Research Guides: History: African-American

African American Primary Source Collections

African-American Newspapers: The 19th Century
The full text of selected nineteenth-century, African-American newspapers, including: the Freedom's Journal, Colored American, The North Star, Frederick Douglass Papers, National Era, Provincial Freeman, and The Christian Recorder.

Formerly Accessible Archives
African American Communities

Focusing predominantly on Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis, New York, and towns and cities in North Carolina this resource presents multiple aspects of the African American community. Key themes include desegregation, civil rights, race relations, African American culture.
Note: This collection is owned in perpetuity by Davidson College.
African American Newspapers, Series 1 and 2
Provides online access to U.S. newspapers chronicling a century and a half of the African-American experience.

Part of the America’s Historical Newspapers collection.
African American Periodicals, 1825-1995

Periodicals by and about African Americans; includes magazines, academic and political journals, institutional newsletters, organizations' bulletins, and more.

Part of the Archive of Americana.
Afro-Americana Imprints, 1535-1922: From Library Company of Philadelphia
A record of African American history, literature, and culture, this collection of books, broadsides, and pamphlets spans the nearly 400-year arc of the fight for freedom and equality.
Part of America's Historical Imprints.
Black Freedom Struggle in the United States
Primary source documents related to critical people and events in African American history.

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)
The Contemporary Era (1976-2000)
Civil Rights in America: From Reconstruction to the Great Society
Archive of official publications and primary source material related to civil rights in the United States from the 19th century through the 20th century.
Documenting the American South
A collection of primary sources on Southern history, culture, and literature from the colonial period through the early twentieth century. Includes diaries, first-person narratives, literary works, photographs, and other materials.
Historical Newspapers

Includes full-text coverage of US newspapers listed below, with the earliest starting in the late 19th century and many continuing through the 20th century.

Davidson has purchased perpetual access to:
The Atlanta Constitution (1868-1945)
Atlanta Daily World (1931-2010)
The Baltimore Afro-American (1893-1988)
Chicago Defender (1909-2010)
Chinese Newspapers Collection (1832 - 1953)
Cleveland Call and Post (1934-1991)
Los Angeles Sentinel (1934-2005)
New York Amsterdam News (1922-1993)
The New York Times with Index (1851-2020)
Norfolk Journal and Guide (1916-2010)
Philadelphia Tribune (1912-2001)
Pittsburgh Courier (1911-2002)
The Wall Street Journal (1889-2013)
The Washington Post (1877-2008)
Independent Voices
Independent Voices comprises selections from alternative press collections of respected academic institutions across the country.

Davidson College Library is a funding library for Reveal Digital, Independent Voices.
Slavery & Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive
Research, study, and discover endless teaching possibilities on understanding slavery from a multinational perspective.
Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice

From a largely colonial and thus Western and Eurocentric perspective, the material included focuses on the varieties of slavery, the legacies of slavery, the social justice perspective and the continued existence of slavery in the twentieth century.
Note: This collection is owned in perpetuity by Davidson College.
Slave Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database
The Trans-Atlantic and Intra-American slave trade databases provide information about vessels, routes, and the people associated with them.

The National Endowment for the Humanities was the principal sponsor of this work carried out at Emory Center for Digital Scholarship, the University of California at Irvine, and the University of California at Santa Cruz. The Hutchins Center of Harvard University has also provided support.
History Vault: Southern Life, Slavery, and the Civil War
Covers business records (ledgers, accounting books, receipts, and work rules) and personal papers (diaries, correspondences, and wills) from plantations in the American South.
Part of ProQuest History Vault.