Research Guides: Africana Studies: Digital Collections

Selected Web Resources

	Civil Rights History Project Oral history collections with relevance to the Civil Rights movement to obtain justice, freedom and equality for African Americans and to record new interviews with people who participated in the struggle. A project by the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African American History and Culture.

	W.E.B. DuBois Online The digitized papers of W.E.B. Dubois which are held at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The papers include correspondence, essays, lectures, notes, and photographs.

	African American History Month The Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum join in paying tribute to the generations of African Americans who struggled with adversity to achieve full citizenship in American society.

	Documenting the American South Documenting the American South (DocSouth) is a digital publishing initiative that provides Internet access to texts, images, and audio files related to southern history, literature, and culture. Currently DocSouth includes sixteen thematic collections of books, diaries, posters, artifacts, letters, oral history interviews, and songs.

	Historical Publications of the United States Commission on Civil Rights Since its inception in 1957, the United States Commission on Civil Rights has been at the forefront of efforts by the Federal Government and state governments to examine and resolve issues related to race, ethnicity, religion and, more recently, sexual orientation. Complete electronic record of the publications held in the Thurgood Marshall Law Library.

	African American Research at the National Archives and Records Administration African American historical research can be undertaken in both military and civilian records; however, the documentation is scattered through a variety of correspondence of government and private citizens and government reports.

	African American History from the Library of Congress' American Memory American Memory provides free and open access through the Internet to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience.These materials, from the collections of the Library of Congress and other institutions, chronicle historical events, people, places, and ideas that continue to shape America, serving the public as a resource for education and lifelong learning.

	Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South A selection of 100 recorded oral history interviews chronicling African-American life during the age of legal segregation in the American South, from the 1890s to the 1950s.

	Visualizing Emancipation Visualizing Emancipation organizes documentary evidence about when, where, and how slavery fell apart during the American Civil War. Funded by a We the People grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, it shows how emancipation occurred unevenly across the South, beginning before the first major battles and ending after the end of the Confederacy.

	The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database This database has information on more than 35,000 slave voyages that forcibly embarked over 12 million Africans for transport to the Americas between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. It offers researchers, students and the general public a chance to rediscover the reality of one of the largest forced movements of peoples in world history.

	Black Press Research Collective The Black Press Research Collective (BPRC) is the brainchild of a pair of scholars who work on archiving and producing knowledge about the historical and contemporary role of Black newspapers in the United States, African Diaspora and Africa.

	Primary Resource Guide A research guide from University of Washington to primary and secondary sources for African American History. Some of these links will not work as they require authentication through UW's system. Goucher, however, has access to many of these and can be accessed by searching for the journal title.

	Umbra: Search African American History A free digital platform that brings together content documenting African American history and culture in order to enable the creation of new works—research projects, scholarship, curricula, art of all kinds—that illuminate parts of our history that have not been enough broadly accessible. This is a beta test site so some searches may be unpredictable.

	The Official Negro Directory and Classified Buyers Guide (1942-1943) From the Introduction: "The aim of our directory is to offer the following services: (1) A complete list of the businesses, professions, trades and services in each Negro District as well as all businesses elsewhere who welcome Negro patronage (spending money in our districts and with those who want our patronage helps to improve our districts, make opportunities and reflects our interest in community development). (2) A complete pictorial Who's Who of service to acquaint the general public with the people who are making contributions to the growth, progress and betterment of our race. (3) A complete list of Negroes over age 16.

Organizations

African Studies Association
Established in 1957, the African Studies Association is the flagship membership organization devoted to enhancing the exchange of information about Africa.
Association for the Study of African American Life and History
Established on September 9, 1915 by Dr. Carter G. Woodson, ASALH are the Founders of Black History Month. Their mission is to promote, research, preserve, interpret and disseminate information about Black life, history and culture to the global community.
National Association of African American Studies & Affiliates
NAAAS serves as a resource for scholars in the field who desire information and support for research related to the African and African American, Hispanic, Latino(a) and Chicano(a), Native American and Asian experiences.
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
Founded in 1909, the NAACP is the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization. The vision of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is to ensure a society in which all individuals have equal rights without discrimination based on race.

Baltimore Resources

Baltimore ’68 Riots and Rebirth
Forty years after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., the University of Baltimore offered a close-up examination of the Baltimore Riots of 1968—their causes and the short- and long-term consequences—in a series of public events called "Baltimore '68: Riots and Rebirth."