This research guide provides information about the major print and electronic and web resources for for African and African-American studies.
Keywords: Selecting and Collecting
As you conduct your secondary research and learn more about your topic, work to identify keywords and phrases to use in your online search for additional relevant sources. These keywords can be themes, names of individuals, places, events, etc.
Developed in conjunction with the American Theological Library Association (ATLA), this database provides access to formerly widely-dispersed and endangered materials, documenting the history of African American life and religious organizations with materials published between 1829 and 1922.
Complete texts of major 19th century African American newspapers. Includes first-hand reports of events and issues of the day, as well as biographies, vital statistics, essays and editorials, poetry and prose, and advertisements.
British Archives Online provides American material from the archives of the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, 1635-1928. Missionaries in North America, as elsewhere, were often the only people recording and submitting regular reports of events from remote English-speaking communities around the world.
1941-1996, translated news and commentary from across the globe covering foreign perspectives of American racial issues and race relations between 1941-1996. Contains newspapers, magazines, government statements and radio and television broadcasts from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency archives.
A range of materials, including books, pamphlets, graphic materials, and ephemera, from the American Antiquarian Society's holdings of slavery and abolition materials. Published over the course of 100 years, topics include, for example, the Missouri Compromise and the founding of Liberia; the first National Anti-Slavery Society Convention in 1837 and the Compromise of 1850; the Emancipation Proclamation and the establishment of Redeemer state governments; the birth of Jim Crow and the expansion of segregation through the early 1920s.
1718-1876. More than 140 newspapers from 22 islands, much published in English. Countries represented include Antigua, Bahamas, Barbados, Cuba, Curaao, Dominica, Grenada, Guadaloupe, Haiti, Jamaica, Martinique, Montserrat, Nevis, Puerto Rico, St. Bartholomew, St. Christopher, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Tobago, Trinidad, and the Virgin Islands.
Colonial Caribbean makes available materials from 27 Colonial Office file classes from The National Archives, UK. Covering the history of the various territories under British colonial governance from 1624 to 1870, this extensive resource includes administrative documentation, trade and shipping records, minutes of council meetings, and details of plantation life, colonial settlement, imperial rivalries across the region, and the growing concern of absentee landlords.
Access to:
Module 1: Settlement, Slavery, and Empire, 1624-1832
Module 2: Colonial Government and Abolition, 1833-1849
OAASC database is a comprehensive compendium focusing on the "lives and events which have shaped African American and African history and culture". The database includes encyclopedias, biographies, primary sources, images and more to support research in African and African Diaspora Studies.
The liberation of Southern Africa and the dismantling of the Apartheid regime was one of the major political developments of the 20th century, with far-reaching consequences for people throughout Africa and around the globe. This collection (on JSTOR) focuses on the complex and varied liberation struggles in the region, with an emphasis on Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. It brings together materials from various archives and libraries throughout the world documenting colonial rule, dispersion of exiles, international intervention, and the worldwide networks that supported successive generations of resistance within the region.
AAL is an open source, collaborative initiative between Boston University and the West African Research Center (WARC). Ajami traditions of Africa are centuries-old and are quite varied, consisting of satirical, polemical and protest poetry, as well as biographies, eulogies, genealogies, talismanic resources, therapeutic medical manuals, family journals, business transactions, historical records, speeches, texts on administrative and diplomatic matters (correspondence between Sultans and provincial rulers), Islamic jurisprudence, behavioral codes, grammar, and even visual arts. The primary goal of AAL is to ensure that these materials are no longer treated as insignificant vestiges, but rather as major sources of local African knowledge, without which a holistic and in-depth understanding of Islamized Africa will remain elusive.
Items from the collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society: unique manuscripts and rare published materials, documents and letters by African Americans, the earliest antislavery pamphlet published in Massachusetts, petitions of African Americans requesting freedom, and much more.
Collections include: Frederick Douglas papers, Zora Neale Hurston plays, Pamphlets, Sheet music, Broadsides & Ephemera, Slave Narratives (audio interviews) and much more.
An initiative of the University of Georgia providing access to a variety of primary sources from the Civil Rights Movement including letters, pamphlets, oral histories, photographs and film. Search or browse by year, event, people or topic.
Discover and explore nearly a half million people records and 5 million data points. From archival fragments and spreadsheet entries, we see the lives of the enslaved in richer detail.
Aggregating, producing and distributing 500 news and information items daily from over 110 African news organizations and our own reporters to an African and global public. We operate from Cape Town, Dakar, Abuja, Johannesburg, Nairobi and Washington DC.
