Selected African-American History Sources

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Databases
(*licensed by Rhodes College)

Use 360 Search to search the Rhodes library catalog, selected databases and online journals simultaneously.

• *American History and Life
  Covers over 2,000 journals published worldwide. In addition to covering all key English-language historical journals, America: History and Life coverage includes selected historical journals from major countries, state and local history journals, and a targeted selection of hundreds of journals in the social sciences and humanities. Over 90% of the articles included are published in English-language journals.
• *Americas Historical Newspapers
  Offers several hundred thousand fully searchable issues from more than 200 significant 18th- and 19th- century newspapers from all 50 present states.
• *American Civil War: Letters & Diaries
  "Knits together more than 1,000 sources of diaries, letters, and memoirs to provide fast access to thousands of views on almost every aspect of the war, including what was happening at home. The writings of politicians, generals, slaves, landowners, farmers, seaman, wives, and even spies are included. The letters and diaries are by the famous and the unknown, giving not only both the Northern and Southern perspectives, but those of foreign observers also. The materials originate from all regions of the country and are from people who played a variety of roles."
• *American National Biography
  Offers portraits of more than 17,400 men and women -- from all eras and walks of life -- whose lives have shaped the nation.
• *ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials
  Combines the premier index to journal articles, book reviews, and collections of essays in all fields of religion with ATLA′s online collection of major religion and theology journals.
• *Black Thought and Culture: African Americans from Colonial Times to the Present
  When complete, Black Thought and Culture will provide approximately 100,000 pages of monographs, essays, articles, speeches, and interviews written by leaders within the black community from the earliest times to 1975. The collection is intended for research in black studies, political science, American history, music, literature, and art.
• In the First Person
  A free, high quality, professionally published, in-depth index of more than 3,350 collections of personal narratives in English from around the world.
• *Lexis-Nexis
  Provides access to a wide range of news, business, legal, and reference information.
• *Oxford African American Studies Center
  The Oxford African American Studies Center provides students, teachers, and scholars with an authoritative and comprehensive source on the African American experience. At launch, the site will be comprised of five major encyclopedias and content from eighteen additional reference sources from Oxford University Press. The site includes a carefully selected editorial program of supplementary material. This includes approximately 100 primary source documents with commentaries, 1,000 images with an ongoing image research program, over 200 charts, tables and graphs, maps, timelines, and learning resources for students and teachers.
• *Primary Sources in African American History and American Women′s History
• *Southern Life
  Contains nearly 5 million full-text articles on topics that relate directly to Southern living, both past and present, including people, places, historical events and more.
• *Wilson OmniFileFull Text
  Electronic access to full text articles, page images, article abstracts, and citations from over 4,000 journals. Coverage back as early as 1982 ensures that every search is as deep as it is broad.
• *Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000
  Intended to serve as a resource for students and scholars of U.S. history and U.S. women′s history. Organized around the history of women in social movements in the U.S. between 1600 and 2000, the website seeks to advance scholarly debates and understanding at the same time that it makes the insights of women′s history accessible to teachers and students at universities, colleges, and high schools.
• *WorldCat
  The world′s most comprehensive bibliography, with more than 42 million bibliographic records representing 400 languages. Covers information back to the 11th Century. Includes holdings information from the world′s libraries. Now includes the Library of Congress Subject Headings as its thesaurus.

Online Journals
(*licensed by Rhodes College)

• *JSTOR African-American Journals
• *JSTOR History Journals
• *SerialsSolutions Online History Journals
• Directory of Open Access Journals - 3,200 free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals, many of them searchable at the article level.

Selected Reference Sources
(*licensed by Rhodes College)

• Africana: the Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience (Print: Ref DT14 .A37435 2005]
• African American Autobiographers: a Sourcebook
• *Black Firsts
• *W.E.B. Du Bois: An Encyclopedia
• *The Civil Rights Movement
• *Dictionary of Contemporary History- 1945 to the Present
• Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History : the Black Experience in the Americas (Print: Ref E185 .E54 2006]
• *Encyclopedia of African-American Heritage
• *Encyclopedia of African-American Education
• *Encyclopedia of African American Business History
• *Encyclopedia of the United States in the Nineteenth Century
• Encyclopedia of African and African-American Religions (Print: Ref. BL2462.5 .E53 2001]
• Encyclopedia of African-American Civil Rights: from Emancipation to the Present (Print: E185.61 .E54 1992]
• *Great American Court Cases
• *Great American History Fact-Finder
• *Organizing Black America: an Encyclopedia of African American Organizatons
• **Oxford Companion to United States History
• *Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States
• *Oxford Guide to United States Supreme Court Decisions
• *Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History
  The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History, edited by Bonnie G. Smith, captures the experiences of women throughout history in a far-reaching, four-volume work. Although there has been extensive research on women in history by region, no other text or reference work has comprehensively covered the role women have played throughout world history. With over 650 biographies of influential women and over 600 topical articles covering topics such as geography and history, culture and society, organizations, movements, and gender studies, Women in World History is the definitive reference work in the field.
• *Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World
  Through its fluent global coverage, The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World provides information about major world developments from 1750 to the present, with close attention to social, economic, cultural, and political topics. The Encyclopedia contains articles on world events; countries; organizations; regions; ethnic groups; and themes such as social history, demography, family life, politics, economics, religion, thought, education, science and technology, and culture. It offers coverage of standard geographic and ethnic units—such as Scandinavia, Korea, or the Gypsies—in the modern period. Significant institutions such as the International Red Cross and the League of Nations are treated at length. Comprehensive coverage enables readers to broaden their research outside a particular time or region and to explore topics within the context of modern world history.
• *Reader′s Companion to American History
• *Who′s Who in the Twentieth Century

