Research Guides: *Africana: Primary Sources

Historical Newspapers and Magazines

African American Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Black newspapers. Publication dates: 1827-1998
Chicago Defender (1905-1975) This link opens in a new window
Coverage: 1905-1975.
Pittsburgh Courier (1911-2002) This link opens in a new window
Benjamin Mays had a column in this storied African American newspaper. Coverage: 1911-2002.
Baltimore Afro-American (1893-1988) This link opens in a new window
Coverage: 1893-1988.
New York Amsterdam News (1922-1993) This link opens in a new window
Coverage: 1922-1993.

Historical African American Newspapers Available Online
Guide compiled by Marist College library staff - most all are freely available online
African American Newspapers in Chronicling America
Black Panther
Newspaper produced by the group from 1967-1980. See also The Black Panthers Speak.
Ebony
Influential magazine available in print at Ladd and online via Ebony Magazine Archive.

Jet Magazine Archive (1951-2014) This link opens in a new window
Black newsmagazine. Full color PDFs, including advertisements.

Other Historical Sources

Oxford African American Studies Center This link opens in a new window
Short essays, biographies, and primary sources on Black history and culture. Includes African American National Biography, Black Women in America, and Encyclopedia of African American History among others.
Limited to one user at a time.
Black Thought and Culture This link opens in a new window
Non-fiction works of leading African Americans, as well as interviews, journal articles, and letters.

Library of Congress' African American Online Collections
Including historic pamphlets, broadsides and slave narratives

American Periodicals Series This link opens in a new window
Searchable, full-text database, with digitized page images, of American magazines and journals. Coverage: 1740-1940 Including Anti-Slavery Examiner

Historical Publications of the United States Commission on Civil Rights
Reports on issues related to race, ethnicity, religion and, more recently, sexual orientation.
Documenting the South
Documenting the American South (DocSouth) is a digital publishing initiative that provides Internet access to texts, images, and audio files related to southern history, literature, and culture
FBI Records: Civil Rights
Declassified documents related to civil rights leaders.
Colored Conventions Project
Records related to political meetings held between 1830s and 1890s.

Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century, Parts 1 & 2 This link opens in a new window
Primary source materials on the civil rights movement, including the Congress for Racial Equality and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Part of History Vault.

The Black Worker by Philip S. Foner (Editor)
Location: E185.8 .B553
Published: 1979
Eight volume set of documents.

Moorland Springarn Research Collection
Archival sources at Howard University.

Oral histories

The Black Women Oral History Project by Ruth Edmonds Hill; Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America Staff (Contribution by)
Location: E185.86 .B545 1990
66 interviews in 11 volumes

Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South
A selection of 410 recorded oral history interviews
KZSU Project South Interviews
Transcripts and audio recordings of meetings and interviews with Civil Rights workers in the South during the summer of 1965.
Goin' North: Stories from the First Great Migration to Philadelphia
Oral histories.

Collected papers

The papers of W.E.B. Du Bois
Bates Microfilm E185.97.D73 A3, see guide in reference collection for contents.
The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association papers
Volumes 1-13 in Bates Bookstacks, E185.97.G3 M36; other available online.
The papers of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Bates Bookstacks E185.97.K5 A2.
The Booker T. Washington papers
Bates Bookstacks E185.97 .W274
Bayard Rustin Papers
Online in History Vault.

Primary sources in the catalog

Relevant subject headings

The following links lead to Library of Congress subject heading searches in the L ibrarySearch. These same subject headings can find relevant books in any academic library catalog.

Guides to sources

Federal records relating to civil rights in the post-World War II era
Guide to government documents.

The Harvard Guide to African-American History
Location: Reference E185 .H326 2001
Published: 2001
The Cambridge History of African American Literature by Maryemma Graham (Editor); Jerry W. Ward (Editor)
Published: 2011
Oxford Bibliographies: African American Studies
Bibliographies on related topics, listing overviews and primary sources.