HIST 212: The History of the African American Family (Spring 2025)

Essential for understanding Black history and culture, African Diaspora, 1860-Present allows scholars to discover the migrations, communities, and ideologies of the African Diaspora through the voices of people of African descent. With a focus on communities in the Caribbean, Brazil, India, United Kingdom, and France, the collection includes never-before digitized primary source documents.

Images, documents, and 3D models documenting heritage sites throughout Africa. Includes photographs, GIS data, site plans, excavation reports, traveler's accounts, maps, books, recordings, journal articles, etc. Coverage: 18th century-present.

Complete volumes of all British Government Confidential Print for Africa, from the Colonial, Dominion, Foreign and War Offices.

Black nationalism and pan-Africanism. FBI documents, correspondence, ephemera, reports, memoranda, transcriptions, etc. An Archives Unbound database. Coverage: 1970-1985.

Slave Trade in the Atlantic World charts the inception of slavery in Africa and its rise as perpetuated on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, placing particular emphasis on the Caribbean, Latin America, and United States. This collection was developed by an international editorial board with scholars specializing in North American, European, African, and Latin American/Caribbean aspects of the slave trade. Includes customs records, court cases, shipping records, manuscripts, personal papers, letters, trade records, and other materials.

Newspapers.com is a historical database of newspapers across the globe, potentially going as far back as 1690 and up until the present day.

African Newspapers in the World Newspaper Archive contains more than 420,000 pages of content from newspapers published throughout sub-Saharan Africa. The database features 67 titles from Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and other countries.

Focusing predominantly on Atlanta, Chicago, New York, and towns and cities in North Carolina this resource presents multiple aspects of the African American community through pamphlets, newspapers and periodicals, correspondence, official records, reports and in-depth oral histories, revealing the prevalent challenges of racism, discrimination and integration, and a unique African American culture and identity.

Comprehensive coverage of the African American experience from the early 18th century to the present. Sourced from more than 19,000 American and global news sources.

Real and perceived African American radicalism in the 20th century, including the federal scrutiny, harassment, and prosecution to which African Americans of all political persuasions were subjected. From the files of the FBI. An Archives Unbound database. Coverage: 1920-1984.

The HistoryMakers Digital Archive is an extensive online database of over 9,000 hours of full-text and video interviews with African-Americans distinguished in the fields of science, culture, politics, the arts, and public life. More content being added each week.

Includes African American Studies and African Studies. Collections include: "Black Economic Empowerment: The National Negro Business League" ; "Federal Surveillance of African Americans, 1920-1984" ; "Liberation Movement in Africa and African America" ; "We Were Prepared for the Possibility of Death: Freedom Riders in the South, 1961"

Broad coverage of African American history, culture, and daily life. Newspapers from over 35 states. Coverage: 1827-1998.

Ebony Magazine Archive covers civil rights, education, entrepreneurship and other social topics with an African-American focus. It includes more than 800 issues providing a broad view of African-American culture from its first issue in 1945 through 2014.

W.A. Scott II founded the Atlanta Daily World at a time when most black Americans lived in the South. He felt that the race problem could only be solved in the South, which required an informed community. Rather than reading news about African-Americans through the optics of a host of prejudiced white papers, he launched his own newspaper to educate, inspire, uplift, and promote the expression of the Southern black community. Coverage: 1931-2003

One of the most widely circulated African American newspapers on the Atlantic Coast. News articles, photos, advertisements, obituaries, cartoons, etc. Full page and article images with searchable full text. Coverage: 1893-1988.

A leading African American newspaper, with more than two-thirds of its readership outside Chicago. News articles, photos, advertisements, obituaries, cartoons, etc. Full page and article images with searchable full text. Coverage: 1909-1975.

Full page and article images with searchable full text from the Chicago daily tribune (published 1847-1858; coverage 1849-1858), Chicago press and tribune (1858-1860), Chicago tribune (1860-1872), Chicago daily tribune (1872-1963), Chicago tribune (1963-current file). The collection includes digital reproductions of every page from every issue in PDF format.

Michigan Chronicle offers primary source material essential to the study of American history and African American culture, history, politics, and the arts. Examine major movements from the Great Migration and Civil Rights to the election of Americas first Black president.

African American newspaper, published weekly in New York City. News articles, photos, advertisements, classified ads, obituaries, cartoons, etc. Full page and article images with searchable full text. Coverage: 1922-1993.

Published in Norfolk, Virginia, this is one of the most important African American newspapers of its time. News articles, photos, advertisements, classified ads, obituaries, cartoons, etc. Full page and article images with searchable full text. Coverage: 1916-2003.

