Research Guides: Africana Studies: Primary Sources

Primary Source Databases

African-American History

Online encyclopedia of African-American history.

Features thousands of cross-referenced entries, covering the entire spectrum of African-American history over the past 500 years.
African American Music Reference (Music Online)

Online encyclopedia of African American music.

Contains text and liner notes that offer the first comprehensive coverage of blues, jazz, spirituals, civil rights songs, slave songs, minstrelsy, rhythm and blues, gospel, and other forms of black American musical expression.
African American Newspapers, Series 1
African American newspapers published in the U.S. from 1827-1998.

Provides access to U.S. newspapers chronicling a century and a half of the African American experience.
African Diaspora, 1860 - Present

Primary source documents covering migrations, communities, and ideologies of the African Diaspora through the voices of people of African descent, with a focus on communities in the Caribbean, Brazil, India, United Kingdom, and France.
American Historical Periodicals (Gale)

Highly comprehensive documentary history of the American experience spanning four centuries with multiple perspectives on the thought, culture, and society of North America.
Black Abolitionist Papers
Primary sources from African Americans actively involved in the movement to end slavery in the United States between 1830 and 1865.
Black Drama: Third Edition
Full text of select plays written from the mid-1800s to the present by playwrights from North America, English-speaking Africa, the Caribbean, and other African diaspora countries.

Many of the works are rare, hard to find, or out of print. James Vernon Hatch, the playwright, historian, and curator of the landmark Hatch-Billops Collection, is the project’s editorial advisor. More than 40 percent of the collection consists of previously unpublished plays by writers such as Langston Hughes, Ed Bullins, Willis Richardson, Amiri Baraka, Randolph Edmonds, Zora Neale Hurston, and many others.
Black Life in America
The experience and impact of African Americans, as recorded by the news media.
Black Thought and Culture
Non-fiction writings by major American black leaders—covering 250 years of history. Includes letters, speeches, prefatory essays, political leaflets, interviews, periodicals, and trial transcripts.

Confidential Print, Africa, 1834-1966
Official British documents from the National Archives, UK

Empire Online
Primary source materials in world history.

This resource brings together manuscript, printed and visual primary source materials for the study of 'Empire' and its theories, practices and consequences. The materials span across the last five centuries and are accompanied by a host of secondary learning resources including scholarly essays, maps and an interactive chronology.
Primary Sources (Gale)
Includes many primary source collections relevant to Africana Studies
HistoryMakers Digital Archive

United States' largest African American video oral history collection, containing oral history interviews with historically significant African Americans.
History Vault: Civil Rights and the Black Freedom Struggle

Manuscript and archival collections focusing on civil rights and the Black Freedom Movement of the 20th Century. Contains records of four of the most important civil rights organizations of the 1950s and 1960s: NAACP, SCLC, SNCC, and CORE.
History Vault: Southern Life, Slavery, and the Civil War

Primary source materials candidly documenting the realities of slavery at the most immediate grassroots level in Southern society and provides some of the most revealing documentation in existence on the functioning of the slave system.
Nineteenth Century Collections Online (Gale Primary Sources)
Primary source materials about the Nineteenth Century. To see collections focused on Africa go to 'Collections' and limit the subject to 'Africa.'

Includes books, newspapers, periodicals, diaries and personal letters, manuscripts, photographs, pamphlets, maps and musical scores.

NCCO: Europe and Africa: Commerce, Christianity, Civilization, and Conquest
Archive within Nineteenth Century Collections Online

Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A transitional archive
Collections on the history of the transatlantic slave trade from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries.

