Research Guides: African American Studies *: Primary Sources

African American Primary Source Collections

African American Studies Center (Oxford) This link opens in a new window
The Oxford African American Studies Center provides access to more than 10,000 articles by top scholars in the field.
Access to the database is limited to 3 users.
The core content includes Africana; Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895; Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896 to the Present; Black Women in America, Second Edition; and African American National Biography. In addition to the full-text of these works, the Center draws on other key resources from Oxford's reference program, including the /Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature; the Oxford Companion to Black British History;/ and selected articles from other major reference titles. This database also includes over 2,500 images, more than 450 primary sources with specially written commentaries, nearly 200 maps, and more than 150 charts and tables that offer information on everything from demographics to government and politics to business and labor to education and the arts.

American Memory - African American History
(11 Collections)
Blackpast.org
An online reference center that makes available materials on African American history. These materials include an online encyclopedia of over 4,000 entries, the complete transcript of more than 300 speeches by African Americans, other people of African ancestry, and those concerned about race, given between 1789 and 2016, over 140 full text primary documents, bibliographies, timelines and six gateway pages with links to digital archive collections, African and African American museums and research centers, genealogical research websites, and more than 200 other website resources on African American and global African history.

Black Freedom Struggle in the United States This link opens in a new window
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)
Black Studies Center This link opens in a new window
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A fully cross-searchable gateway to African American Studies including scholarly essays, recent periodicals, key literature indexes, historical newspaper articles (from core publications such as Chicago Defender), and much more.
Black Thought and Culture This link opens in a new window
Black Thought and Culture contains 1,303 sources with 1,210 authors, covering the non-fiction published works of leading African Americans.

Documenting the American South: The Church in the Southern Black Community
This digital initiative, by the University Library at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, provides access to texts, images, and audio files related to southern history, literature, and culture.
Say it Plain, Say it Loud: A Century of Great African American Speeches
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
Key site from the New York Public Library's digital and research collections on African American culture

Large Primary Source Databases & Collections

African American Historical Serials Collection This link opens in a new window
This collection was developed in conjunction with the American Theological Library Association (ATLA) as part of an effort to preserve endangered serials related to African American religious life and culture documenting the history of African American life and religious organizations from materials published between 1829 and 1922. Collection content includes more than 170 unique titles related to African American life and culture and approximately 60,000 pages of searchable primary source content.
Umbra: Search African American History This link opens in a new window
USC is beta test partner for Umbra, a freely available digital discovery tool designed for the research and study of African American history and culture. It includes a growing collection of digital materials—images, videos, books, and more—provided by libraries, museums, and other repositories around the country.
Eight Centuries (formerly 19th Century Masterfile) This link opens in a new window
Login required An "Index of Indexes". The largest resource for historical research prior to 1930. 19th Century Masterfile brings together over 60 subject indexes to: Periodicals; Newspapers; Books; US Congressional Record; US and UK Government Documents;US Patents. You can query over 11 million citations in 19th Century Masterfile in a single search.
C19: Nineteenth Century Index This link opens in a new window
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Draws on the strength of established indexes such as the Nineteenth Century Short Title Catalogue, The Wellesley Index, Poole's Index and Periodicals Index Online to create integrated bibliographic coverage of over 1.4 million books and official publications, 64,891 archival collections and 15.6 million articles published in over 2,500 journals, magazines and newspapers. C19 Index now provides integrated access to 10 bibliographic indexes, including over 300,000 records from the ongoing digitization of British Periodicals Collection.

Digital History

U.S. History In Context This link opens in a new window
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Provides integrated access to over 4,000 historical (primary) documents, articles from more than 30 reference titles, and over 110 full-text journals covering themes, events, individuals and periods in U.S. history from pre-Colonial times to the present. The material also includes citations from over 180 additional history journals from the Institute for Scientific Information's Arts and Humanities Citation Index, as well as the entire "American Journey Online" series.
The material also includes citations from over 180 additional history journals from the Institute for Scientific Information's Arts and Humanities Citation Index, as well as the entire "American Journey Online" series.
Women and Social Movements Library This link opens in a new window
Organized around the history of women in social movements between 1600 and the present,

