LibGuides: African American Studies: Archives & Primary Sources

Resources

Amistad Research Center
The Amistad Research Center is committed to collecting, preserving, and providing open access to original materials that reference the social and cultural importance of America's ethnic and racial history, the African Diaspora, human relations, and civil rights.

Archives Unbound
Digital collections covering a broad range of multi-disciplinary topics from the Middle Ages forward – from Witchcraft to World War II to twentieth-century political history. Includes U.S. foreign policy; U.S. Civil Rights; global affairs and colonial studies; and modern history.
Broad topic clusters include: African American studies; American Indian studies; Asian studies; British history; Holocaust studies; LGBT studies; Latin American and Caribbean studies; Middle East studies; political science; religious studies; and women’s studies.

The Gordon Parks Foundation
The Gordon Parks Foundation permanently preserves the work of Gordon Parks, makes it available to the public through exhibitions, books, and electronic media and supports artistic and educational activities that advance what Gordon described as "the common search for a better life and a better world."
Massachusetts Historical Society
As the nation’s first historical society, the MHS strives to enhance the understanding of our nation’s past and its connection to the present, demonstrating that history is not just a series of events that happened to individuals long ago but is integral to the fabric of our daily lives.
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture - New York Public Library
Founded in 1925 and named a National Historic Landmark in 2017, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is one of the world’s leading cultural institutions devoted to the research, preservation, and exhibition of materials focused on African American, African Diaspora, and African experiences. As a research division of The New York Public Library, the Schomburg Center features diverse programming and collections spanning over 11 million items that illuminate the richness of global black history, arts, and culture.
W.E.B. DuBois Papers
Includes over 100,000 items of correspondence (more than three quarters of the papers), speeches, articles, newspaper columns, nonfiction books, research materials, book reviews, pamphlets and leaflets, petitions, novels, essays, forewords, student papers, manuscripts of pageants, plays, short stories and fables, poetry, photographs, newspaper clippings, memorabilia, videotapes, audiotapes, and miscellaneous materials.
Civil Rights Archive - University of Mississippi
The University of Mississippi's Civil Rights Archive contains digitized versions of small (generally one box or less) collections related to the struggle for civil rights in Mississippi and the American South. Collections date from Reconstruction to the late 20th century. Major topics represented include the Freedmen's Bureau, school integration, voter registration, labor, and religious activism.

AM Explorer
Full text primary sources especially pertinent to American and world history, literature and culture. Spanning the 15th - 21st century. Digitized documents include: manuscripts and typescript letters, diaries, notebooks, journals, newspapers, art, illustrations, photographs, video and 360-degree objects.
Collections: 1980s Culture and Society; Africa and the New Imperialism; African American Communities; Age of Exploration; American in World War Two; American Committee on Africa; American History, 1493-1945; American West; Amnesty International Archives; Apartheid South Africa, 1948-1994; British Newsreels, 1911-1930; Broadcasting America; Central Asia, Persia and Afghanistan, 1834-1922; Children's Literature and Culture; China, America and the Pacific; China: Culture and Society; China: Trade, Politics and Culture, 1793-1980; Church Missionary Society Periodicals; Colonial America; Colonial Caribbean; Confidential Print: Africa, 1834-1966; Confidential Print: Latin America, 1833-1969; Confidential Print: Middle East, 1839-1969; Confidential Print: North America, 1824-1961; Conflict in Indochina: Foreign Office Files for Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia; Defining Gender; Early Modern England; East India Company; Eighteenth Century Drama; Eighteenth Century Journals; Empire Online; Ethnomusicology; Everyday Life & Women in America, c1800-1920; First World War Portal; Food and Drink in History; Foreign Office Files for China, 1919-1980; Foreign Office Files for India, Pakistan and Afghanstan, 1947-1980; Foreign Office Files for Japan, 1919-1952; Foreign Office Files for Southeast Asia, 1963-1980; Foreign Office Files for the Middle East, 1971-1981; Frontier Life; Gender: Identity and Social Change; Global Commodities; Hindi Cinema; India, Raj and Empire; Indigenous Histories and Cultures in North America; Indigenous Newspapers in North America; Interwar Culture; J Walter Thompson: Advertising America; Jewish Life in America, c1654-1954; Leisure Travel and Mass Culture; Life at Sea: Seafaring in the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1600-1900; Literary Manuscripts Berg; Literary Manuscripts Leeds; Literary Print Culture, London Low Life; Macmillan Cabinet Papers, 1957-1963; Market Research and American Business, 1935-1965; Mass Observation Online; Mass Observation Project; Medical Services and Warfare; Medieval Family Life; Medieval Travel Writing; Meije Japan; Mexico in History; Migration to New Worlds; Nineteenth Century Literary Society; Perdita Manuscripts, 1500-1700, Popular Culture in Britain and America, 1950-1975; Popular Medicine in America, 1800-1900; Poverty, Philanthropy and Social Conditions in Victorian Britain; Race Relations in America; Romanticism: Life, Literature and Landscape; Royal Shakespeare Company Archives; Service Newspapers of World War Two; Sex & Sexuality; Shakespeare in Performance; Shakespeare's Globe Archive; Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice; Socialism on Film; The Gilded Age and Progressive Era; The Grand Tour; The Nixon Years, 1969-1974; The Olympic Movement; The Transformation of Shopping; Trade Catalogues and the American Home; Trade in Early Modern London; Travel Writing, Spectable and World History; Victorian Popular Culture; Victorians on Film; Virginia Company Archives; Women in The National Archives; Women's Voices and Life Writing; World's Fairs
Making of America
Primary sources related to development of the U.S. infrastructure. American social history from the Antebellum period through Reconstruction, with focus on education, psychology, history, sociology, religion, science, and technology.

Slave Voyages
Explore the origins and forced relocations of enslaved africans across the Atlantic World

African Music Database
Audio files (MP3 format) of traditional and popular music and spoken word, from Africa and the global diaspora. Includes highlife, jazz, hip hop, jùjú, hiplife, zouk, mbalax, and reggae. Published by Africa Resource Center. Part of Africa Knowledge Project.
Music Online: American Music (US)
Streaming audio of music reflecting American history. Liner notes available for some recordings. Music by and about American Indians, miners, immigrants, enslaved people, children, pioneers, and cowboys; and songs of civil rights, political campaigns, wars, protests, and more.