African American Studies

Provides access to primary source, cross-searchable, full-text, full-image documents on widely studied topics in 19th and 20th-century American history. Content is applicable to research in history, African American studies, women's studies, political science, social sciences, sociology, and international studies.

Contains ebooks, essays, and liner notes related to blues, jazz, spirituals, civil rights songs, slave songs, minstrelsy, rhythm and blues, gospel, and other forms of black American musical expression.

A collection of poems by African American poets of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Streaming audio of music from America's past. Includes songs by and about American Indians, immigrants, slaves, pioneers, and cowboys, as well as songs from the Civil Rights movements, political campaigns, the Civil War, and the Revolutionary War.

Full text of plays written between the mid-19th century to the present by hundreds English speaking playwrights of African descent. Includes basic facts about each play, such as first known production, production history, author biographical details, etc.

Brings together works of short fiction produced by writers from Africa and the African Diaspora from the earliest times to the present. The materials have been compiled from early literary magazines, archives, and the personal collections of the authors. Some of the collection is fugitive or ephemeral, or has never been published before.

Literature and essays on feminist issues, written by authors from Africa and the African diaspora. Facing both sexism and racism, black women needed to create their own identities and movements. The collection documents that effort, presenting the woman’s perspective on the diversity and development of black people generally, and in particular the works document the evolution of black feminism.

A searchable collection of poetry and fiction produced in the region during the 19th and 20th centuries. Among the titles selected are numerous rare and hard-to-find works written in English, French, Spanish, Dutch, and various Creole languages.

Streaming audio of jazz, swing, hard-bop, contemporary jazz, bop, latin jazz, cool jazz, avant-garde jazz, dixieland, and other genres of music that have developed from jazz. Excellent information can also be found in the liner notes that accompany many of the recordings.

Provides access to an extensive range of diaries, letters, and memoirs of persons somehow involved in the American Civil War. Includes previously unpublished manuscripts such as the letters of Amos Wood and his wife and the diary of Maryland Planter William Claytor.

The focus of the Federal Government Records module is on the political side of the freedom movement, the role of civil rights organizations in pushing for civil rights legislation, and the interaction between African Americans and the federal government in the 20th century.

A collection of the records of major civil rights organizations and personal papers of leaders and observers of the 20th century Black freedom struggle. The three major civil rights organizations are the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs.

This module includes the records of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Africa-related papers of Claude Barnett, and the Robert F. Williams Papers.

Non-fiction works by African-American leaders and others who have dealt substantially with issues of race in America. Includes books, essays, articles, speeches, letters, interviews, and other materials, some of which have not previously been published.

This collection includes newspapers promoting and opposing white supremacy, published mainly in the 1920s. It brings together local, regional, and national newspapers published by Klan organizations and by sympathetic publishers from across the US. It also includes key anti-Klan voices from newspapers published by American Black, Catholic, and Jewish communities.

Case documents and primary sources relating to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) from 1912-1990.

This first module provides a comprehensive view of the NAACP's evolution, policies, and achievements from 1909-1970.

These files cover subjects and episodes that are crucial to the NAACP's history, such as civil rights complaints and legislation, the Klan, Birth of a Nation, the Walter White-W. E. B. Du Bois controversy of 1933-1934, communism and anticommunism during the years of the "red scare," the congressional prosecution of Hollywood personalities, the prosecution of conscientious objectors during World War II, NAACP's relations with African colonial liberation movements, NAACP fundraising and membership recruitment, urban riots, the War on Poverty, and the emergence of the Black Power Movement.

Major campaigns for equal access to education, voting, employment, housing and the military are covered in this module.

The focus of this module is on the NAACP's efforts to combat lynching, mob violence, discrimination in the criminal justice system, and white resistance to civil rights efforts.

Consists of Papers of the NAACP Legal Department from 1956-1972. Among the topics covered in these cases are school desegregation, abuses of police procedure, freedom of speech, desegregation of public facilities, voting rights, housing discrimination, and employment discrimination.

This resource is designed as a portal for slavery and abolition studies.

Includes collections on the transatlantic history of the slave trade from the sixteenth through the nineteenth century.

Race, slavery, and free blacks petitions to southern legislatures and southern county courts.

Brings together, for the first time, all known legal materials on slavery in the United States and the English-speaking world. This includes every statute passed by every colony and state on slavery, every federal statute dealing with slavery, and all reported state and federal cases on slavery.

Record of American slavery, focusing on the industrial uses of slave labor.

The SlaveVoyages website is a collaborative digital initiative that compiles and makes publicly accessible records of the largest slave trades in history. The website also provides access to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade database, the Intra-American Slave Trade database, and the African Names database.