This database provides full page and article images with searchable full text from the Courier (1950-1954 : City ed.), New Pittsburgh Courier (1969-1981 : City ed.), New Pittsburgh Courier (1981-2002), Pittsburgh Courier (1911-1950 : City ed.), and Pittsburgh Courier (1955-1965 : City ed.).

The oldest continuously published black newspaper, is dedicated to the needs and concerns of the fourth largest black community in the U.S. During the 1930s the paper supported the growth of the United Way, rallied against the riots in Chester, PA, and continuously fought against segregation.

The Louisville Courier Journal is Kentucky's newspaper of record. The paper has become a progressive voice in southern politics, championing causes such as public education, equal rights for blacks and advocating for the poor of Appalachia. The Courier Journal became the first U.S. daily newspaper to appoint a woman managing editor, Carol Sutton in 1974.

African Americans and Jim Crow, 1883-1922 contains more than 1,000 fully searchable printed works from the beginning of Jim Crow to post-World War I. These works provide insights into African American culture and life during this period of segregation and disenfranchisement and include such topics as African American identity, relationships with peoples of other nations, and literature.

African Americans and Reconstruction, 1865-1883 contains nearly 1,400 fully searchable printed works from the end of the Civil War to the beginning of Jim Crow. It includes documents related to African Americans and citizenship, voting rights, literacy, land rights, employment, and more, including the gaps between written law and practice.

ProQuest History Vault's coverage of the Black Freedom Struggle offers the opportunity to study the most well-known and also unheralded events of the Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century from the perspective of the men, women, and sometimes even children who waged one of the most inspiring social movements in American history. This category consists of the NAACP Papers and federal government records, organizational records, and personal papers regarding the Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century.

The Documenting White Supremacy and Its Opponents collection includes papers promoting and opposing white supremacy, published mainly in the 1920s. It brings together for the first time local, regional, and national newspapers published by Klan organizations and by sympathetic publishers from across the US. It also includes key anti-Klan voices from newspapers published by American Black, Catholic, and Jewish communities.

Fannie Lou Hamer was a voting rights activist and civil rights leader. She was instrumental in organizing Mississippi Freedom Summer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and later became the Vice-Chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, attending the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in that capacity. An Archives Unbound database. Coverage: 1966-1978.

The civil rights and anti-war movements, communism, Black-nationalist and white-supremacist hate groups, the Socialist Workers Party, and American radicalism. Documents from the files of the FBI. An Archives Unbound database. Coverage: 1956-1971.

Based at Fisk University from 1943-1970, the Race Relations Department and its annual Institute were set up by the American Missionary Association to investigate problem areas in race relations and develop methods for educating communities and preventing conflict. Documenting three pivotal decades in the fight for civil rights, this resource showcases the speeches, reports, surveys and analyses produced by the Departments staff and Institute participants, including Charles S. Johnson, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Thurgood Marshall.

This collection 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. An Archives Unbound database. Coverage: 1967-1973.

Activities of the Republic of New Afrika leaders, power struggles within the organization, its growing militancy, and its affiliations with other black militant organizations. Documentation collected by the FBI, including newspaper and periodical articles, books, pamphlets, broadsides, leaflets, etc. An Archives Unbound database. Coverage: 1968-1980.

Revolution and Protest Online explores the protest movements, revolutions, and civil wars that have transformed societies and human experience from the 18th century through the present. It is organized around more than thirty events and areas, representing a variety of time periods, regions, and topics. Includes American Revolution, Arab Spring, Chinese Communist Revolution, Civil Rights Movement, Cuban Revolutions, Hungarian Revolution, Iranian Revolutions, Russian Revolutions, and others.

African American history, radical studies, civil rights, and political science. Documents from the FBI chronicle the interracial group that left Washington on May 4, 1961, bound for New Orleans. An Archives Unbound database. Coverage: 1961.

Age of Emancipation includes numerous rare documents related to emancipation in the United States, as well as Latin America and the Caribbean. This collection supports the study of many areas, including activities of the federal government in dealing with former slaves and the Freedmen's Bureau, views of political parties and post-war problems with the South, documents of the British and French government on the slave trade, reports from the West Indies and Africa, and other topics.

Explore five centuries of journeys across the globe, scientific discoveries, the expansion of European colonialism, conflict over territories and trade routes, and decades-long search and rescue attempts in this multi-archive collection dedicated to the history of exploration.

This collection searches a unique set of primary sources from African Americans actively involved in the movement to end slavery in the United States between 1830 and 1865.

Debates over Slavery and Abolition sheds light on the abolitionist movement, the conflicts within it, the anti- and pro-slavery arguments of the period, and the debates on the subject of colonization. It explores all facets of the controversial topic, with a focus on economic, gender, legal, religious, and government issues.

