Guides: History: Primary Sources for Student Projects: Racism in the US

Overview of sources

Racism in the United States is systemic and pervasive. This page cannot possibly capture all of the sources that are available on this topic. Because racism does not exist in a vacuum, the other topics in this guide also contain information related to racism and that specific topic. This page is intended to capture specific movements, groups, and events that have occurred in US history. Therefore, the resources in this section of the guide are broken into the following sections:

1. Jim Crow: contains primary sources that document Black American existence under Jim Crow laws

2. Ku Klux Klan: contains primary sources documenting Klan movement, policies, and artifacts

3. Black Lives Matter: primary sources documenting leaders, activities, and events surrounding the #BlackLivesMatter movement.

Library Resources on Racism

Federal Surveillance of African Americans, 1920-1984 This link opens in a new window
A digital collection of 88,021 documents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation Library.
Ralph J. Bunche Oral Histories Collection on the Civil Rights Movement This link opens in a new window
The Ralph J. Bunche Oral History Collection from the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center is a unique resource for the study of the era of the American civil rights movement. Included here are transcriptions of close to 700 interviews with those who made history in the struggles for voting rights, against discrimination in housing, for the desegregation of the schools, to expose racism in hiring, in defiance of police brutality, and to address poverty in the African American communities.

Black Freedom Struggle in the US
A website focused on Black Freedom, featuring select primary source documents related to critical people and events in African American history.