Black History Resources

Africans in America: America's Journey through Slavery (PBS)
A legacy site for the 1998 PBS TV series. Presented in four parts. For each era users will find a historical narrative; a resource bank of images, documents, stories, biographies, and commentaries; and a teacher's guide for using the content of the web site and the television series in U.S. history courses.

African-American Mosaic: a Library of Congress Resource Guide for the Study of Black History & Culture
An online exhibit as well as a publication from the Library of Congress. The Mosaic is the first library-wide resource guide to the institution's African-American collections, some of which can be found below, in "American Memory." "Covering the nearly 500 years of the black experience in the Western hemisphere, the Mosaic surveys the full range size, and variety of the Library's collections, including books, periodicals, prints, photographs, music, film, and recorded sound. ... [The online] exhibit is but a sampler of the kinds of materials and themes covered by the publication and the Library's collections. Many of the exhibit items are featured in the Mosaic. Other exhibit materials, not specifically described in the publication, are also included to illustrate that the Mosaic is an effective guide to the Library's rich collections, not an exhaustive inventory. A print copy of American-American Mosaic can be found in the Stacks under call number E184.6 .L5 1993.

American Memory (Library of Congress)
American Memory, from the Library of Congress, includes 16 collections on African American history, some of which are listed below. [list of all 16 African-American History collections]

• African American Odyssey
• Showcases the Library's incomparable African-American collections. The presentation was not only a highlight of what is on view in this major black history exhibition, but also a glimpse into the Library's vast African-American collections. Both include a wide array of important and rare books, government documents, manuscripts, maps, musical scores, plays, films, and recordings. It includes links to some of the other African American collections listed below.
• African American Perspectives: Pamphlets from the Daniel A.P. Murray Collection, 1818-1907
• This collection presents a panoramic and eclectic review of African-American history and culture, spanning almost one hundred years from the early nineteenth through the early twentieth centuries, with the bulk of the material published between 1875 and 1900. Among the authors represented are Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Benjamin W. Arnett, Alexander Crummel, and Emanuel Love.
• Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938
• More than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves 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. This online collection is a joint presentation of the Manuscript and Prints and Photographs Divisions of the Library of Congress and includes more than 200 photographs from the Prints and Photographs Division that are now made available to the public for the first time.
• First-Person Narratives of the American South, 1860-1920
• This compilation of printed texts from the libraries at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill documents the culture of the nineteenth-century American South from the viewpoint of Southerners. It includes the diaries, autobiographies, memoirs, travel accounts, and ex-slave narratives of not only prominent individuals, but also of relatively inaccessible populations: women, African Americans, enlisted men, laborers, and Native Americans.
• From Slavery to Freedom: The African-American Pamphlet Collection, 1822-1909
• This collection presents 396 pamphlets from the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, published from 1822 through 1909, by African-American authors and others who wrote about slavery, African colonization, Emancipation, Reconstruction, and related topics. The materials range from personal accounts and public orations to organizational reports and legislative speeches. Among the authors represented are Frederick Douglass, Kelly Miller, Charles Sumner, Mary Church Terrell, and Booker T. Washington. It complements African American Perspectives: Pamphlets from the Daniel A.P. Murray Collection, 1818-1907.
• Voices from the Days of Slavery (audio presentation)
• Former slaves tell their stories. The almost seven hours of recorded interviews presented here took place between 1932 and 1975 in nine Southern states. Twenty-three interviewees, born between 1823 and the early 1860s, discuss how they felt about slavery, slaveholders, coercion of slaves, their families, and freedom. Several individuals sing songs, many of which were learned during the time of their enslavement. It is important to note that all of the interviewees spoke sixty or more years after the end of their enslavement, and it is their full lives that are reflected in these recordings. The individuals documented in this presentation have much to say about living as African Americans from the 1870s to the 1930s, and beyond.

American Women's History: African American Women
Part of a comprehensive website on women's history compiled by Ken Middleton, reference/microforms librarian at Middle Tennessee State University Library. This site covers not only web resources about African American women, but print and electronic sources as well.

