The TransAtlantic Slave Trade
- Slave VoyagesThe SlaveVoyages website is a collaborative digital initiative that compiles and makes publicly accessible records of the largest slave trades in history. Search these records to learn about the broad origins and forced relocations of more than 12 million African people who were sent across the Atlantic in slave ships, and hundreds of thousands more who were trafficked within the Americas. Explore where they were taken, the numerous rebellions that occurred, the horrific loss of life during the voyages, the identities and nationalities of the perpetrators, and much more.
- North American Slave NarrativesPart of the larger Documenting the American South collection from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, this is a full-text collection of approximately 200 slave narratives published prior to 1920.
Slavery at Sea : Terror, Sex, and Sickness in the Middle Passage by Call Number: ONLINEISBN: 9780252040559Publication Date: 2016-09-30Most times left solely within the confine of plantation narratives, slavery was far from a land-based phenomenon. This book reveals for the first time how it took critical shape at sea. Expanding the gaze even more deeply, the book centers how the oceanic transport of human cargoes--infamously known as the Middle Passage--comprised a violently regulated process foundational to the institution of bondage.
The Slave Trade in Colonial America by Call Number: ONLINEISBN: 9781422244081Publication Date: 2019-01-01Slavery was introduced to North America in the sixteenth century, as Spanish and Portuguese settlers relied on slave labor to extract the resources of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Brazil, and other colonies. When the British established North American colonies in the early seventeenth century, slavery gradually became prevalent. This book will examine how slaves were treated in colonial America, and how laws and attitudes about the institution of slavery changed prior to the American Revolution and the establishment of the United States.
Chained to History by Call Number: ONLINEISBN: 9781501761058Publication Date: 2022-02-15In Chained to History, Steven J. Brady centers slavery in America's pre Civil War foreign relations. From the aftermath of the American Revolution, Brady examines how slavery influenced military, economic, and moral diplomatic challenges. He demonstrates how slavery intertwined with America's foreign policy, affecting trade, extradition treaties, and military alliances.
Slave No More by Call Number: ONLINEISBN: 9781469649627Publication Date: 2019-03-11Commanding a vast historiography of slavery and emancipation, Aline Helg reveals as never before how significant numbers of enslaved Africans across the entire Western Hemisphere managed to free themselves hundreds of years before the formation of white-run abolitionist movements. Her sweeping view of resistance and struggle covers more than three centuries, from early colonization to the American and Haitian revolutions, Spanish American independence, and abolition in the British Caribbean.
General History
- HeinOnline's Social Justice Suite This link opens in a new windowA growing suite of databases that includes Slavery in America and the World, Gun Regulation and Legislation in America, Civil Rights and Social Justice, Open Society Justice Initiative, LGBTQ+ Rights databases.
- Black Freedom Struggle in the United States This link opens in a new windowFeatures expertly selected open primary source documents. Users will find historical newspaper articles, pamphlets, diaries, correspondence and more from specific time periods in U.S. history marked by the opposition African Americans have faced on the road to freedom
- Black Life In America This link opens in a new windowThe experience and impact of African Americans as recorded by the news media, 1976 to today.
Abolition, Civil Rights, and Black Social Movements
Abolition
- Frederick Douglass PapersThe papers of nineteenth-century African American abolitionist Frederick Douglass (1818-1895), who escaped from slavery and then risked his freedom by becoming an outspoken antislavery lecturer, writer, and publisher, consist of approximately 7,400 items (38,000 images), most of which were digitized from 34 reels of previously produced microfilm. The collection spans the years 1841-1964, with the bulk of the material dating from 1862 to 1895. Many of Douglass’s earlier writings were destroyed when his house in Rochester, New York, burned in 1872.
- Sojourner Truth DocumentsPrimary source documents that highlight news articles, speeches and interviews from Sojurner Truth.
Standard-Bearers of Equality by Call Number: ONLINEISBN: 9781469653938Publication Date: 2019-12-16Paul Polgar recovers the racially inclusive vision of America's first abolition movement. In showcasing the activities of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, the New York Manumission Society, and their African American allies during the post-Revolutionary and early national eras, he unearths this coalition's comprehensive agenda for black freedom and equality.
The Slave's Cause by Call Number: ONLINEISBN: 9780300181371Publication Date: 2016-02-23Received historical wisdom casts abolitionists as bourgeois, mostly white reformers burdened by racial paternalism and economic conservatism. Manisha Sinha overturns this image, broadening her scope beyond the antebellum period usually associated with abolitionism and recasting it as a radical social movement in which men and women, black and white, free and enslaved found common ground in causes ranging from feminism and utopian socialism to anti-imperialism and efforts to defend the rights of labor.