Slavery, Abolition & Race Relations

African Americans and the End of Slavery in Massachusetts
Includes historical manuscripts and rare published works from the late 17th century through the abolition of slavery
Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora
This website is a digital archive for hundreds of historical images, paintings, lithographs, and photographs illustrating enslaved Africans and their descendants before c. 1900. (Formerly known as The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas : a Visual Record)
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Click on the link on the page to enter the database.
The Avalon Project, Documents Concerning Slavery
Primary sources compiled by Yale Law School
Black Abolitionist Archive
From the 1820s to the Civil War, close to 300 black abolitionists who were involved in the antislavery movement. This University of Detroit Mercy collection provides access to over 800 speeches by antebellum blacks and approximately 1,000 editorials from the period

Black Abolitionist Papers This link opens in a new window
This collection searches a unique set of primary sources from African Americans actively involved in the movement to end slavery in the United States between 1830 and 1865.
Over 15,000 items are available for searching.

Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938
Contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. (from the Library of Congress) These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and assembled and microfilmed in 1941 as the seventeen-volume Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves.
Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery & Justice
Digitized documents from a report on Brown University's historical relationship to slavery and the slave trade
Documenting the American South: North American Slave Narratives
This digital initiative, by the University Library at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, provides access to texts, images, and audio files related to southern history, literature, and culture.
The Dred Scott Case Collection
The records displayed in this exhibit document the Scotts' early struggle to gain their freedom through litigation and are the only extant records of this significant case as it was heard in the St. Louis Circuit Court. This collection was expanded from 85 - 111 documents, over 400 pages of text. (Click on the last link on the page "The Revised Dred Scott Case Collection").
Freedmen and Southern Society Project
This project of the University of Maryland draws on materials from the National Archives of the United States to document people's movement from slavery to emancipation.
Freedom on the Move: A database of Fugitives from North American Slavery
The goal is to compile all North American slave runaway ads and make them available for statistical, geographical, textual, and other forms of analysis.
Free People of Color in Louisiana: Revealing an Unknown Past
This collection of 25,000 digitized items are from the Historical Center at the Louisiana State Museum in New Orleans, the Louisiana Division of the New Orleans Public Library, The Historic New Orleans Collection, and Tulane University’s Louisiana Research Collection.
From Slavery to Freedom: The African-American Pamphlet Collection 1824-1909
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396 pamphlets from the Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress, published from 1822 through 1909, by African-American authors and others who wrote about slavery, African colonization, Emancipation, Reconstruction, and related topics.
Georgetown Slavery Archive
A repository of materials relating to the Maryland Jesuits, Georgetown University, and slavery.
In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience
This Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture site provides timelines and primary and secondary source materials on topics ranging from the Transatlantic Slave Trade to the Western Migration to Caribbean and Haitian Immigration
The Ku Klux Klan In Washington State, 1920s

ProQuest History Vault: Slavery and the Law This link opens in a new window
Documents in Series I: Petitions to State Legislatures, 1777-1867 include primary source materials digitized from the state archives of Alabama, Delaware, Florida, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.
The collection includes nearly all existing legislative petitions on the subject of race and slavery. Documents in Series II: Petitions to Southern County Courts, 1777-1867 were collected from local courthouses, and show the realities of slavery at the grassroots level in southern society. This collection also includes State Slavery Statutes, a master record of the laws governing American slavery from 1789â1865.
ProQuest History Vault: Southern Life and African American History, 1775-1915, Plantations Records, Parts 1 & 2 This link opens in a new window
Primary sources included are from the papers (business and financial records, diaries, letterbooks, correspondence, etc.) of dozens (both prominent and average) slaveholding families from plantations in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, North Carolina South Carolina, Georgia, and Virginia.
Race Relations in America This link opens in a new window
Based at Fisk University from 1943-1970, the Race Relations Department and its annual Institute were set up by the American Missionary Association to investigate problem areas in race relations and develop methods for educating communities and preventing conflict.
Documenting three pivotal decades in the fight for civil rights, this resource showcases the speeches, reports, surveys and analyses produced by the Department’s staff and Institute participants, including Charles S. Johnson, Dr Martin Luther King, Jr., and Thurgood Marshall. The resource is provided by Adam Matthew.

