African American History

Over 12,000 printed works, including books, pamphlets, and broadsides: "works on Africa, the rise of slavery and movements against it, and the writings of African Americans." Part of America's Historical Imprints and the Archive of Americana.

A wide ranging collection that complements our largest collection of digitized African American newspapers, ProQuest Historical Black Newspapers. While ProQuest Historical Black Newspapers covers the major, metropolitan black newspapers of the twentieth century, African American Newspapers, 1827-1998 provides access to a broader range of publications, especially the black press of America's smaller cities, and the few extant issues of the earliest black newspapers, most of which were previously available only on microfilm or in smaller digital collections scattered around the Internet. Click here to view a complete title list for African American Newspapers Series I and II. Part of America's Historical Newspapers and the Archive of Americana.

Nine major African American newspapers of the nineteenth century, including Freedom's Journal (the first African American newspaper ever published), the Christian Recorder, the Colored American, Douglass' Monthly, Frederick Douglass' Paper, the National Era, the North Star, the Provincial Freeman, and the Weekly Advocate. Click here to view a complete title list for African American Newspapers: The Nineteenth Century.

Includes complete runs of representative newspapers from the District of Columbia, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and West Virginia.

About 170 periodicals published by, for, or about African Americans. Part of the Archive of Americana.

A federated collection of newspaper articles documenting the African American experience. Supports keyword searching, or structured browsing by time period and subject.

1959-2008. Full color reproductions.

Full-color reproductions of (so far) 24 magazines, spanning mid- to late-twentieth century, with some runs into the 2000s. Most of the magazines are American publications.

1959-present. Newspaper, magazine, and journal articles from ethnic, minority and native presses.

1951-2015. Over 1,000 alternative press newspapers and periodicals. Currently includes nine subcollections: African American; student protest; feminist; military; LGBTQ; Latino/Latina; literary; American Indian; and radical Right. Click here to view a complete title list for Independent Voices.

1951-2008. Full color reproductions.

The major black newspapers of the twentieth century. Click here to see a complete list. Part of ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Major reference works, along with supplementary primary source material.

Colonial times to the present. Non-fiction works, including interviews, journal articles, speeches, essays, books, pamphlets, and letters, with brief, biographical entries for all authors. Some of the documents were previously-unpublished. Supports browsing by date, event, and other subjects.

Documentaries, newsreels, interviews and archival footage

Newspapers, periodicals, oral histories, organizational records, personal papers, pamphlets, and ephemera that document the history of African American communities in Chicago, St. Louis, Atlanta, New York, North Carolina. Highlights of the collection include the Chicago Urban League records (1917-1985), the Town of Pullman records (1876-1919), the Lea Demarest Taylor papers on housing and race relations, 1893-1966, the Urban League of St. Louis records, and an extensive oral history collection. Collection is organized around five broad themes: Desegregation, Urban renewal and housing problems, Civil rights activities and protests, Race relations and community integration, and African American culture.

Documents from the Archives of the Race Relations Department of the United Church Board for Homeland Ministries. The Race Relations Department of the United Church Board for Homeland Ministries was established for the purpose of bringing the expertise of social scientists to bear on the problem of race relations in the United States. Although the entire archive has not been digitized, the collection includes significant holdings of case studies, reports, audio recordings, scrapbooks, statistical data, academic studies, photographs, periodicals, correspondence, government documents, posters, and more. The collection also features extensive editorial apparatus intended to assist the user with exploring and interpreting the documents.

Manuscripts, pamphlets, books, paintings, and maps. Emphasis on the Atlantic world, but includes coverage of Middle East, Asia, and the Pacific. Documents all aspects of slave trade and the slave experience.

Books, periodicals, manuscripts, court records, and reference works documenting world slavery and the slave trade from the 16th century through the 19th.

All extant legal materials on slavery in the United States and the English-speaking world, as well as documents on free African-Americans before 1870. Includes every statute passed by every state and colony, all federal statutes, all reported state and federal cases on slavery, and hundreds of books and pamphlets on the subject. Free to use, but registration required. Part of Hein Online.

Shipping manifests from nearly 35,000 individual slaving expeditions between 1514 and 1866.

1830-1865. Approximately 15,000 articles, documents, correspondence, proceedings, manuscripts, and literary works of almost 300 Black abolitionists.

