History - Primary Sources
African American History
African American History
African American History Online: A Resource Guide (Library of Congress)
Primary sources for African American history from the Library of Congress collections.
BlackPast: African American History Primary Documents
Website dedicated to providing the public with comprehensive, reliable, and accurate information concerning the history of African Americans in the United States.
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
One of the New York Public Library's renowned research libraries, The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem is a leading cultural institution devoted to the research, preservation, and exhibition of materials focused on African American, African Diaspora, and African experiences.
In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience
Presents primary documents and other historical materials related to the thirteen defining migrations that formed and transformed African America.
Documenting the American South
A digital publishing initiative that provides internet access to texts, images and audio files related to southern history, literature and culture, including primary sources in African American history.
Eyes on the Prize: Civil Rights Movement Oral History Interviews
The Eyes on the Prize interviews collection consists of over 300 raw footage interviews conducted with participants in the American Civil Rights movement for the acclaimed documentary series Eyes on the Prize.
Black Freedom Struggle in the United States: Challenges and Triumphs in the Pursuit of Equality
A website, developed by Proquest, focused on Black Freedom--featuring select primary source documents related to critical people and events in African American history. The website contains over 3,000 documents focused on six different phases of Black Freedom: Slavery and the Abolitionist Movement (1790-1860); The Civil War and the Reconstruction Era (1861-1877); Jim Crow Era from 1878 to the Great Depression (1878-1932); The New Deal and World War II (1933-1945); The Civil Rights and Black Power Movements (1946-1975); and the Contemporary Era (1976-2000).
Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938
Contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves.
- Black Freedom Struggle in the United States This link opens in a new windowThe Black Freedom Struggle website will include more than 2,000 documents curated around six crucial phases of the U.S. Black freedom struggle:
• Resistance to slavery by enslaved persons and the abolitionist movement of the 19th century
• The end of slavery during the Civil War and the Reconstruction Era
• The fight against Jim Crow segregation
• The New Deal and World War II
• The Civil Rights Movement and Black Power Movement from 1946-1975
• …and the contemporary Black experience since 1976.
The Black Freedom Struggle website is available to anyone at no charge. Its intention is to support a wide range of students and patrons – including high-school and college students – with reliable, easily discoverable materials that can be used for assignments and special projects focused on U.S. Black history. Educators can use this primary source material in the classroom for culturally responsive teaching, and for building essential critical thinking and information literacy skills.