Records of Slave Ship Movement Between Africa and the Americas, 1817-1843
This site provides access to the raw data and documentation which contains information on slave ship movement between Africa and the Americas from 1817-1843. Specifically, the data file contains information on the ship's port of arrival, date of arrival, type of vessel, tonnage, master's name, number of guns, number of crew, national flag, number of slaves, port of departure, number of days of voyage, and mortality.
Runaway Slaves in Britain: Bondage, Freedom and Race in the Eighteenth Century
The sources for this project are advertisements placed in eighteenth-century English and Scottish. newspapers by slave-owners. The project will also locate and make available related newspaper, legal and other materials.
Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection
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The over 10,000 items in this Cornell University collection include pamphlets, leaflets, broadsides, newsletters, and other ephemera documenting anti-slavery efforts at the local, regional, and national levels, beginning in 1700.
Slave Movement During the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
Provides access to raw data and documentation which contains information on slave trade topics from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
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This site provides access to the raw data and documentation which contains information on slave trade topics from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: records of slave ship movement between Africa and the Americas, slave ships of eighteenth century France, slave trade to Rio de Janeiro, Virginia slave trade in the eighteenth century, English slave trade (House of Lords Survey), Angola slave trade in the eighteenth century, internal slave trade to Rio de Janeiro, slave trade to Havana, Cuba, Nantes slave trade in the eighteenth century, and slave trade to Jamaica.
The Slave Narrative
Part of Washington State University's Brief Timeline of American Literature and Events site, this collection features informational resources as well as primary source material

Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice, 1490-2007 This link opens in a new window
28 min video tutorial => http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kwbrp6Pwvf0

This portal for slavery and abolition studies brings together documents and collections from dozens of libraries and archives across the Atlantic world. Close attention is given to the varieties of slavery, the legacy of slavery, the social justice perspective and the continued existence of slavery today. It also includes significant coverage of US court records from the local, regional and Supreme Court level.
Close attention is being given to the varieties of slavery, the legacy of slavery, the social justice perspective and the continued existence of slavery today.
Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive This link opens in a new window
We have access to Part II-IV: (2) Slave Trade in the Atlantic World, (3)The Institution of Slavery (1492-1888), (4) The Age of Emancipation. Provided by Gale-Cengage.
These collections cover the transatlantic slave trade, the legal, personal, and economic aspects of the slavery system, and the dynamics of emancipation in the U.S., Latin America, the Caribbean, and other regions.It includes digital access to a variety of primary sources: legaldocuments, court records, plantation records, company records,first-person accounts, newspaper articles, government documents and much more. Also includes reference articles and links to websites, biographies, chronologies, bibliographies to give background and context for further research.

Slaves & the Courts, 1740-1860
Contains over a hundred pamphlets and books (published between 1772 and 1889) concerning the experiences of African and African-American slaves in the American colonies and the United States. The documents, most from the Law Library and the Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress, comprise an assortment of trials and cases, reports, arguments, accounts, examinations of cases and decisions, proceedings, journals, a letter, and other works of historical importance.
Texas Slavery Project
Examines the expansion of slavery in the borderlands between the United States and Mexico in the years between 1837 and 1845. Based at the Virginia Center for Digital History, the project provides dynamic maps that plot the flows of slavery throughout Texas and a population search engine. Also includes primary sources such as personal letters, newspaper articles, constitutions and legal documents
Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database
This database, sponsored by a number of research institutions, provides information on around 35,000 slaving voyages that forcibly embarked over 10 million Africans to the Americas between the 16th and 19th centuries
Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture
This University of Virginia site explores the effects of this work on American culture
The Understanding Slavery initiative (USI)
A national learning project which supports the teaching and learning of transatlantic slavery and its legacies using museum and heritage collections. Six museums across the UK have worked in partnership to share expertise, develop resources, training opportunities and school sessions.
Voices from Slavery: Former Slaves Tell Their Stories
From the Library of Congress, American Memory Project. Almost 7 hours of recorded interviews took place between 1932 and 1975 in nine Southern states. 23 interviewees, born between 1823 and the early 1860s, discuss how they felt about slavery, slaveholders, coercion of slaves, their families, and freedom.