University of Illinois owns the following six modules: A Newspaper Perspective, The Soldiers’ Perspective, The Generals’ Perspective, A Midwestern Perspective, Iowa’s Perspective, and Northeast Regimental Histories.

Online access to 37 previously-microfilmed archival collections, including East St. Louis Riot of 1917; Martin Luther King Jr. FBI Files, Parts I and II; Black Workers in the Era of the Great Migration, 1916-1929; Several series of records on civil rights during the Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, and Bush administrations; and more.

Issued in modules. 36 previously-microfilmed archival collections, including the Records of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Bayard Rustin Papers, the Mary McLeod Bethune Papers, the Papers of A. Philip Randolph, the Records of the American Committee on Africa, the Records of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the Records of the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs, the Claude A. Barnett Papers, and more.

Filmed, oral history interviews of contemporary African Americans. Subscription canceled.

Almost 9,000 poems by 62 African American poets of the twentieth century.

From the Papers of the National Negro Congress held by the Schomburg Center at the New York Public Library. Part of Archives Unbound.

Temporarily offline. Online exhibition of films from the Newsfilm Library's Fox Movietone News Collection, ca. 1919 to 1963.

Photographs, news clippings, pamphlets, scrapbooks, directories, and newsletters, ca. 1924-1970

TRIAL. FBI records on the Black Liberation Army (BLA), from the period 1970-1983. Part of Archives Unbound.

The Black Metropolis Research Consortium (BMRC) is an unincorporated Chicago-based association of libraries, universities, and other archival institutions with major holdings of materials that document African American and African diasporic culture, history, and politics, with a specific focus on materials relating to Chicago. The University of Chicago serves as Host Institution of the BMRC.

Over 2,300 personal narratives about slavery as well as 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves.

All published slave narratives in English through 1920: Part of Documenting the American South.

Yearbooks, newspapers, and graduation programs from Indianapolis's first segregated high school built for African Americans (in 1927).

TRIAL. Part of Archives Unbound.

TRIAL. Records from the FBI. Part of Archives Unbound.

TRIAL. Davis was an African American leader in the Communist Party. Part of Archives Unbound.

TRIAL. Records from the FBI, ATF, and the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department. Part of Archives Unbound.

TRIAL. FBI records on James Meredith. Includes selections from Meredith's correspondence from the period. Part of Archives Unbound.

Based on New Deal-era maps and reports created by the Home Owners' Loan Corporation of the Federal Government. These maps and accompanying reports helped to codify the practice of redlining.

Books, journals, government records, video, audio, and photographs, with emphasis on the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Also includes documents on Watergate, Iran Contra, and other government scandals.

Using data reported by municipalities, this site documents the number of families, by race, displaced through federally-funded urban renewal projects.

Oral histories, photographs, films, slideshows, newspaper clippings, archival material, and contextualizing editorial apparatus like essays and timelines. Includes multiple sub-collections: Segregated Seattle; Chicano/a Movement in Washington; LGBTQ Activism in Seattle History Project; Seattle Black Panther Party History and Memory Project; The Ku Klux Klan In Washington State; Farm Workers in Washington State; Filipino Cannery Unionism Across Three Generations 1930s-1980s; Seattle's Asian American Movement; Tyree Scott and the United Construction Workers Association; The Black Student Union at UW; CORE and the Central Area Civil Rights Campaigns; and The 1907 Bellingham Riots.

Almost 7 hours of audio recorded oral histories by former slaves.

Oral histories, with audio recordings and transcripts, or working African Americans in Birmingham, Alabama prior to World War II.

Geographic coverage: United States. Date range: 1950-1987. Document types: Correspondence; memoranda; speeches; notes; reports; press releases; financial records; agendas; printed material; and personal papers. Topical coverage: African-American civil rights; gay rights; international human rights; social reform; pacifism.. Source institution: Library of Congress (originally in the A. Philip Randolph Institute, New York). Part of ProQuest History Vault: Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century: Organizational Records and Personal Papers, Part 1.

Issued in modules. 36 previously-microfilmed archival collections, including the Records of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Bayard Rustin Papers, the Mary McLeod Bethune Papers, the Papers of A. Philip Randolph, the Records of the American Committee on Africa, the Records of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the Records of the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs, the Claude A. Barnett Papers, and more.