The Institution of Slavery explores, in vivid detail, the inner workings of slavery from 1492 to 1888. Through legal documents, plantation records, first-person accounts, newspapers, government records, and other primary sources, this collection reveals how enslaved people struggled against the institution. These rare works explore slavery as a legal and labor system, the relationship between slavery and religion, freed slaves, the Shong Massacre, the Demerara insurrection, and many other aspects and events.

This database covers a vast range of topics including the formative economic factors and other forces that led to the abolitionist movement, the 600,000 battle casualties and the emancipation of nearly 4 million slaves. Includes newspapers, advertisements, editorials, letters, obituaries, ephemera

Slave Trade in the Atlantic World charts the inception of slavery in Africa and its rise as perpetuated on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, placing particular emphasis on the Caribbean, Latin America, and United States. This collection was developed by an international editorial board with scholars specializing in North American, European, African, and Latin American/Caribbean aspects of the slave trade. Includes customs records, court cases, shipping records, manuscripts, personal papers, letters, trade records, and other materials.

Includes collections on the transatlantic slave trade, the global movement for the abolition of slavery, the legal, personal, and economic aspects of the slavery system, and the dynamics of emancipation in the U.S. as well as in Latin America, the Caribbean, and other regions. Part 1. Debates over slavery and abolition; Part 2. Slave trade in the Atlantic world; Part 3. The institution of slavery; Part 4. The age of emancipation. Includes legal documents, plantation records, first-person accounts, newspapers, government records, and other primary sources Covers: 1492 to 1888.

Slavery in Antebellum Southern Industries presents some of the richest, most valuable, and most complete collections in the entire documentary record of American slavery, focusing on the industrial uses of slave labor. The materials selected include company records; business and personal correspondence; documents pertaining to the purchase, hire, medical care, and provisioning of slave laborers; descriptions of production processes; and journals recounting costs and income.

This digital collection documents key aspects of the history of slavery worldwide over six centuries, with 16 key areas of focus: slavery in the early Americas; African coast; the Middle Passage; slavery and agriculture; urban and domestic slavery; slave testimony; spiritualism and religion in slave communities; resistance and revolts; the Underground Railroad; the abolition movement and the slavery debate; legislation and politics; freed slaves, freedmen and free black settlements; education; slavery and the Islamic world; varieties of slave experience; slavery today and the legacy of slavery. Documents include legal materials and court cases, broadsides, court records, maps, pamphlets, lists of enslaved peoples, ship's logs, registers, and reports. The collection also includes case studies from America, the Caribbean, Brazil, and Cuba.

Primary source documents of records and correspondence of southern plantations during the Antebellum period of U.S. History. These documents reflect the business and operation of plantations, including slavery records. Part of ProQuest's History Vault.

Music Online: African American Music Reference includes full text from major reference works; personal narratives from oral histories and interviews; manuscripts, song sheets, lyrics, discography data, and other text sources. The largest online collection of musical scores and reference works available anywhere.

Early history of African American poetry, from 1746 to the major poets of the nineteenth century.

A history database through music; formerly American Song. Streaming audio with songs by and about all Americans (immigrants, children, enslaved persons, etc.), and about all aspects of the American experience (civil rights, political campaigns, the Revolutionary War, etc.). Coverage: Precolonial period-present.

Black Drama, now in its expanded third edition, contains the full text of more than 1,700 plays written from the mid-1800s to the present by more than 200 playwrights from North America, English-speaking Africa, the Caribbean, and other African diaspora countries.

Black Thought and Culture contains 1,303 sources with 1,210 authors, covering the non-fiction published works of leading African Americans. Particular care has been taken to index this material so that it can be searched more thoroughly than ever before. Where possible the complete published non-fiction works are included, as well as interviews, journal articles, speeches, essays, pamphlets, letters and other fugitive material.

The collection consists of rare works of poetry, organizational records, print publications, over one hundred articles, poems, plays, and speeches by Baraka, a small amount of personal correspondence, and oral histories.
An Archives Unbound database. Coverage: 1913-1998.

From feast to famine, explore primary source material documenting the story of food and drink throughout history. The materials in this collection illustrate the deep links between food and identity, politics and power, gender, race and socio-economic status, as well as charting key issues around agriculture, nutrition and food production. Includes cookbooks, advertisements, correspondence, illustrations, government reports, images, and ephemera.

Ebony Magazine Archive covers civil rights, education, entrepreneurship and other social topics with an African-American focus. It includes more than 800 issues providing a broad view of African-American culture from its first issue in 1945 through 2014.