Statistics & Data

Historical Statistics of the United States This link opens in a new window
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This is the fourth edition of Historical Statistics of the United States. The U.S. Bureau of the Census published the prior editions in 1949, 1960, and 1975, the last known as the Bicentennial Edition. Cambridge University Press publishes this, the Millennial Edition, with the permission of the Census Bureau. Some of the data and table documentation presented here are used without explicit quotation, but with permission, from the earlier editions. The Census Bureau takes no responsibility for the design of this edition or the accuracy of its content, which rests solely with the contributors, the editors, and Cambridge University Press.
Roper Center Public Opinion Archives (with iPOLL) This link opens in a new window
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An archive of public opinion survey data from the National Opinion Research Center (NORC), Gallup, Los Angeles Times Polls, exit polls and others.
Allows users to search survey questions or download data.
Userguide: http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/pdf/iPOLL_Basic_Search_Pocket_Guide.pdf
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Polling the Nations This link opens in a new window
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Database of over 500,000 questions from more than 14,000 public opinion polls and surveys covering the United States and 100 other countries going back to 1986. Can search for questions by keyword, topic, or other specification and quickly pull-up top-line percentage distributions.
Although the database contains polls from all over the world, the majority were conducted in the United States. Each record in the database consists of one poll question and the participants' responses. Also includes source of poll, contact information, sample size, and notes on the sample population. Records are searchable by subject, publication year, general and specific location of poll and survey method.
ProQuest Statistical Insight This link opens in a new window
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Indexes printed federal, state, international statistical publications, and selected business and professional publications containing statistics.
Whenever possible, the Superintendent of Documents classification number, the Library of Congress card number, the Government Printing Office (GPO) Monthly Catalog entry number, the GPO stock number, and the depository item number are also included. The abstract may also contain two hypertext links - one to the agency's World Wide Web site where the full text of the publication may be viewed and downloaded; the other to the full text on Statistical Universe, where the publication can be viewed, downloaded and accessed section by section or table by table.

World Values Survey
The WVS in collaboration with EVS (European Values Study) carried out representative national surveys in 97 societies containing almost 90 percent of the world's population from 1981 to 2008. These surveys show changes in what people believe in and what they want out of life in relation to the environment, work, family, politics and society, religion and morale, and national identity.
Use the “Online Data Analysis” option to view findings.

Legal & Legislative History

Avalon Project (Yale University)
Contains digital documents relevant to the fields of Law, History, Economics, Politics, Diplomacy and Government.
Brown v. Board of Education Digital Archive
This archive, developed by the University of Michigan Library, contains documents and images concerning Supreme Court cases; busing and school integration efforts in northern urban areas; school integration in the Ann Arbor Public School District; and recent resegregation trends in American schools

Crime, Punishment, and Popular Culture, 1790-1920 This link opens in a new window
Includes a wide range of primary source material related to the international history of law and society, including: trial transcripts, case notes, police and forensic reports, detective novels, newspaper accounts, broadsides, photographs true crime literature, and related ephemera.

The Dred Scott Case Collection
1846-1855
The records displayed in this exhibit document the Scotts' early struggle to gain their freedom through litigation and are the only extant records of this significant case as it was heard in the St. Louis Circuit Court. The original Dred Scott case file is located in the Office of the St. Louis Circuit Clerk.

This collection is an expanded and updated version of the original Dred Scott Case Collection. The collection, was expanded from eighty-five to one hundred and eleven documents, over 400 pages of text. In addition, the collection is now a full-text, searchable resource that represents the full case history of the Dred Scott Case.
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Famous Trials of the 20th Century
Compiled by Douglas O. Linder of the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, this resource provides primary source and other materials concerning some of the 20th Century's key trials.