Websites

• African-American History (WWW Virtual Library)
• African American History and Studies Resources (AcademicInfo)
• African American History Links (World History Archives)
• African American Resources (Howard University)
• African-American Mosaic: A Library of Congress Resource Guide for the Study of Black History and Culture
• African American Odyssey (Library of Congress)
• African Americans (Mosaicweb)
• Guide to African American Documentary Sources (Cornell)
• Internet Resources for Students of  African-American History and Culture  (Rutgers)
• Lest We Forget: the Triumph Over Slavery (NYPL Exhibit)
• Malcolm X Project (Columbia University)
• National Museum of African American History and Culture (Smithsonian)
  The centerpiece of the NMAAHC Museum on the Web are the collected reminiscences of ordinary Americans. These stories, called "memories" are collected as text, images, and audio uploads in the virtual Memory Book where website visitors are encouraged to submit their own histories, traditions, thoughts and ideas
• New York Public Library Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
• Minority Studies Resources (Voice of the Shuttle)
• National Civil Rights Museum
• Resources in Black Studies (UCSB)
• SNCC 1960-1966: Six Years of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
  This site covers the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee from its birth in 1960 to 1966, when John Lewis was replaced by Stokely Carmichael as chairman.

Documentation, Texts

• African American Historical Documents and Speeches
• African American History Digital Collections (Library of Congress) 
• African-American Women (Duke University Online Collection)
• African American Women′s History Links
• Africans in America: Anerica′s Journey Through Slavery (PBS)
  America′s journey through slavery is presented in four parts. For each era, you′ll find a historical Narrative, a Resource Bank of images, documents, stories, biographies, and commentaries, and a Teacher′s Guide for using the content of the Web site and television series in U.S. history courses.
• American Slave Narratives: An Online Anthology (UVA)
• Booker T. Washington Papers
  The Booker T. Washington Papers Online is a completely free and searchable web site designed to provide researchers worldwide with full access to the thousands of pages comprising this 14-volume printed work, originally published by the University of Illinois Press.
• Brown v. Board of Education - Digital Archive (U Michigan)
  This archive contains documents and images which chronicle events surrounding this historically significant case up to the present.
• Civil Rights Documentation Project (USM)
• Civil Rights Movement Veterans
  Includes documents, interviews, bibliography and more.
• Crossroads to Freedom
  Crossroads to Freedom is a digital archive of materials that documents the Civil Rights era in Memphis TN.
• Documenting the American South (UNC)
• Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy (Yale, Avalon Project) Oral Histories of the American South: the Civil Rights Movement (UNC)
  The voices of the civil rights movement swelled into a wave of protest that profoundly changed America. This collection of interviews seeks to make this massive movement local and understandable by reducing it into its smallest parts—the people that participated, in small and large ways.
• The End of Slavery: The Creation of the 13th Amendment 
  HarpWeek is pleased to present “The End of Slavery:  The Creation of the Thirteenth Amendment” as a public service for students, teachers, and interested citizens who wish to explore the nation’s transition from slavery to freedom.
• Historical Publications of the United States Commission on Civil Rights (U of Md)
  In conjunction with the Thurgood Marshall Law Library′s strategic plan to enhance its civil rights collection in support of the School of Law′s teaching and research mission, the Library has worked since 2001 to create a complete electronic record of United States Commission on Civil Rights publications held in the Library′s collection and available on the USCCR Web site. The publications are made available over the Internet as page image presentations in PDF format
• Images of the Antislavery Movement in Massachusetts
  This website, Images of the Antislavery Movement in Massachusetts, presents digital images of 840 visual materials from the collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society that illustrate the role of Massachusetts in the national debate over slavery. Included are photographs, paintings, sculptures, engravings, artifacts, banners, and broadsides that were central to the debate and the formation of the antislavery movement.
• An Imperfect Revolution: Voices From the Desegregation Era
  American RadioWorks traveled to Louisville, KY and Charlotte, NC to talk with people about their memories of integration.
• North American Slave Narrative (UNC)
• Powerful Days in Black and White  
• Voices of Civil Rights
  AARP, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), and the Library of Congress have teamed up to collect and preserve personal accounts of America′s struggle to fulfill the promise of equality for all.