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Primary Sources: Primary Sources--African American History

List of primary sources by topic

General History

Websites

African American Migration Experience
Includes images, texts and maps which explore "thirteen defining migrations that formed and transformed African America." 1450 to the present.

African American Mosaic
A Library of Congress research guide for the study of Black History and culture. Includes sections on Colonization, Abolition, and Migration. 

Africans in America
PBS presents a narrative history of "America's journey through slavery," 1450-1865. Primary source materials are located under "Resource Bank" in each of the of the four chronological sections. 

Black Freedom Struggle in the United States: Challenges & Triumphs in the Pursuit of Freedom
Primary sources documenting the following time periods: 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); and The Contemporary Era (1976-2000). Freely available from Proquest. 

Digital Public Library of America: African Americans
Includes around 50K images and video/sound recordings with documentation of re-use rights for each object. 

Umbra Search African American History
A federated search tool from the University of Minnesota Libraries & Penumbra Theater Company. Includes access to content from 1000 U.S. Archives, Libraries, and Museums.

Ebooks from OCC Libraries

Slavery & Abolition

Websites

Black Abolitionist Archive
The Black Abolitionist Digital Archive is a collection of over 800 speeches by antebellum blacks and approximately 1,000 editorials dated 1820-1856. From the University of Detroit Mercy Archive. 

The Geography of Slavery in Virginia
Primarily a collection of advertisements  for runaway and captured slaves and servants published in Virginia during the 18th- and 19th centuries. Hosted by the University of Virginia. 

North American Slave Narratives
"Documenting the American South" is a project from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. This collection presents "the individual and collective story of the Black struggle for freedom and human rights in the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries." Includes narratives written by self-emancipated and formerly enslaved people which were published as broadsides, pamphlets, or books in English up to 1920, as well as many of the biographies of self-emancipated and formerly enslaved people published in English, pre-1920.

Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection
Pamphlets and leaflets documenting the abolitionist movement at the local, regional, and national levels. Includes sermons, position papers, offprints, local Anti-Slavery Society newsletters, poetry anthologies, freedmen's testimonies, broadsides, and Anti-Slavery Fair keepsakes. Archived and presented by Cornell University Libraries. 

Slavery and Abolition in the US: Select Publications of the 1800's.
A digital collection of books and pamphlets documenting the varying ideas and beliefs about slavery in the United States as expressed by Americans throughout the nineteenth century. Documented by Dickinson College Archives & Millersville University Archives.

Slaves and the Courts
Pamphlets and books (1772-1889) from the Library of Congress on the experiences of African and African-American slaves in the colonies and the US: an assortment of trials and cases, reports, arguments, accounts, etc.

Ebooks from OCC Libraries

Segregation & Civil Rights

Websites

Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South
From Duke University Library's Repository. 100 oral history interviews and transcripts chronicling African American life during the age of legal segregation in the American South. Browsable by state, interviewee name, gender, and occupation. 1890s to the 1950s.

Brown vs. The Board of Education Archive
Includes transcripts of federal and Michigan court cases, transcripts of oral arguments, images, and a bibliography on the historic Brown v. Board of Education. From the University of Michigan Libraries. 

Freedom Summer Project
Documentation of the 1964 Freedom Summer, a nonviolent effort by civil rights activists to integrate Mississippi's segregated political system. Compiled and presented by the Wisconsin Historical Society.

Historical Publications of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
Official records of the Commission from 1957 to the present.

Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers Project
Documents the life and work of Marcus Garvey throughout the history of his Pan Africanist movement. Presented by the UCLA Africa Studies Center. 

Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute
The King Institute presents primary and secondary source material from and about MLK. Includes speeches, sermons and photographs. Includes the full audio recording and transcript of Dr. King's  "I Have a Dream" speech.

Rosa Parks Papers
This Library of Congress collection documents Rosa Parks's private life and public activism on behalf of civil rights for African Americans. 

Ebooks from OCC Libraries

Writing & Speeches

Websites

African American Women Writers of the 19th Century
A digital collection of published works by 19th-century black women writers, with biographies for each author along with citations and some images. Genres include Autobiography, Biography, Essays, Fiction, and Poetry. The New York Public Library presents this collection in plain text for all users.  

Booker T. Washington Online Resources
Thirteen indexed volumes of Washington's papers. From the Library of Congress's Rare Book Collection. 

Historical African American Newspapers Available Online
Provides a list of historical African American Newspapers available online as part of digitization projects at libraries and historical societies as well as digitization projects done by Google. Browse by title, time period, or geographic area. Collected by the Cannavino Library at SUNY. 

Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute
The King Institute presents primary and secondary source material from and about MLK. Includes speeches, sermons and photographs. Includes the full audio recording and transcript of Dr. King's  "I Have a Dream" speech.

Ebooks from OCC Libraries

Attribution

Primary Sources--African American History by Oakland Community College Library is adapted from: Guide to Online Primary Sources: African Americans by Kelly L. Smith, UC San Diego Library, © 2024.

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