Gale Primary Sources This link opens in a new window
Provides centralized access to 48 Gale Primary source collections
Nexis Uni (formerly LEXIS/NEXIS Academic) This link opens in a new window
Database of full text online news, legal cases, and company information from 1980 to present. Includes Nexis Dossier and Total Patent One.
Making of Modern Law: Primary Sources, 1620-1926 This link opens in a new window
Records of the American colonies, state constitutional conventions, state codes, city charters and more, 1620-1970.
Making of Modern Law: Trials, 1600-1926 This link opens in a new window
The Making of Modern Law: Trials 1600-1926 is a digital collection of more than 10,000 titles describing courtroom dramas published between 1600 and 1926.
The two million pages of searchable content is derived from primary source documents located in the law libraries of Yale University, Harvard University, and the Library of the Bar of the City of New York. Included in the collection are unofficially published trial accounts, official trial documents, administrative proceedings, and arbitrations.The collection offers up content describing scandalous courtroom dramas and the daily lives of everyday people around the world, providing a rare historical glimpse into a given era.

O SAY CAN YOU SEE: Early Washington D.C., Law & Family
Explores multigenerational black, white, and mixed family networks in early Washington, D.C., by collecting, digitizing, making accessible, and analyzing thousands of case files from the Circuit Court for the District of Columbia, Maryland state courts, and the U.S. Supreme Court
The Oyez Project
A multimedia archive devoted to the Supreme Court of the United States, its justices, and its work. It aims to be a complete and authoritative source for all audio recorded in the Court since the installation of a recording system in October 1955.

Proquest Congressional This link opens in a new window
This database indexes and abstracts a broad spectrum of Congressional publications, including hearings (testimony), committee prints, reports, documents, and full text of bills and public laws, and the U.S. Statutes at Large from 1789 to the present.
ProQuest Regulatory Insight This link opens in a new window
This resource provides researchers with content and workflow tools to facilitate research tasks associated with administrative law, from 1936-2016. As a companion to Legislative Insight, Regulatory Insight offers regulatory histories associated with public laws compiled by our editorial staff.
ProQuest History Vault: Law and Society Since the Civil War: American Legal Manuscripts from the Harvard Law School Library This link opens in a new window
Consists of 11 collections, including the papers of Albert Levitt, Felix Frankfurter, Livingston Hall, Louis D. Brandeis, Richard H. Field, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Roscoe Pound, the Sacco-Vanzetti Case, Sheldon Glueck, William H. Hastie, and Zechariah Chafee. Frankfurter's and Brandeis's papers provide a behind-the-scenes view of the Supreme Court between 1919 and 1961.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Papers include Holmes's correspondence from 1861-1935.

Slaves & the Courts, 1740-1860
Library of Congress, American Memory Project.
Contains just over a hundred pamphlets and books (published between 1772 and 1889) concerning the difficult and troubling experiences of African and African-American slaves in the American colonies and the United States. The documents, most from the Law Library and the Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress, comprise an assortment of trials and cases, reports, arguments, accounts, examinations of cases and decisions, proceedings, journals, a letter, and other works of historical importance.

U.S. Supreme Court Records and Briefs 1832-1978 This link opens in a new window
U.S. Supreme Court Records and Briefs 1832-1978 is a fully searchable database of approximately 11 million pages and more than 350,000 separate documents related to the Supreme Court from 1832-1978.
Approximately 150,000 Supreme Court cases are featured, the majority consisting of those for which the Court did not give a full opinion. U.S. Supreme Court Records and Briefs comprises over 150,000 cases from the generation before the American Civil War to the decade of the Vietnam War and Watergate. It covers every aspect of law: civil rights law; constitutional law; corporate law; environmental law; gender law; labor law; legal history and legal theory; property law; taxation; trademark and intellectual property law, among other subjects.

Research Guide for finding Laws from the 13 colonies
From Bowling Green State University

Civil War (1861-1865)

American Civil War: Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new window
Contains content written by over 2,000 authors and includes approximately 100,000 pages of diaries, letters and memoirs as well as biographies.
American Civil War Research Database This link opens in a new window
(from Alexander Street)
Contains indexed, searchable information on over 4 million soldiers and thousands of battles, together with over 16,000 photographs

Originally created by Historical Data Systems, Inc., the database contains indexed, searchable information on over 4 million soldiers and thousands of battles, together with over 16,000 photographs. With thousands of regimental rosters and officer profiles, the database will continue to grow as new information is loaded semiannually.

