Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture and Law

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.


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Papers of the NAACP (Digitized)

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).

African American Communities

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, and 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.

Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century: Federal Government Records

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.

More information.

TRIAL: NAACP Papers: Branch Department, Branch Files, and Youth Department Files

Online access to 24 previously-microfilmed archival collections. The Branch Files are selected from the archives of the NAACP’s regional branch offices, and cover the years 1913 to 1972. The Youth Files were selected from the NAACP’s Youth Department, and cover the years 1919 to 1965. More information.

TRIAL OVER.

African American Newspapers, 1827-1998

A wide-ranging collection, African American Newspapers, 1827-1998 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 20th 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. Highlights of the collection include the Huntsville, Alabama Gazette (1881-1894); the Indianapolis Freeman (1888-1916); the Savannah, Georgia Tribune (1875-1922); the Kansas City Advocate (1916-1926); the Topeka Plaindealer (1899-1931); the Cleveland Gazette (1883-1945); the Wichita Negro Star (1920-1952); the Kansas City Plaindealer (1932-1958); the Arkansas State Press (1941-1959); the Mississippi Free Press (1961-1964); the Rockford, Illinois Crusader (1952-1971), the Wichita Times and Kansas Weekly Journal (1972-1981); the Milwaukee Star (1967-1977); the Chicago Metro News (1973-1990); the Racine, Wisconsin Courier (1976-1992); and the Grand Rapids, Michigan Afro-American Gazette (1991-1995). Click here to see a complete list of titles.

Spring 2015 Course: Researching the African American Experience

Explore and learn about new digital resources in the Library that support the field of African American studies. Learn also about historical personalities and precedents for the development of such products. AFRO 102 will focus on research and documentation of the African American experience. The course examines significant repositories of African American culture in public libraries, historically black colleges, and predominantly white universities. The course also acknowledged the associations of influential bibliophiles (book collectors) and their contributions in establishing unique and rare collections of African American literature and history. These bibliophiles were pivotal in establishing major Black heritage collections at Howard University, the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, Atlanta University, and Fisk University, to name a few. Although primarily about African American life and culture, the personal libraries of black bibliophiles included material about Africa and the African Diaspora.

Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century: Organizational Records and Personal Papers, Part 1

Online access to the 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.

More information.

New Online Resources for African American Studies

The History, Philosophy, and Newspaper Library has acquired 2 major digital collections for African American studies, and has added 3 digitized historical African American newspapers to our collection of ProQuest Historical Black Newspapers. The digital collection History Makers brings together 100 filmed oral histories of contemporary African Americans who have made major contributions to the arts, business and economics, education, health and medicine, journalism, law, literature, politics, popular culture, religion, science, and other fields. Black Abolitionist Papers documents the work of almost 300 black abolitionists active between 1830 and 1865 with both published and unpublished primary source material. The 3 newspapers we have added to ProQuest Historical Black Newspapers are the Cleveland Call and Post (1934-1991), the Norfolk Journal and Guide (1921-2003), and the Philadelphia Tribune (1912-2001).

In addition to this major purchase of ProQuest resources, the History, Philosophy, and Newspaper Library has digitized the Broad Ax, an African American newspaper published in Chicago from 1899 to the early 1930s, described by Juliet Walker as “the most controversial black newspaper published in Chicago in the late nineteenth century.”  For more information about the Broad Ax, or to browse or search the issues, see the Chronicling America.