Guides: Black Studies: Primary Sources

Primary Sources for Black Studies

Black Life in America
Comprehensive coverage of the African American experience. Sourced from nearly 20,000 American and global newspapers from 1704 to 1975, including over 400 African American newspapers. Provides full-text searching as well as access to content by Topic, Event, and Eras in African American History.
African American Periodicals, 1825-1995
More than 170 wide-ranging periodicals by and about African Americans. Published in 26 states, the publications include academic and political journals, commercial magazines, institutional newsletters, organizations bulletins, annual reports and other genres.
Archives Unbound
Archives Unbound provides multi-disciplinary, topically-focused digital collections of historical documents. FROM TOPIC MENU CHOOSE African American Studies (Topics include civil rights, race relations, school integration, freedom riders, Amiri Baraka, FBI surveillance, National Negro Business League, etc.) or CHOOSE African Studies (Liberia, Libya, Egypt, and Morocco)

Black Freedom Struggle in the United States
From ProQuest."Expertly selected open primary source documents. Visitors will find historical newspaper articles, pamphlets, diaries, correspondence and more from specific time periods in U.S. history marked by the opposition African Americans have faced on the road to freedom."

American Race Relations: Global Perspectives, 1941-1996
Digital archive covering foreign perspectives of American racial issues in the mid-20th century. It contains translations of thousands of news articles, radio transcripts, and television transcripts from around the world, chosen by the U.S. Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS). Also offers rare insight into race relations in Latin America, Europe, Africa and Asia. No U.S. papers or broadcasts are included in this database.

African Online Digital Library
From Michigan State University. Includes a variety of collections. Especially see African Activist Archive Project and Cape Town's Community Video Education Trust (for footage of protests, etc.).

Confidential Print: Africa, 1834-1966
Online archive to the United Kingdom’s Colonial, Dominion and Foreign Offices’ confidential correspondence relating to Africa between 1834 and 1966. Coverage includes: European conquest and colonization, the early stages of imperial expansion and indigenous resistance in the interior of western and southern Africa, the European scramble for the continent in the late 19th century, the expansion of settler colonialism in southern and eastern Africa, the rising challenges to imperialism in the 20th century, and European withdrawal from the continent in the 1950s and 1960s.
Archives of Latin American and Caribbean History, Sixteenth to Twentieth Century
A collection of primary source documents about Latin America and the Caribbean, plus academic journals and news feeds covering the region; reference articles and commentary; maps and statistics; audio and video.
Federal Surveillance of African Americans, 1920-1984

The Black Panther (print issues)
Select print issues of The Black Panther newsletter/newspaper can be found in Davis Family Library Special Collections.
The Black Panther (online)
Full-text digital images of The Black Panther newsletter/newspaper can be found in the African American Periodicals database.
Black Women's Suffrage
From the Digital Public Library of America. Covers 1850's - 1860. "The materials in this collection include photographs, correspondence, speeches, event programs, publications, oral histories, and other artifacts."

Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice, 1490-2007
A research database from Adam Matthew with original material from 30 libraries and archives including the British Library, Duke University, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, NYPL. Close attention has been given to the varieties of slavery, the legacy of slavery, the social justice perspective and the continued existence of slavery today.
We Were Prepared for the Possibility of Death: Freedom Riders in the South, 1961
Full-text digital access to these historic documents from the FBI Library.

Langston Heritage Group Collection, 1869-2022
Held by the Archives of Appalachia at East Tennessee State University, the digital archive documents African-American history in Johnson City, Tennessee, and greater Washington County. It features materials pertaining to African-American churches including Bethel Baptist Church, Friendship Baptist Church, Thankful Baptist Church, and St. Paul African American Episcopal Zion Church; materials pertaining to schools, such as Langston School and Dunbar School; community organizations; and more.

