African American NewspapersThis link opens in a new windowNewspapers covering the African American experience from 1827-1998. Contains newspapers from more than 35 states.
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African American PeriodicalsThis link opens in a new windowPublications by and about African Americans from 1825-1995. Includes academic journals, magazines, newsletters and annual reports
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Afro-Americana ImprintsThis link opens in a new windowBooks, pamphlets, and broadsides that record African American history, literature, and culture. Created from the Library Company's Afro-Americana Collection and covers 1535-1922.
Black Abolitionist PapersThis link opens in a new windowPrimary source collection of proceedings, documents, correspondences, manuscripts, and literary works of Black abolitionists detailing the work of African Americans to abolish slavery in the United States prior to the Civil War, covering 1830-1865.
Documenting White Supremacy and Its Opponents in the 1920sThis link opens in a new windowLocal, regional, and national newspapers published by Klan organizations and by sympathetic publishers in the 1920s. It also includes key anti-Klan voices from newspapers published by American Black, Catholic, and Jewish communities
Negro Motorist Green BookFrom the Introduction to the 1949 edition: With the introduction of this travel guide in 1936, it has been our idea to give the Negro traveler information that will keep him from running into difficulties, embarrassments and to make his trips more enjoyable.
American Slavery : A Composite AutobiographyThis link opens in a new windowFull-text database of slave narratives from transcripts of 2,000 interviews of former slaves from seventeen states, conducted between 1936 and 1938.
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American Slavery Collection (1820-1922)This link opens in a new windowCollection of slavery and abolition materials addressing every facet of American slavery. Materials included are: books, pamphlets, graphic materials, and ephemera.
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Black Abolitionist PapersThis link opens in a new windowPrimary source collection of proceedings, documents, correspondences, manuscripts, and literary works of Black abolitionists detailing the work of African Americans to abolish slavery in the United States prior to the Civil War, covering 1830-1865.
HarpWeekThis link opens in a new windowFull text access to Harper's Weekly from 1857-1871.
Last Seen : Finding Family After SlaveryAims to identify, digitize, transcribe, and publish ads placed in newspapers across the United States (and beyond) by formerly enslaved people searching for family members and loved ones after emancipation. These newspaper ads began appearing in the 1830s (our earliest ad appeared in The Liberator in 1832) and greatly increased in frequency in the years immediately following emancipation (1865) and continued well into the 20th century.
Legacies of British slave-ownershipDatabase of slave-owners in the British Caribbean, Mauritius or the Cape at the moment of abolition in 1833.
Entries include information about the activities, affiliations and legacies of these men and women, with a particular emphasis on the "absentee" owners based in Britain.
Slave Societies Digital ArchiveThe Slave Societies Digital Archive (SSDA), directed by Jane Landers and hosted at Vanderbilt University, is dedicated to identifying, cataloging, and digitally preserving endangered archival materials documenting the history of Africans and their descendants in the Atlantic World.
The SSDA’s largest and oldest collections were generated by the Catholic Church, which mandated the baptism of African slaves in the fifteenth century and later extended this requirement to the Iberian New World. The baptismal records preserved in Slave Societies are the oldest and most uniform serial data available for the history of Africans in the Atlantic World and offer the most extensive information regarding their ethnic origins. Once baptized, Africans and their descendants were eligible for the sacraments of Christian marriage and burial, adding to their historical record. Through membership in the Catholic Church families also generated a host of other religious documentation such as confirmations, petitions to wed, wills, and even annulments. In addition, Africans and their descendants joined church brotherhoods organized along ethnic lines, through which they recorded not only ceremonial and religious aspects of their lives but their social, political, and economic networks as well.
Africans and their descendants also left a documentary trail in municipal and provincial archives across the Atlantic World. These secular records, which Slave Societies is now preserving too, include bills of sale, property registries and disputes, dowries, and letters of manumission, among many other types of records.
Unfortunately, many of these historical documents are at risk. Some materials preserved by SSDA teams have suffered significant damage; others no longer exist except in digital form. The goal of Slave Societies is to preserve as many of these unique documents as possible and make them freely available to the world so that current and future generations can continue to learn about the history of Africans and their descendants in the Atlantic World.
Slavery Abolition and Social Justice 1490-2007This link opens in a new windowPrimary and secondary source material relating to the subjects of slavery, abolition, and social justice, from 1490-2007.
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Slavery and Anti-Slavery ArchiveThis link opens in a new windowCollections on the transatlantic slave trade, the global movement for the abolition of slavery, the legal, personal, and economic aspects of the slavery system, and the dynamics of emancipation in the U.S. as well as in Latin America, the Caribbean, and other regions.
Slavery and the Law (ProQuest History Vault)This link opens in a new windowPetitions on race, slavery, and free blacks that were submitted to state legislatures and county courthouses between 1775 and 1867.
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Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture & LawThis link opens in a new windowLegal materials related to slavery and free Blacks in the U.S. published before 1920. There are also hundreds of pamphlets and books written about slavery defending it, attacking it, or simply analyzing it.
NAACP Papers (ProQuest History Vault)This link opens in a new windowCollection of documents from the national, legal, and branch NAACP offices, from 1909-1972. Papers document segregation in the early 20th century, the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
African American CommunitiesThis link opens in a new windowPamphlets, newspapers, periodicals, correspondence, official records, and oral histories from late 1860s-1970s, documenting race relations, discrimination, urban renewal, desegregation, and African American culture.
Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century (ProQuest History Vault)This link opens in a new windowPrimary sources from the African-American struggle for freedom and equality from 1790 to the contemporary period. The collection consists of Federal Government records, organizational records, and personal papers.
Race Relations in AmericaThis link opens in a new windowDocuments relating to the struggle for civil rights in America. They highlight different responses to the challenges of overcoming prejudice, segregation, and racial tensions.
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`Black Elevation MapGuide to the Black cultural sites, Black historical landmarks, and Black-owned businesses which can be found in America’s towns and cities. This new interactive map uses data from a number of sources to show the concentration and locations of Black-owned businesses and Black historical markers across the country.
History Makers Digital ArchiveThe HistoryMakers Digital Archive of 356 African American video oral history interviews is available online for the first time on a test basis to registered users. This archive includes 16243 stories from over 833 hours of video.
In Motion : The African American Migration ExperienceIn Motion: The African-American Migration Experience presents a new interpretation of African-American history, one that focuses on the self-motivated activities of peoples of African descent to remake themselves and their worlds. Of the thirteen defining migrations that formed and transformed African America, only the transatlantic slave trade and the domestic slave trades were coerced, the eleven others were voluntary movements of resourceful and creative men and women, risk-takers in an exploitative and hostile environment. Their survival skills, efficient networks, and dynamic culture enabled them to thrive and spread, and to be at the very core of the settlement and development of the Americas. Their hopeful journeys changed not only their world and the fabric of the African Diaspora but also the Western Hemisphere.
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