Research Guides: African-American History: Websites and Primary Source Materials

Recommended Websites and Primary Source Materials

African American History: Primary Sources (University of Washington)
An excellent collection of online primary sources related to African American History.
American Memory: African-American History (Library of Congress)
American Memory collection of the Library of Congress provides free and open access through the Internet to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience. It is a digital record of American history and creativity.
The Atlantic Slave Trade in Two Minutes
This interactive, designed and built by Slate’s Andrew Kahn, gives you a sense of the scale of the trans-Atlantic slave trade across time, as well as the flow of transport and eventual destinations. The dots—which represent individual slave ships—also correspond to the size of each voyage. The larger the dot, the more enslaved people on board. And if you pause the map and click on a dot, you’ll learn about the ship’s flag—was it British? Portuguese? French?—its origin point, its destination, and its history in the slave trade.
Black Freedom Struggle in the United States: A Selection of Primary Sources
This website from ProQuest features expertly selected primary source documents. Visitors will find historical newspaper articles, pamphlets, diaries, correspondence and more from specific time periods in history marked by the opposition African Americans have faced on the road to freedom.
Black History Milestones (History Channel)
Explore black history milestones and events that shaped African-American history, including the Civil War, abolition of slavery and civil rights movement. Articles, audio and video files can be found on this site.
Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 (Library of Congress)
Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and assembled and microfilmed in 1941 as the seventeen-volume Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves.
Caribbean Histories Revealed: National Archives (UK)
The history of the British Caribbean is explored in this exhibition through government documents, photographs, and maps dating from the 17th century to the 1920s and discovered during a cataloguing project at the National Archives of the United Kingdom.
Civil Rights Digital Library
The struggle for racial equality in the 1950s and 1960s is among the most far-reaching social movements in the nation's history, and it represents a crucial step in the evolution of American democracy. The Civil Rights Digital Library promotes an enhanced understanding of the Movement by helping users discover primary sources and other educational materials from libraries, archives, museums, public broadcasters, and others on a national scale.
Digital Library of the Caribbean
The Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) is a cooperative digital library for resources from and about the Caribbean and circum-Caribbean. dLOC provides access to digitized versions of Caribbean cultural, historical and research materials currently held in archives, libraries, and private collections.
Digital Library on American Slavery
The Digital Library offers a searchable database of detailed personal information about slaves, slaveholders, and free people of color. Designed as a tool for scholars, historians, teachers, students, genealogists, and interested citizens, the site provides access to information gathered and analyzed over an eighteen-year period from petitions to southern legislatures and country courts filed between 1775 and 1867 in the fifteen slaveholding states in the United States and the District of Columbia.
Freedom's Journal (Wisconsin Historical Society)
Freedom's Journal was the first African-American owned and operated newspaper published in the United States. The Journal was published weekly in New York City from 1827 to 1829. John B. Russworm edited the journal alone between March 16, 1827 and March 28, 1829. Later, Samuel Cornish served as co-editor (March 16, 1827 to September 14, 1827). Freedom's Journal was superseded by The Rights of All, published between 1829 and 1830 by S. E. Cornish.
In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience (NYPL Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture)
In 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.
Latin American & Caribbean Studies: Primary Resources (Duke University)
An excellent collection of online primary sources from Duke University Libraries.
Latin American Network Information Center: Caribbean Resources (University of Texas)
A collection of online resources about all countries in the Caribbean, including cultural, statistical, and academic resources.
National Underground Railroad Freedom Center
Website for the Freedom Center, located in Cincinnati, OH, the website contains detailed information about Underground Railroad history, as well as descriptions and images of the Freedom Center's exhibits. From education initiatives, to community enhancement programs, to blogs, you will find relevant discussion about subjects ranging from the history of slavery to contemporary human trafficking issues.
North American Slave Narratives: Documenting the American South (University of North Carolina)
"North American Slave Narratives" collects books and articles that document the individual and collective story of African Americans struggling for freedom and human rights in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries.
Rosa Parks Papers (Library of Congress)
The papers of Rosa Parks (1913-2005) span the years 1866-2006, with the bulk of the material dating from 1955 to 2000. The collection documents many aspects of Parks's private life and public activism on behalf of civil rights for African Americans.
Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora
The images in Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora have been selected from a wide range of sources, most of them dating from the period of slavery. Our growing collection currently has over 1,200 images. This website is envisioned as a tool and a resource that can be used by teachers, researchers, students, and the general public - in brief, anyone interested in the experiences of Africans who were enslaved and transported to the Americas and the lives of their descendants in the slave societies of the New World.
Slave Narratives (Museum of the African Diaspora)
Print resources and audio recordings of a select number of slave narratives
Slave Voyages
The SlaveVoyages website is a collaborative digital initiative that compiles and makes publicly accessible records of the largest slave trades in history. Search these records to learn about the broad origins and forced relocations of more than 12 million African people who were sent across the Atlantic in slave ships, and hundreds of thousands more who were trafficked within the Americas. Explore where they were taken, the numerous rebellions that occurred, the horrific loss of life during the voyages, the identities and nationalities of the perpetrators, and much more.
Slavery in the Caribbean: Find Primary Sources Online (Rutgers University)
An excellent collection of online primary sources related to slavery in the Caribbean in English, French, Spanish, and Portugese.
Staten Island African American Heritage Tour
Experience Staten Island’s African American history on site or by virtual tour. This app allows you to experience the depth and breadth of NYC's most southern borough, where you will discover the many untold stories of Staten Island's rich African American past.

Archives & Digital Collections

Some large libraries, government websites, and archives have excellent collections of primary source material in many areas. These collections will have some primary sources related to African American history:

Library of Congress

Library of Congress Digital Collections

New York Public Library
NYPL Digital Gallery
Digital Schomberg (Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture)

The following databases are available through NYPL but you must log in with your NYPL library card barcode and PIN:

American Civil Liberties Union Papers, 1912-1990
African American, Communists, and the National Negro Congress, 1933-1947
African American Experience
Fight for Racial Justice and the Civil Rights Congress
NAACP Papers
Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive
Slavery in America and the World: HIstory, Culture & Law

National Archive (United States)
http://www.archives.gov/

National Archives (United Kingdom)
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/

United Nations
http://www.un.org/