TRIAL ENDED. 13 previously-microfilmed archival collections, including the Arthur W. Mitchell Papers, 1898-1968; the Black Power Movement, Part 2: The Papers of Robert F. Williams; Congress of Racial Equality Papers (8 modules, covering 1941-1976); the Midwest Academy (Chicago, Illinois) Records, Heather Booth's Personal Files, 1964 and 1984; the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Papers, 1959-1972; and The Claude A. Barnett Papers, 1918-1967, Series 2: Africa and Other Foreign Interests, 1925-1966. Part of ProQuest History Vault.

TRIAL. Records from the personal collection of Dr. Muhammad Ahmad. Part of Archives Unbound.

TRIAL. Part of Archives Unbound.

Abolitionist who founded the Normal School for Colored Girls in 1851, in response to the prohibition against teaching African Americans in her classrooms. From the collections of the Library of Congress. Library of Congress. Part of Nineteenth Century Collections Online.

Digitized from the 35 reel microfilm set. Randolph was an African American socialist leader, and the founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, widely considered the first successful union of African American workers. Part of the module Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century: Organizational Records and Personal Papers, Part 1 in ProQuest History Vault.

TRIAL. The National Negro Business League files in Part III of the Booker T. Washington Papers at the Library of Congress. Part of Archives Unbound.

Issued in modules. 36 previously-microfilmed archival collections, including the Records of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Bayard Rustin Papers, the Mary McLeod Bethune Papers, the Papers of A. Philip Randolph, the Records of the American Committee on Africa, the Records of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the Records of the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs, the Claude A. Barnett Papers, and more.

Digitized from the holdings of the King LIbrary and Archive, at the Martin Luther KIng, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change (Atlanta, Georgia). Part of ProQuest History Vault: Civil Rights and the Black Freedom Struggle.

TRIAL ENDED. 13 previously-microfilmed archival collections, including the Arthur W. Mitchell Papers, 1898-1968; the Black Power Movement, Part 2: The Papers of Robert F. Williams; Congress of Racial Equality Papers (8 modules, covering 1941-1976); the Midwest Academy (Chicago, Illinois) Records, Heather Booth's Personal Files, 1964 and 1984; the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Papers, 1959-1972; and The Claude A. Barnett Papers, 1918-1967, Series 2: Africa and Other Foreign Interests, 1925-1966. Part of ProQuest History Vault.

TRIAL. Records from the archives of the Civil Rights Congress national office in New York City (now at the Schomburg Center, New York Public Library). Part of Archives Unbound.

The papers of the NAACP held by the Library of Congress. Previously available on microfilm, the digitized version comprises six modules: Board of Directors, Annual Conferences, Major Speeches, and National Staff Files (Parts 1, 2, 14, 16, 17, and 21 of the microfilm set); Branch Department, Branch Files, and Youth Department Files (Parts 12, 19, 25, 26, 27, and 29 of the microfilm set); Special Subjects (Parts 11, 18, 24, 28, and 30 of the microfilm set); The NAACP's Major Campaigns: Education, Voting, Housing, Employment, Armed Forces (Parts 3, 4, 5, 9, and 13 of the microfilm set); The NAACP's Major Campaigns: Legal Department Files (Parts 22 and 23 of the microfilm set); and The NAACP's Major Campaigns: Scottsboro, Anti-Lynching, Criminal Justice, Peonage, Labor, and Segregation and Discrimination Complaints and Responses (Parts 6, 7, 8, 10, 15, and 20 of the microfilm set). Part of ProQuest History Vault: Civil Rights and the Black Freedom Struggle.

Digitized from the 23 reel microfilm set. Drawn from the NAACP papers held by the Library of Congress (the largest, but not only, repository of NAACP papers). This series brings together records from the subject files that document working conditions and workforce discrimination. Part of the NAACP Papers: The NAACP's Major Campaigns--Scottsboro, Anti-Lynching, Criminal Justice, Peonage, Labor, and Segregation and Discrimination Complaints and Responses module in ProQuest History Vault.

Registers of signatures of depositors in branches of the Freedman's Savings and Trust Company. The Freedman's Saving and Trust Company, which was established by Congress for the benefit of freed slaves. Records include personal information of depositors, including the name of depositor, the date of application/deposit, the name of the depositor's employer, the name of plantation, the depositor's age, the depositor's height, the depositor's complexion, the name of the depositor's father and/or mother, marital status, place of birth, place of residence, occupation, names of depositor's children, and names of depositor's siblings. Part of HeritageQuest.