Civil War 150: National Portrait Gallery
The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery is taking part in the commemorations for the 150th anniversary of the Civil War and the presidency of Abraham Lincoln with a series of seven related exhibitions. Accompanying these exhibitions are weekly blog entries, podcasts and videos written and produced by experts on Civil War topics.
Civil War Images of Northern Virginia
This site, created by George Mason University's Library, Special Collections, provides images of wood engravings, lithographs, chromolithographs, photolithographs, and more; many stem from the time of the Civil War, and most depict Civil War battles and military maps
Civil War Medical Care
This New York Public Library collection contains photographs from the United States Sanitary Commission Collection, 1861-1872
Civil War Women
This Duke University Library site features primary source documents and links to other resources concerning women in the Civil War

Civil War Primary Source Documents This link opens in a new window
Comprised of over 110,000 pages, this database focuses on the Civil War as it was fought from 1861 to 1865 and represents both Northern and Southern perspectives.

It Includes a variety of primary source documents, such as, letters, diaries, administrative records, photographs, illustrations, artifacts, scrapbook journals, family portraits, and maps featuring hand-colored details of troop movements and local landmarks.

Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln
Searchable full-text edition of the 1953 publication, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Includes speeches, correspondence, and more, compiled by the Abraham Lincoln Association.
Confederate Broadside Poetry Collection
This Wake Forest University collection consists of over 250 poems written by Southerners and Confederate sympathizers during the Civil War
Crisis at Fort Sumter
This site, developed by Tulane University, uses text, images, and sound to reconstruct policy decision making during from the time of Lincoln's election to the battle of Fort Sumter in April 1861.
eHistory Primary Sources
This Ohio State University project provides access to documents, images, and other primary source material, with special strengths in Civil War, including the Official Records; “the 128 volumes of the Official Records provide the most comprehensive, authoritative, and voluminous reference on Civil War operations.”
Freedmen and Southern Society Project
This site offers sample documents from the Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867 project developed at the University of Maryland.
Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
A nonprofit organization supporting the study and love of American history through a wide range of programs and resources for students, teachers, scholars, and history enthusiasts throughout the nation. Topics covered include Slavery and Abolition; Civil War Era; Abraham Lincoln.
The Geography of Slavery in Virginia
A digital collection of advertisements for runaway and captured slaves and servants in 18th- and 19th-century Virginia newspapers.

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This project offers a personal, geographical and documentary context for the study of slavery in Virginia, from colonial times to the Civil War.
A House Divided: America in the Age of Lincoln
This collaboration between the Chicago Historical Society (CHS) and the Gilder Lehrman Institute, with text by Eric Foner and Olivia Mahoney, Director of Historical Documentation at the CHS, examines slavery; free and slave-based economies; and the legacy of the Civil War as destruction and as catalyst.

Illustrated Civil War Newspapers and Magazines This link opens in a new window
Includes 65,000 pages from 49 confederate, union, abolitionist, and British presses periodicals, including 15 campaign newspapers, most of which are illustrated.
Images of the American Civil War This link opens in a new window
Photographs, Posters, and Ephemera provides over 1400 images from the fields of battle, politics, and general society, enabling researchers to experience the events, both monumental and mundane, of the war that tested and defined the core meaning of America

The images, which are drawn from the fields of battle, politics, and general society, allow students and researchers to experience the events, both monumental and mundane, of this critical war.

Making of America
Dates covered: 1840-1900
A collaborative effort between Cornell and the University of Michigan makes available primary sources in American social history from each university's library.
North Carolina Civil War Image Portfolio
From the University of North Carolina, this collection presents images from woodcuts, engravings, lithographs, and photographs--most of these were made by people accompanying Union forces, or were made from sketches and other information they provided.

ProQuest Civil War Era This link opens in a new window
This database provides access to the full runs of eight newspapers from 1840-1865 and nearly 2000 pamphlets focusing on the entire Civil War era, from Manifest Destiny through the end of the Civil War.