The Schlager Anthology of Black America
Call Number: E-book

Publication Date: 2021

The Schlager Anthology of Black America offers a modern, original sourcebook covering Black history from the 1500s to the present. From the creators and publishers of Milestone Documents in American History, this new three-volume set is built on the principles of inclusivity and accessibility. While presenting the essential primary sources from Black history, from iconic figures such as Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Martin Luther King Jr., this anthology also emphasizes often-marginalized voices, from women to those in the LGBTQ community.

Fannie Lou Hamer: Papers of a Civil Rights Activist, Political Activist, and Woman
Fannie Lou Hamer was a voting rights activist and civil rights leader. She was instrumental in organizing Mississippi Freedom Summer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and later became the Vice-Chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, attending the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in that capacity. Her plain-spoken manner and fervent belief in the Biblical righteousness of her cause gained her a reputation as an electrifying speaker and constant activist of civil rights.
Papers of Amiri Baraka, poet laureate of the Black Power Movement
This collection of Amiri Baraka materials was made available by Dr. Komozi Woodard. Dr. Woodard collected these documents during his career as an activist in Newark, New Jersey.The collection consists of rare works of poetry, organizational records, print publications, over one hundred articles, poems, plays, and speeches by Baraka, a small amount of personal correspondence, and oral histories.

Civil Rights, Race, Women section - Midd U.S. History Guide
Additional primary sources may be found on the Middlebury Libraries' U.S. History guide.

Popular Magazines

Ebony Magazine Archives
Browse all issues online back to 1950
Jet Magazine
"The weekly source of African American political and entertainment news." Available to search and browse on Google Books from 1951 - 2005. Recent issues (1991 - 2014) thru Nexis Uni. See MIDCAT record.
The Crisis (NAACP) - open access
"The Crisis is the official publication of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). It features African American commentary on current affairs. In the past, it has also featured African American literature prominently, and was one of the major magazines of the Harlem Renaissance." Also on microfilm film # 266 (1910-1996)

Historical Books

Black Authors: 1556-1922
Created from the renowned holdings of the Library Company of Philadelphia, Black Authors, 1556-1922, is the most complete and compelling collection of its kind. It offers more than 550 fully catalogued and searchable works by black authors from the Americas, Europe and Africa, expertly compiled by the curators of Afro-Americana Imprints collection, the largest existing collection of its kind. Found within are wide-ranging genres, including personal narratives, autobiographies, histories, expedition reports, military reports, novels, essays, poems and musical compositions.

Slavery

Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice, 1490-2007
A research database from Adam Matthew with original material from 30 libraries and archives including the British Library, Duke University, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, NYPL. Close attention has been given to the varieties of slavery, the legacy of slavery, the social justice perspective and the continued existence of slavery today.

Slave Voyages
Resources to analyze the Slave trade. Includes The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database; The Intra-American Slave Trade Database; The African Names Database.
Freedom Narratives
"Testimonies of West Africans from the Era of Slavery"
Liberated Africans
Detailed court records for over 100,000 individuals. "Retraces the lives of over 250,000 people emancipated under global campaigns to abolish slavery, as well as thousands of officials, captains, crews, and guardians..."

Citing Primary Sources

The Chicago & Turabian Manuals include primary sources as well by type of source (newspaper, letters, documents, etc.) but sometimes you will need to find the closest match and adapt your citation.

Primary Sources Reprinted in a Book (Chicago Style)
In many cases you can follow the format for citing a chapter in an edited book or anthology. It may require some adaptation. The first part should reflect the type of source, the second part the standard elements for the book it is from. Also see Citations taken from secondary sources - section 14.273 of Chicago Manual of Style Online.
Citing Primary Sources - Library of Congress Examples
Examples of citing cartoons, films, gov't publications, manuscripts, maps, newspapers, photographs, etc. from LC's collections using Chicago (~Turabian) and MLA styles.

Black Studies

Subject Specialist

Primary Sources for Black Studies

Popular Magazines

Historical Books

Slavery

See Also

Citing Primary Sources