Antislavery Literature
"The goal of the Antislavery Literature Project is to increase public access to a body of literature crucial to understanding African American experience, US and hemispheric histories of slavery, and early human rights philosophies. These multilingual collections contribute to an educational consciousness of the role of many antislavery writers in creating contemporary concepts of freedom." "The Antislavery Literature Project was established in 2002 as a collaborative electronic publishing project in a major but under-studied area of American literature. The Project is based in the Arizona State University’s English department and works in cooperation with the EServer, located at Iowa State University. As an educational non-profit, the Project provides public access to the literature and history of the antislavery movement in the United States. It does so by research; production and annotation of electronic editions; and delivery of texts via the Internet. ... During 2005 [the Project] accomplished over 5,000 cumulative pages of digitization work, placing antislavery materials not previously available freely online." Includes poetry, prose fiction, slave narratives, tracts, essays, speeches, religious literature, travel accounts, children's literature, contemporary slavery and antislavery resources, news, and proslavery literature.

  Black History (Newsbank)
(Find link under "Special Reports.") "In-depth perspectives on black culture, issues and events, along with profiles of famous figures and leaders. Includes primary source images from the slavery movement."

Black History Month (infoplease)
Includes "History and Timelines," "Special Features," and a section on 500 Notable African Americans [A-Z list], organized by categories such as government leaders and civil rights leaders.

Black Studies (prepared by Grace-Ellen McCrann, City College of New York)
Currently includes links to resources in 51 subject categories including Abolition, Civil Rights, The Freedman's Bureau, the Harlem Renaissance, Horseracing, Literature & Writing, Martin Luther King Jr., the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Slave Narratives, Statistics, Theatre, Tuskegee Airmen and the Underground Railroad.

Booker T. Washington Papers Online (University of Illinois Press)
"The Booker T. Washington Papers Online is a completely free and searchable web site designed to provide researchers worldwide with full access to the thousands of pages comprising this 14-volume printed work, originally published by the University of Illinois Press." Includes full-text images of the pages, a search mechanism, a separate database of images from the published volumes, and links to other resources.

Civil Rights. The Learning Page, Community Center (Library of Congress)
The Library of Congress has gathered more than forty online resources for students and teachers, including information about Jim Crow in America; Brown v. Board of Education; a timeline from slavery to Civil Rights; personal stories of “everyday” Civil Rights activists; and profiles of such notable African Americans as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Langston Hughes, and W.E.B. Du Bois (pictured). The site also offers lesson plans for grades 7-12.

Civil Rights Documentation Project (via CongressLink, The Dirksen Congressional Center)
An interactive, Web-based presentation with links to digitized historical materials and other Internet-based resources about civil rights legislation created by museums, historical societies, and government agencies.

Digital History ("using new technology to enhance teaching and research")
This is an educational and non-commercial site designed specifically for history teachers and their students, grades K-12 and college. It is supported by the Department of History and the College of Education at the University of Houston.

• African American Voices

Handbook of Texas Online
Search the Handbook for many more biographies of African American Texans and additional information on topics of interest on African American history in Texas, such as African American churches, the Beaumont Riot of 1943, Juneteenth, and Slavery.

  Historical Publications of the United States Commission on Civil Rights
Available from the Thurgood Marshall Law Library, University of Maryland School of Law. "In conjunction with its strategic plan to enhance its civil rights collection in support of the School of Law's teaching and research mission, the Library has worked since 2001 to create a complete electronic record of United States Commission on Civil Rights publications held in the Library's collection and available on the USCCR Web site. The publications are made available over the Internet as page image presentations in PDF format. ... Publications are also searchable by keyword and accessible by date and title."

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (Newsbank)
(Find link under "Special Reports.") A retrospective of articles covering the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project (Stanford University)
The King Papers Project is a major research effort to assemble and disseminate historical information concerning Martin Luther King, Jr. and the social movements in which he participated and is one of only a few large-scale research ventures focusing on an African American. Items under "Publications" and "Additional Resources" provide bibliographical information on documents only. Items under "Popular Requests" are available online.

