Research Guides: African American Studies: Reference Resources

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Using reference resources

Reference sources are a great starting point for starting research on a new topic because they provide general information on a topic. They often include the following types of information to help you get started:

Get an overview of a new or complex topic
Learn the names of key scholars in a given area
Locate terms that you can use in your research
Help narrow (or expand) your topic
Locate a bibliography of sources to help you start your research

Reference sources include encyclopedias, handbooks, dictionaries, and other similar sources. Some reference sources for African American studies-related topics are listed below.

Highlighted resources

African American History: A Very Short Introduction by Jonathan Scott Holloway
ISBN: 9780190915155

Publication Date: 2023

This book considers how, for centuries, African Americans have fought for what the black feminist intellectual Anna Julia Cooper called "the cause of freedom." It begins in Jamestown in 1619, when the first shipment of enslaved Africans arrived in that settlement and carries forward to the Black Lives Matter movement, a grass-roots activist convulsion that declared that African Americans' present and past have value and meaning.

Reference sources

A selection of digital and print reference resources, including encyclopedias, handbooks, and other types of overview information.

Oxford African American Studies Center
Collection of scholarship focused on the lives and events which have shaped African American and African history and culture. The core content includes: African American National Biography, Dictionary of African Biography, Africana, Encyclopedia of African American History (1619-1895), Encyclopedia of African American History (1896 to the Present), Black Women in America (2nd ed.), The Oxford Encyclopedia of African Thought, and The Dictionary of Caribbean and Afro-Latin American Biography. Content includes scholarly articles, images, primary sources, maps, charts and tables, and biographies.

Oxford Bibliographies Online: African American Studies
Offers peer-reviewed annotated bibliographies on provide bibliographic articles that identify, organize, cite, and annotate on key areas of African American Studies -- culture, politics, law, history, society, religion, and economics.
Oxford Bibliographies Online: Atlantic History
Offers peer-reviewed annotated bibliographies on the transnational interconnections between Europe, North America, South America, and Africa.

African American Music Reference
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.

The Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature
Covers an enormous range of writers and includes entries on major works (including synopses of novels), literary characters, and icons of black culture. There are also general articles on poetry, fiction, and drama; on autobiography, slave narratives, Sunday School literature, and oratory; as well as on a wide spectrum of related topics.
Blackpast: An Online Reference Guide to African American History
Resources include an open-access encyclopedia, primary sources, bibliographies, timelines, etc.
Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History (2006)
A five-volume set and supplement covering all aspects of the African-American experience from 1619 to the time of publication. Using biographies, historical essays, and thematic pieces, it addresses a wide array of subjects to define in one source the cultural roots, participation in American life, and current condition of the African-American community.
Encyclopedia of Black Studies (2005)
Contains an analysis of the economic, political, sociological, historical, literary, and philosophical issues related to Americans of African descent.
Racism: A Very Short Introduction (2020)
Explores the history of racial ideas and a wide range of racisms—biological, cultural, colourblind, and structural—and illuminates issues that have been the subject of recent debates.

Highlighted web resources

Critical Race Theory, Explained
UC Irvine professors made a series of videos explaining CRT.
CRT Collective
A community of international, interdisciplinary, and intersectional scholar-activists who are committed to cultivating knowledge and information across borders. Our community’s vision is to develop knowledge justice tools for dismantling white supremacy and oppressive hierarchies as they manifest in spaces of work, education and society.
Black American Feminisms: A Multidisciplinary Bibliography
This website offers an extensive bibliography of black American Feminist thought from across the disciplines. Created by a librarian at UCSB, the guide was an effort to combat the erasure of black feminist subjectivity and thought through the promotion and use of the literature.

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Due to the librarian retiring, the last update was made in 2020.

General reference sources

Gale Ebooks
Provides e-book versions of many reference works, including multi-volume encyclopedias, biographical collections, business plan handbooks, company history compilations, consumer health references, and specialized handbooks, dictionaries, encyclopedias, etc. in a wide range of subject areas. Subject categories include arts, biography, business, education, environment, history, law, literature, medicine, multicultural studies, nation and world, religion, science, and social sciences.
SAGE eReference
A social sciences platform for SAGE and CQ Press resources. Access eBooks, debates, dictionaries, handbooks, and encyclopedias with an easy search by subject discipline or collection options.
Oxford Reference
A multidisciplinary reference database that searches across Oxford's Dictionaries, Companions and Encyclopedias. In addition to topic or subject searching, it offers timeline searching.

Reference Sources in Print

The African American Encyclopedia
Located in Langson Library: E185 .A253 2001 (10 vols.)

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Brief entries, some with bibliographic references to additional material. Illustrated.
African-American Newspapers & Periodicals: A National Bibliography
Located in Langson Library: PN4882.5 .A44 1998
Black Biography, 1790-1950 : A Cumulative Index
Located in Langson Library: Z1361.N39 B52 1991 (3 vols.)
State of Black America
Located online and at Langson Library Bound Periodicals E 185.5 S74

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Published annually by the National Urban League. Each issue includes many articles on one major theme. 2000-available online.