Research by Subject: African American History: Primary Sources

Primary Source Materials

See the News Sources guide for additional resources, including historical newspapers.

Evans Digital Edition 1639-1800 (Early American Imprints Series I) This link opens in a new window
Evans, 1639-1800 (Early American Imprints, Series I) has been described as the definitive resource for researching 17th- and 18th-century America. This digital collection contains virtually every book, pamphlet and broadside published in America over a 160-year period. Early American Imprints, Series I is based on Charles Evans’ “American Bibliography” and Roger Bristol’s supplement.
See America’s Historical Imprints
Shaw Shoemaker Digital Edition (Early American Imprints Series II) This link opens in a new window
Shaw-Shoemaker, 1801-1819 (Early American Imprints, Series II) provides a set of American books, pamphlets and broadsides published in the early part of the 19th century. It is based on the noted “American Bibliography, 1801-1819” by Ralph R. Shaw and Richard H. Shoemaker.
See America’s Historical Imprints
African American Periodicals 1825-1995 This link opens in a new window
Explore African American history, culture and daily life in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Slavery & Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive This link opens in a new window
Includes collections from the U.S. and Europe on the worldwide movement for the abolition of slavery in the eighteenth and nineteenth century.
Slavery, Abolition, and Social Justice 1490-2007 This link opens in a new window
Includes books, pamphlets, periodicals and broadsides addressing 19th and early 20th century political, social and gender issues, religion, race, education, employment, marriage, sexuality, health and family life.
American Slavery Collection, 1820-1922 This link opens in a new window
Features the digital edition of the American Antiquarian Society’s holdings of slavery and abolition materials, with more than 3,500 works published over more than 100 years. Materials include books, pamphlets, and ephemera.

Anti-Slavery Examiner (via HathiTrust)
Published by the American Anti-Slavery Society, the Anti-Slavery Examiner appealed to the people of the United States to unite with the Society in maintaining common and unquestioned political rights. Speeches and letters on anti-slavery were reprinted. Testimony from slaveholders and other material taken mainly from slave state newspapers attempted to present slavery as it was.
Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Voyages database
Includes data and information on nearly 35,000 slaving voyages that forcibly embarked over 10 million Africans for transport to the Americas between the 16th and 19th centuries. Database enables searching by ship, nation, voyage dates, slave characteristics, place voyage began/ended, and more.

Black Freedom Struggle in the United States: Challenges and Triumphs in the Pursuit of Equality This link opens in a new window
In this website, we present primary source documents from several of the time periods in American History when the river of the Black Freedom Struggle ran more powerfully, while not losing sight of the fierce, often violent opposition that Black people have faced on the road to freedom.

This website contains approximately 1,600 documents focused on six different phases of Black Freedom:

Slavery and the Abolitionist Movement (1790-1860)
The Civil War and the Reconstruction Era (1861-1877)
Jim Crow Era from 1878 to the Great Depression (1878-1932)
The New Deal and World War II (1933-1945)
The Civil Rights and Black Power Movements (1946-1975)
The Contemporary Era (1976-2000)

Sites

African American Odyssey from the Library of Congress
Provided by the Library of Congress, American Memory
Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives
Contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 photographs of former enslaved people. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA)
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This site provides an opportunity to read a sample of these narratives. The entire collection of narratives can be found in George P. Rawick, ed., The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1972-79), call number E444 .A45 (lower level 2)
Frederick Douglass Papers
Papers of the 19th African-American abolitionist who escaped from slavery and then risked his own freedom by becoming an outspoken antislavery lecturer, writer, and publisher.
Crisis Magazine (Digitized volumes 1910-1922)
W. E. B. Du Bois founded The Crisis in 1910, as the house magazine of the fledgling NAACP, a widely read and influential periodical about race and social injustice.
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NOTE: Print copies in library: 1910~1996. Check "Journal Titles" for access to recent volumes.
Crisis Magazine (via Google books)
The Crisis Magazine, founded by W.E.B. Du Bois as the official publication of the NAACP, is a journal of civil rights, history, politics, and culture and seeks to educate readers about issues that continue to plague African Americans and other communities of color.
Black World via Google Books
Selected volumes, 1961-1976. Founded in 1943, Negro Digest (later “Black World”) was the publication that launched Johnson Publishing. During the most turbulent years of the civil rights movement, Negro Digest/Black World served as a critical vehicle for political thought for supporters of the movement.
Civil Rights Digital Library
Primary sources and other materials from libraries, archives, museums, and public broadcasters.
Brown vs. Board of Education Digital Archive
Digital Archive from U. of Michigan includes documents and images about the historically significant case.
FBI Eyes
FBI Files on African American authors and literary institutions obtained through the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).