Archives and Primary Source Collections

African American Mosaic (Library of Congress)
Covers almost 500 years of African American experience, from the Library of Congress collections.
Black Archives (National Archives)
The Library Company of Philadelphia, Digital Collections
Primary source collections from 17th-19th centuries
Lynching In America
Created by the Equal Justice Initiative, an interactive site on the history of lynching in the US between the Civil War and World War II
National Museum of African American History and Culture
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (NYPL)
Slave Societies Digital Archive
Archival materials recording the history of Africans and their descendents across the Altantic World

More African American Newspapers & Magazines

African American Newspapers Online
List of currently published African American newspapers
Afro (Washington, D.C.)
Afro-American (Baltimore, MD)
Years of coverage through various databases: 1893-1899, 1901-1988, 2003-present
Black World/Negro Digest (from Google Books)
Issues from 1960-1976
Charlotte Post (2006-present)
Chicago Defender
Years of coverage from various databases: 1909-1967, 1973-1975, 1999-present
Ebony (1950s-2008, on Google Books)
Ebony (1985-present)
Jet
Years of coverage from various databases: 1988-2014
Los Angeles Sentinel
Years of coverage from various databases: 1934-1940, 1946-present
New Pittsburgh Courier
Years of coverage from various databases: 1950-1965, 1991-present
New York Amsterdam News (1996-present)
Oakland Post (Oakland, CA)
Years of coverage from various databases: 1968-1981, 1991-2007, 2008-present
Philadelphia Tribune (1991-present)
The Root

Historical Newspapers

African American Newspapers, Series 1
African American newspapers published in the U.S. from 1827-1998.

Provides access to U.S. newspapers chronicling a century and a half of the African American experience.
Accessible Archives
Individual black newspapers that are included in the African American Newspapers collection (above) are listed here and can be searched separately.
African Newspapers, Series 1

Diverse African newspapers from 1800-1922.
Black Life in America
The experience and impact of African Americans, as recorded by the news media.
Civil War Collection
Online archive of newspaper articles published in and books during the U.S. Civil War.

Contains the full text of major articles from The New York Herald, The Charleston Mercury and the Richmond Enquirer, published between November 1, 1860 and April 15, 1865. Included are descriptive news articles, eye-witness accounts and official reports of battles and events, editorials, advertisements and biographies.
Historical Newspapers (Proquest)

Newspaper digital archive of many significant U.S. and some international newspapers dating back to the 18th Century.

AFRO American Newspapers
Middle Eastern & North African Newspapers (MENA)
From East View Global Press Archive

Primary Sources Collection (Proquest)
Includes numerous African American newspapers. See the Subcollections Guide for the full list of newspaper titles.

Web Resources

African American Mosaic: A Library of Congress Resource Guide for the Study of Black History and Culture
Black Freedom Struggle in the U.S. (ProQuest)
Primary source documents from different historical phases in the US: starting with Slavery and the Abolitionist Movement (1790-1860) and ending with The Contemporary Era (1976-2000).
Black Journal
Episodes from the first nationally televised public affair program created for, about, and ultimately by African Americans. Ran from 1968-1977.
The Black Panther (Newspaper)
The newspaper of the Black Panther Party. Coverage from 1968-1973.
The Green Book (1936-1967)
Annual travel guide for African American road travelers during the Jim Crow era. Available from New York Public Libraries.
The Harlem Renaissance
Photographs, authors' drafts, sheet music, an audio recording, and newspaper articles let students explore the artistic and literary legacy of the Harlem Renaissance. Part of the Library of Congress Primary Source Sets.
Jim Crow and Segregation
After the Civil War, most Southern states limited the economic and physical freedom of former slaves by enacting laws that came to be called Jim Crow laws. This primary source set, part of the Library of Congress Primary Source Sets, presents popular views on, and the causes and effects of, these laws.
The King Center
The Krueger-Scott Oral History Project
The Krueger-Scott oral histories is the largest collection of oral history interviews conducted with African-American residents of Newark who came to the city during the Great Migration, as well as those whose local roots stretch back generations. The faculty, staff and graduate students at Rutgers University-Newark who have worked on the collection in collaboration with local cultural institutions are proud to have helped preserve, archive, and make public these remarkable oral narratives that describe an as yet unwritten history of 20th-century African-American life. (source: website)
NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People)
The NAACP: A Century in the Fight for Freedom
The story of America's oldest and largest civil rights organization, told through letters, photographs, maps, and more. Part of the Library of Congress Primary Source sets.
National Museum of African American History & Culture: Collections (Smithsonian)
The National Museum of African American History and Culture is the only national museum devoted exclusively to the documentation of African American life, history, and culture.