Search Google Books and HathiTrust for Digitized Books and Other Materials
Find information about African Americans by searching the full text of millions of books in Google Books and the HathiTrust Digital Library. Note the name of the library that provided the book as well as the book's title, author(s), publisher name and location, date, and the page(s) where the information can be found.
If there are no options for printing or downloading, try to take a screenshot of the page that you need and/or check your library catalog to see if your library has a copy of the book.
In some cases, you will find your search terms highlighted in the text but won't be able to view the book. If there are copyright restrictions, the entire book will not be displayed.
Websites of Interest
- African American Perspectives: Pamphlets from the Daniel A. P. Murray Collection, 1818-1907The collection presents a 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." (Library of Congress)
- African-American Studies Research Guide: Open AccessThe Columbia University Libraries library guide describes freely-available web collections related to African American studies.
- African American Women Writers of the Nineteenth CenturyThe New York Public Library Digital Library Collections (Digital Schomburg)
- Digital Public Library of AmericaThe DPLA portal searches collections held by US archives, libraries and museums.
- Documenting the American SouthDocumenting the American South is a digital publishing initiative that offers "Internet access to texts, images, and audio files related to southern history, literature, and culture." (The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
- From Slavery to Freedom: The African-American Pamphlet Collection, 1822-1909396 pamphlets from the Library of Congress Rare Book and Special Collections Division that complement those from its Daniel A. P. Murray Collection.
- Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection | Cornell University LibraryMore than 10,000 titles, including pamphlets and leaflets, that document the anti-slavery movement at local, regional, and national levels.
Selected Newspaper Websites
Search for freely-available issues of historical newspapers.
Black Abolitionist Archive (Access via University of Detroit Mercy)
"The Black Abolitionist Digital Archive is a collection of over 800 speeches by antebellum blacks and approximately 1,000 editorials from the period."
Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers (1836-1922) | Library of Congress
Identify African American titles by selecting the "All Digitized Newspapers" tab and choosing "African American" under Ethnicity.
California Digital Newspaper Collection (1846 to present)
The California Digital Newspaper Collection is a project of the Center for Bibliographical Studies and Research (CBSR) at the University of California, Riverside.
Google News (historic and recent - search by title here)
Historical Newspapers Online (a useful gateway site)
Illinois Digital Newspaper Collections (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)