Below is a list of databases focused on primary sources related to the historical experience of African Americans and the African Diaspora in the United States.
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The African American Historical Serials Collection, developed in conjunction with American Theological Library Association (ATLA) features more than 170 unique periodical titles related to the history of African American life and culture, with extensive coverage of religious organizations, churches, and institutions. Material was published between 1829 and 1922.
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Updated regularly. A comprehensive collection of scholarship focused on the lives and events which have shaped African American and African history and culture, coupled with sophisticated technology permitting precise search and browse capabilities. Features over 7,500 articles from Oxford's authoritative reference works, approximately 100 primary sources with specially written commentaries, over 1,000 images, over 100 maps, over 200 charts and tables, timelines to guide researchers through the history of African Americans and over 6,000 biographies.
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Updated regularly. Includes more than 1,000 U.S. historical newspapers published between 1690 and the 1990s, including titles from all 50 states. Search by dates/eras, article types (news & opinion, election returns, letters, poetry/songs, legislative, prices, advertisements, matrimony & death notices), region/state, and newspaper name.
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Updated regularly. Contains approximately 1200 plays written from the mid-1800s to the present, together with detailed, fielded information on related productions, theaters, production companies, and more. Also includes selected playbills, production photographs and other ephemera related to the plays. The content represents North America, English-speaking Africa, the Caribbean, and other African diaspora countries. Many of the works are rare, hard-to-find, or out of print.
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This Black Freedom module is highlighted by the records of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Africa-related papers of Claude Barnett, and the Robert F. Williams Papers. Rounding out this module are 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.
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The focus of the Federal Government Records module is on the political side of the freedom movement, the role of civil rights organizations in pushing for civil rights legislation, and the interaction between African Americans and the federal government in the 20th century. Major collections in this module include the FBI Files on Martin Luther King Jr.; Centers of the Southern Struggle, FBI Files covering five of the most pivotal arenas of the civil rights struggle of the 1960s: Montgomery, Albany, St. Augustine, Selma, and Memphis; and records from the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations.
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This module supplements the original module of Federal Government records by adding civil rights records from the Ford and Reagan presidencies. Additionally, seven FOIA collections cover affirmative action; Bob Jones University; busing and school desegregation; civil rights; fair housing; Martin Luther King Jr. Day; and the Civil Rights Restoration Act, Grove City College, and the Voting Rights Act of 1982.
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This collection is a black studies portfolio that brings together seminal documentaries, powerful interviews, and previously unavailable archival footage surveying the black experience. The collection contains 500 hours of film covering African American history, politics, art and culture, family structure, gender relationships, and social and economic issues.
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Digitized historical documents from the records of voting rights activist and civil rights leader, Fannie Lou Hamer. Her papers contain more than three thousand pieces of correspondence plus financial records, programs, photographs, newspaper articles, invitations, and other printed items.
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The collection consists of records of the United Domestic Workers Union (U.S) from 1965-1979. The National Domestic Workers Union was founded in Atlanta in 1968 by Dorothy Bolden to help women engaged in household work. Correspondence (1965-1979) reflects Bolden's efforts in organizing the Union and includes such correspondence with Georgia and national political figures. In addition, the collection contains minutes of the Union, financial documents and files relating to Equal Opportunity Atlanta.
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The Written Rastafari Archives Project (WRAP) involves an exclusive collection of the most well-known Rastafari ephemerals – newsletters, magazines, newspapers, booklets, statements, letters, articles and assorted literature - written and published by a number of Rastafari Mansions, organizations, groups, and individuals over the past four decades. The provocative literary materials in this WRAP Collection provide an historical time stamp and current affairs commentary on the transitional period in the Rastafari Movement’s development – a period extending from the early 1970s through to the present. It is a forty year period during which the Rastafari Movement has been spreading across the Afro-Atlantic world in one form or another and becoming progressively globalized.
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The NAACP branch files in this module chronicle the local heroes of the civil rights revolution via NAACP branches throughout the United States, from 1913-1972. The contributions of scores of local leaders—attorneys, community organizers, financial benefactors, students, mothers, school teachers, and other participants—are revealed in these records. The Branch Department, Branch Files, and Youth Department Files in this module of NAACP Papers will allow researchers at all levels new opportunities to explore the contributions of NAACP local leaders. The branch files also indicate how effectively the NAACP national office used the branch network to advance the NAACP national program. The Youth Department Files document how the NAACP tapped the energy and talent of college students and other young people at the state and local levels.
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The NAACP was involved in several subjects that did not rise to the level of major campaigns but were still vital to the organization. This module contains records on those subjects, and in so doing, reveals the wide scope of NAACP activism and interest.These files cover subjects and episodes that are crucial to the NAACP's history, such as civil rights complaints and legislation, the Klan, Birth of a Nation, the Walter White-W. E. B. Du Bois controversy of 1933-1934, communism and anticommunism during the years of the "red scare," the congressional prosecution of Hollywood personalities, the prosecution of conscientious objectors during World War II, NAACP’s relations with African colonial liberation movements, NAACP fundraising and membership recruitment, urban riots, the War on Poverty, and the emergence of the Black Power Movement.
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Contains internal memos, legal briefings, and direct action summaries from national, legal, and branch offices throughout the country. It charts the NAACP's work and delivers a first-hand view into crucial issues: lynching, school desegregation, and discrimination in the military, the criminal justice system, employment, and housing, among others. It provides a comprehensive view of the NAACP’s evolution, policies, and achievements from 1909–1970.
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Major campaigns for equal access to education, voting, employment, housing and the military are covered in this module. The education files in this module document the NAACP’s systematic assault on segregated education that culminated in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Files from 1955 –1965 focus on the NAACP’s efforts to implementthe Brown decision as well as to combat de facto segregation outside of the South.
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This module consists of Papers of the NAACP Legal Department from 1956-1972. For the period from 1956-1965, this includes the working case files of the NAACP’s general counsel, Robert Carter. Among the topics covered in these cases are school desegregation, abuses of police procedure, freedom of speech, desegregation of public facilities, voting rights, housing discrimination, and employment discrimination. A small sampling of the important cases in this module include NAACP v. Alabama (freedom of association), Gomillion v. Lightfoot (voting rights), Allen v. County School Board and Griffin v. County School Board (school desegregation in Virginia), Ogletree v. McNamara (employment discrimination), and Powell v. McCormack (seating of Congressman Adam Clayton Powell in the U.S. House of Representatives).
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This NAACP module focuses on the NAACP’s efforts regarding anti-lynching, peonage, and discrimination in employment and the criminal justice system. A rich set of records in this module is the NAACP file on one of the most celebrated criminal trials of the 20th century – the case of the Scottsboro boys. In this case, nine young black men were accused of raping two white women on a train in northern Alabama. Sixteen days after their arrest, eight of the nine teenagers were sentenced to death in the electric chair. All eight escaped execution when the Supreme Court, in the landmark case of Powell v. Alabama, ruled that the defendants had been inadequately represented by counsel.
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