Materials were specifically selected for regional and diverse perspectives they offer; newspapers include Richmond Dispatch, Charleston Mercury, New Orleans Times Picayune, Boston Herald, New York Herald, Columbus State Journal, The Kentucky Daily Journal, and the Memphis Daily Appeal. Pamphlets come from two important collections: Slavery and Anti-Slavery Pamphlets from the Libraries of Salmon P. Chase & John P. Hale and Civil War Pamphlets 1861-1865.

Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War
This site, developed by Edward L. Ayres at the University of Virginia, provides a wealth of primary sources, including letters, diaries, church and census records, newspapers, and speeches, to document one Northern and one Southern community during the Civil War era.

Emancipation/Reconstruction Era (1865-1887)

African American Pamphlets
Dates covered: 1818-1907 (The bulk were published between 1875-1900)
The Daniel A. P. Murray Pamphlet Collection presents a panoramic and eclectic review of African-American history and culture, spanning almost one hundred years from the early 19th through the early 20th centuries. Among the authors represented are Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Benjamin W. Arnett, Alexander Crummel, and Emanuel Love.
An Era of Progress and Promise: Education and Religion in Post-Emancipation America
full text of the 1910 book
1863-1910
The book is a culmination of the findings of the Clifton Conference -- which took place from 1901 to 1908 to discuss educational and religious opportunities available to African Americans.It was compiled by W. N. Hartshorn of Clifton, Massachusetts, to celebrate the "religious, moral, and educational development of the American Negro since his emancipation."
Freedmen and Southern Society Project
This project of the University of Maryland draws on materials from the National Archives of the United States to document people's movement from slavery to emancipation.
Impeachment of Andrew Johnson
This Harpweek site compiles over 200 excerpts from Harper's Weekly concerning the 1868 Johnson impeachment.

Civil Rights Movement

ACLU American Civil Liberties Union Papers, 1912-1990 This link opens in a new window
The records of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on free speech, citizenship, race, discrimination, immigration, labor, radicalism, and related topics support the study of American legal history and complement the modules in the Making of Modern Law series. Documents include newspaper clippings, scrapbooks, court files, memorandums, telegrams, minutes, and legal case records.
Alexander Street Press Oral Histories Online This link opens in a new window
Oral History Online provides in-depth indexing to more than 2,700 collections of Oral History in English from around the world. The collection also provides keyword searching of more than 329,400 pages of full-text by close to 10,000 individuals from all walks of life. It also contains pointers to over 4,200 audio and video files and almost 19,000 bibliographic records.
American Race Relations: Global Perspectives, 1941-1996 This link opens in a new window
Reports, publications, and news broadcasts covering America's fight for racial justice, with firsthand analysis of race relations in Latin America, Europe, Africa, and Asia.
Archives of Sexuality & Gender This link opens in a new window
The Archives of Sexuality and Gender program provides a robust and significant collection of primary sources for the historical study of sex, sexuality, and gender. With material dating back to the sixteenth century, researchers and scholars can examine how sexual norms have changed over time, health and hygiene, the development of sex education, the rise of sexology, changing gender roles, social movements and activism, erotica, and many other interesting topical areas.
Searchable Archives include:

* LGBTQ History and Culture Since 1940, Part I
* LGBTQ History and Culture Since 1940, Part II
* Sex and Sexuality, Sixteenth to Twentieth Century
* International Perspectives on LGBTQ Activism and Culture
* L'Enfer de la Bibliothèque nationale de France
* Community and Identity in North America

Black Panther Party: The UC Berkeley Library Social Activism Sound Recording Project
This Pacifica Radio/UC-Berkeley collaboration seeks to gather, catalog, and make accessible primary source media resources related to social activism and activist movements in California in the 1960's and 1970's; it provides links to key resources and sites with primary sources on the Black Panther Party and more
Brown v. Board of Education Digital Archive
This archive, developed by the University of Michigan Library, contains documents and images concerning Supreme Court cases; busing and school integration efforts in northern urban areas; school integration in the Ann Arbor Public School District; and recent resegregation trends in American schools
The Civil Rights Digital Library
Civil Rights Documentation Project
Developed by the University of Southern Mississippi Library and partners, this resource provides oral history transcripts and a civil rights timeline.

