Subject Guides: Black Studies: Primary Sources

Online Library Archives

Black Studies Center This link opens in a new window
Black Studies Center combines invaluable resources for research and teaching in Black studies: Schomburg studies on the Black experience, International index of Black periodicals (IIBP), The Chicago defender, ProQuest dissertations for Black studies, and Black literature index. This fully cross-searchable gateway to Black studies includes scholarly essays, recent periodicals, historical newspaper articles, and much more.
Archives Unbound: African American Studies This link opens in a new window
An interdisciplinary academic collection devoted to the study of the history, culture, and politics of Black Americans covering the tumultuous period from 1900 to present day. From U.S. nation-building in Liberia to Freedom Riders and from Rastafaria to FBI surveillance, researchers can explore a breadth of experiences.
Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice, 1490-2007 This link opens in a new window
An essential resource for the study of slavery, the African American experience and world history spanning over five centuries. Designed for teaching and research, this resource brings together documents and collections from libraries and archives across the Atlantic world, covering an extensive time period from 1490. Topics covered include the varieties of slavery, the legacy of slavery, the social justice perspective and the continued existence of slavery today.
Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture & Law This link opens in a new window
Searchable database which provides links to legal materials on slavery in the United States and the English-speaking world.
Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive This link opens in a new window
Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive is devoted to the study and understanding of the history of slavery in America and the rest of the world from the 17th century to the late 19th century. Archival collections were sourced from more than 60 libraries, providing unparalleled depth and breadth of content.

Historical Newspaper Databases

ProQuest Historical Black Newspapers
Full text and full-image articles from African American newspapers: Atlanta Daily World (1931-2010), Baltimore Afro-American (1893-2010), Chicago Defender (1910-2010), Cleveland Call & Post (1934-1991), Kansas City Call (1919 - 2010), Los Angeles Sentinel (1934-2010), Louisville Defender (1951-2010), Michigan Chronicle (1939-2010), New York Amsterdam News (1922-2010), Norfolk Journal & Guide (1921-2010), Philadelphia Tribune (1912-2010), and Pittsburgh Courier (1911-2010).

ProQuest Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window
ProQuest Historical Newspapers offers full-text and full-image articles for selected newspapers dating back to the late 18th century. For most titles, the collection includes digital reproductions of every page from every issue in the stated time period, cover to cover, in downloadable PDF files.
Black Life in America This link opens in a new window
This primary source collection offers an expansive window into centuries of African American history, culture and daily life--as well as the ways the dominant culture has portrayed and perceived people of African descent via Black-owned newspapers and mainstream publications.
NYS Historic Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Newspapers back to 1803 from throughout New York State.
Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers features publications of all kinds, from the political party newspapers at the beginning of the nineteenth century to the mammoth dailies that shaped the nation at the century's end. Major newspapers stand alongside those published by African Americans, Native Americans, women’s rights groups, labor groups, and the Confederacy.
Caribbean Newspapers 1718-1876 This link opens in a new window
Caribbean Newspapers, 1718-1876, provides a comprehensive primary resource for studying the development of Western society and international relations within this important group of islands. Essential for researching colonial history, the Atlantic slave trade, international commerce, New World slavery, and U.S. relations with the region as far back as the early 18th century.

Genealogical Resources

Ancestry This link opens in a new window
Provides access to historical documents and photos, local narratives, oral histories, indexes and other resources in over 30,000 databases that span from the 1500s to the 2000s. The Library Edition of Ancestry.com has fewer personalized functions and options than the versions available to private subscribers.

African American Family Research in Ancestry
Ancestry provides a useful guide with how to do research when looking for African American family especially when looking for documents from the 19th or earlier centuries.

Government, Educational, and Non-Profit Resources

There are many archives and resources that provide primary source material created and maintained by government agencies, educational institutions, and non-profit institutions. This is a small selection of what is available.

Library of Congress
National Archives
New York Public Library
Digital Collections
Digital Schomburg (Part of New York Public Library)
Digital Schomburg provides access to trusted information, interpretation, and scholarship on the global Black experience through online materials at the Schomburg Center created and curated by our staff and librarians.
National Museum of African American History & Culture
Digital Collections from the Museum

What Is a Primary Source?

A primary source provides firsthand information, direct evidence, or original data on a topic. It is the material on which other research is based. Primary sources tend to be contemporary to the events or conditions under examination, but in some circumstances may be written or created at a later time (e.g. autobiographies, memoirs, or oral histories).

Examples of primary sources include original manuscripts, technical reports, diaries, memoirs, letters, photographs, drawings, posters, film footage, sheet music, interviews, government documents, public records, eyewitness accounts, conference proceedings, works of literature, statistical data, speeches, emails, tweets, and web pages.

The differences between primary and secondary sources can be nuanced and can depend on how a source is being used by a researcher. Watch the video to get more information on these two types of sources and where their identification can be complicated.

What Are Primary Sources?

Lucy Scribner Library

Black Studies