National Archives and Records Administration
The National Archives' Prologue Magazine, Genealogy Notes, and Access to Archives Databases web site provide articles and documents for the researcher.

• The Summer 1997 issue of Prologue Magazine (vol. 29, no. 2) is a special issue focusing on the use of federal records in African American historical research. Articles by NARA staff and other historians explore the depth and breadth of material in the Archives relative to African Americas. The issue examines the Civil War and Reconstruction, labor issues, civil rights, pictorial records, and research aids. The issue is out of print and not available for purchase, but all of the articles are online.
• Genealogy Notes on "African American History" includes, among others, Special Issue on African American Research and Federal Records (summer 1997) and Researching African Americans in the U.S. Army, 1866-1890: Buffalo Soldiers and Black Infantrymen (spring 2001)
• Access to Archives Databases (AAD) web site: "Out of the nearly 200,000 data files in its holdings, NARA has selected approximately 475 of them for public searching through AAD. We selected these data because the records identify specific persons, geographic areas, organizations, and dates. The records cover a wide variety of civilian and military functions and have many genealogical, social, political, and economic research uses." (from "Getting Started Guide")

 A Roadmap to African-American and Diversity Resources (ARAADR)
Created by Sherry DuPree, Santa Fe Community College Professor of Student Development Instruction (formerly SFCC Library User Services Coordinator). "Learn about African-American and Diversity Resource links that you can visit on the Internet. The sites offer a range of resources: connecting you to pages where you can access both primary and secondary documents, databases, archives, libraries, maps, images and more. The focus covers what is available for the United States with an emphasis on Florida and Central America. The links cover at least one of the following criteria; sites that offer resources at the secondary, college and university levels; sites that allow access to material without copyright restrictions on downloading and circulating materials in an educational setting; and sites from well-known government databases. Some sites will deal with world history, including England, Canada, Caribbean and Africa. ... All web sites have been approved by librarians and/or subject area specialists." Search by Library of Congress or Dewey call numbers areas, Library of Congress subject headings, countries, or timelines.

Theme Studies (National Park Service. National Register of Historic Places)
National Historic Landmarks are preferably identified through theme studies because they provide a comparative analysis of properties associated with a specific area of American history. Some theme studies are mandated by Congress, while others are determined by the National Park Service, and generally prepared under cooperative agreements or contracts with other governmental entities or private organizations. These theme studies are examples appropriate to the topic of African American History Month.

• American Civil Rights [second vol., draft study, Civil Rights in America: Racial Desegregation in Public Accommodations, PDF 167 pp.],
•   Legends of Tuskegee: American Visionaries: Booker T. Washington, the Tuskegee Airman, George Washington Carver,
• Racial Desegregation in Public Education in the US, and
• Underground Railroad Resources in the United States [including "Aboard the Underground Railroad: A National Register Travel Itinerary" and "Exploring a Common Past: Researching and Interpreting the Underground Railroad"].
• Other theme studies of interest include "Labor History" (with essays on labor history against the backdrop of civil rights, race, and other issues) [draft study, PDF 191 pp.] and "World War II Homefront" [draft study, PDF 181 pp.].

U.S. Society > African Americans (U.S. Diplomatic Mission to Germany)
An informative site compiled from various State Dept. and other government publications. Includes links to a number of "e-texts" such as The Amistad Revolt: an Historical Legacy of Sierra Leone and the United States (by Arthur Abraham) [PDF 21 pp.] and "Toward One America: A National Conversation on Race" (U.S. Society and Values [electronic journals of the U.S. Information Agency], v.2, no.3 (August 1997)) [PDF 45 pp.]

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USGS Maps, Online Edition
"Discover a small sample of the millions of maps produced by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in its mission to map the Nation and survey its resources. This booklet gives a brief overview of the types of maps sold and distributed by the USGS through its Earth Science Information Centers (ESIC) and also available from business partners located in most States. The USGS provides a wide variety of maps, from topographic maps showing the geographic relief and thematic maps displaying the geology and water resources of the United States, to special studies of the moon and planets."

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Government Documents Home  |  Maps Home Compiled: March 2004 Janetta Paschal, Government Documents/Reference Librarian