Farmworker Movement Documentation Project This link opens in a new window
A comprehensive multimedia digital collection and primary source project created to ensure that historical materials related to the United Farmworkers of America (UFW) and the life of Cesar Chavez would be preserved. Photographs, videos, documentaries, oral histories and fulltext of selected books. Searchable and browsable by topics.

The Freedom Archives
A non-profit educational archive located in San Francisco dedicated to the preservation and dissemination of historical audio, video, and print materials documenting progressive movements and culture from the 1960s to the 1990s.
Historical Publications of the United States Commission on Civil Rights
Thurgood Marshall Law Library, University of Maryland.
Since its inception in 1957, the United States Commission on Civil Rights has been at the forefront of efforts by the Federal Government and state governments to examine and resolve issues related to race, ethnicity, religion and, more recently, sexual orientation.

Homophile Movement: Papers of Donald Stewart Lucas, 1941-1976 This link opens in a new window
"Homophile Movement" refers to organizations and political strategies employed by the GLBT community prior to the era of confrontational activism of the 1970s.
Donald Stewart Lucas was a gay rights pioneer, leader of the Mattachine Society, and an advocate for the poverty stricken. The papers document the difficulties of gay men in 1950s -1960s, the history of organizations the Mattachine Foundation, the Mattachine Society, Pan-Graphic Press, the Council on Religion and the Homosexual, the Society for Individual Rights, and the Economic Opportunity Council of San Francisco.
ProQuest History Vault: Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century This link opens in a new window
Provides access to 4 primary source modules: (1) Federal Government Records – Includes FBI Files on Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights activists, records from from the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations, detailing the interaction between civil rights leaders and organizations and the federal government; (2) Federal Government Records, Supplement - includes civil rights records from the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department during the Ford presidency and from the Ronald Reagan White House Office Records related to civil rights. (3) Organizational Records and Personal Papers, Part 1 - Includes papers and records of various individuals and civil rights organizations, including: Claude A. Barnett's Associated Negro Press, Mary McLeod Bethune's National Association of Colored Women's Clubs, the Revolutionary Action Movement and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. (4) Organizational Records and Personal Papers, Part 2 - Includes the records of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Africa-related papers of Claude Barnett, the Robert F. Williams Papers, the papers of Chicago Congressman Arthur W. Mitchell, the Chicago chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality, and records pertaining to the Mississippi Freedom Summer.
ProQuest History Vault: NAACP Papers Digital Archive This link opens in a new window
The collection, made up of 6 modules, contains nearly 2 million pages of internal memos, legal briefings, and direct action summaries from national, legal, and branch offices throughout the country.
The documents range from 1909 - 1972.
Revolution and Protest Online This link opens in a new window
Revolution and Protest Online explores the protest movements, revolutions, and civil wars that have transformed societies and human experience from the 18th century through the present. Organized around more than thirty events and areas, representing a variety of time periods, regions, and topics, this collection will include at completion 175 hours of video, 100,000 pages of printed materials.

The Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project
1910-1970
From the University of Washington. Civil rights movements in Seattle started well before the celebrated struggles in the South in the 1950s and 1960s, and they relied not just on African American activists but also on Filipino Americans, Japanese Americans, Chinese Americans, Jews, Latinos, and Native Americans. They also depended upon the support of some elements of the region's labor movement.
SNCC Digital Gateway
Digital Library of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

Literature & Music

20th Century African-American Poetry 10,000 poems by 70 African-American modern and contemporary poets
The Center for Black Music Research A research unit of Columbia College Chicago devoted to research, preservation, and dissemination of information about the history of black music on a global scale.
African American Song The first online resource to document the history of African American music in an online music listening service
African-American Poetry (1750-1900) Nearly 3,000 poems written by African-American poets in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture This University of Virginia site explores the effects of this work on American culture

Black Drama (Third Edition) This link opens in a new window
Contains approximately 1,462 plays by 233 playwrights, with detailed, fielded information on related productions, theaters, production companies, and more. The database also includes selected playbills, production photographs and other ephemera related to the plays. Close to 600 of the plays are published here for the first time, including a number by major authors.