Civil Rights 1866-Current
- Duke University Library -- Behind the VeilInterviews, photographs, and oral history project files chronicling African-American life in the American South with a particular focus on the era of legal segregation and its immediate aftermath from the 1890s to the 1970s
- The Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project at Stanford UniversityFull text of speeches, sermons, and papers of MLK, with quick links to the most requested documents.
- Ralph J. Bunche Oral Histories Collection on the Civil Rights Movement This link opens in a new windowThe 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.
- We Were Prepared for the Possibility of Death: Freedom Riders in the South, 1961 This link opens in a new windowA digital collection of 4,285 documents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation Library.
Civil Rights in the Shadow of Slavery by Call Number: ONLINEISBN: 9780199739707Publication Date: 2012-12-05The 1866 Civil Rights Act is one of the most monumental pieces of legislation in American history, figuring into almost every subsequent piece of legislation dealing with civil rights for the next century. While numerous scholars have looked at it in the larger social and political context of Reconstruction and its relationship with the Fourteenth Amendment, this will be the first book that focuses on its central role in the long history of civil rights.
The Civil Rights ERA by Call Number: ONLINEISBN: 9781680480481Publication Date: 2015-07-30One of the most important chapters in American history, the civil rights era represents the path of recognition, acceptance, and lauding of one of America's greatest assets: its black American citizenry. This resource guides readers through the key events, successes, and trials of the civil rights movement, from the Montgomery bus boycott to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Civil Rights Movement by Call Number: ONLINEISBN: 9781598840384Publication Date: 2009-05-13This work documents the importance of the civil rights movement and its lasting impression on American society and culture. This revealing volume looks at the struggle for individual rights from the social historian's perspective, providing a fresh context for gauging the impact of the civil rights movement on everyday life across the full spectrum of American society.
Black Power and social movements
- National Archives -- Black PowerThis portal highlights records of Federal agencies and collections that related to the Black Power Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The selected records contain information on various organizations, including the Nation of Islam (NOI), Deacons for Defense and Justice, and the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP). It also includes records on several individuals, including Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, Elaine Brown, Angela Davis, Fred Hampton, Amiri Baraka, and Shirley Chisholm. This portal is not meant to be exhaustive, but to provide guidance to researchers interested in the Black Power Movement and its relation to the Federal government.
- Federal Surveillance of African Americans, 1920-1984 This link opens in a new windowA digital collection of 88,021 documents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation Library.
- Federal Response to Radicalism in the 1960s This link opens in a new windowA digital collection of 87,391 images from the Federal Bureau of Investigation Library.
Unbroken and Unbowed by Call Number: ONLINEISBN: 9780664267377Publication Date: 2022-02-22In this compelling and informative volume, Jimmie R. Hawkins walks the reader through the many forms of Black protest in American history, from pre-colonial times though the George Floyd protests of 2020.
The Black Panthers by Call Number: E185.615 .S44 2006ISBN: 9781597110242Publication Date: 2006-07-15Photography from the world's largest archive of Black Panther images, a nuanced portrait of a dynamic movement and a tumultuous time.
Black Against Empire by Call Number: E185.615 .B5574 2016ISBN: 9780520293281Publication Date: 2016-10-25This timely special edition, published on the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Black Panther Party, features a new preface by the authors that places the Party in a contemporary political landscape, especially as it relates to Black Lives Matter and other struggles to fight police brutality against black communities.
Identity and Culture
- Black Life In America This link opens in a new windowThe experience and impact of African Americans as recorded by the news media, 1976 to today.
- Blair-Caldwell African American Research LibraryInformation about the branch of the Denver Public Library devoted to African-American history of Denver and the Rocky Mountain West. Includes online finding aids for their archival collections.
- Behind the Veil: African American life in the SouthThe Behind the Veil Oral History Project was undertaken by Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies from 1993 to 1995. Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the primary purpose of this documentary project was to record and preserve the living memory of African American life in the American South during the age of legal segregation and its immediate aftermath, from the 1890s to the 1970s.
- Schomburg Center for Research in Black CultureThe Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, one of The New York Public Library’s renowned research libraries, is a world-leading cultural institution devoted to the research, preservation, and exhibition of materials focused on African American, African Diaspora, and African experiences.
Jim Crow Wisdom by Call Number: ONLINEISBN: 9781469610702Publication Date: 2013-10-15Relying on social science, documentary film, dance, popular literature, museums, memoir, and the tourism trade, Jonathan Scott Holloway explores the stories black Americans have told about their past and why these stories are vital to understanding a modern black identity. In the process, Holloway asks much larger questions about the value of history and facts when memories do violence to both.
