By Subject

Try using some of these Library of Congress subject headings to locate books on Black education and related topics. You can use the Subject field in an Advanced Search in HOLLIS to search these headings individually or combined with other topics. 

  • Affirmative Action Programs -- United States
  • African American Educators
  • African American Schools
  • African American Women Educators
  • African Americans -- Civil rights -- History -- 20th century
  • African Americans -- Education
  • African Americans -- Education -- Civil Rights
  • African Americans -- History
  • African Americans -- Intellectual life -- 20th century
  • African Americans -- Migrations
  • African Americans -- Politics and government
  • African Americans -- Race identity
  • African Americans -- Segregation
  • African Americans -- Social conditions
  • African Americans -- Study and teaching -- United States.
  • African Americans in literature
  • American literature -- African American authors -- History and criticism
  • Blacks -- Race identity
  • Blacks -- Study and teaching -- United States
  • Black nationalism -- United States
  • Black power -- United States
  • Civil rights movements -- United States -- History -- 20th century
  • Multicultural Education
  • School integration
  • Segregation in education
  • Public schools

By Keyword

Think about the language of the time period you are exploring. For example, a keyword search to span American history would need to include a variety of terms; for example:

negro* OR colo*red OR enslave* OR slave* OR "afr* american" OR "african americans" OR free*m*n.OR blacks OR black

[Note that HOLLIS does not support use of truncation within quotation marks, so when you use them, you'll need to have a search string for both the singular and plural form of the term.] 

For education-related topics, a search string might include:

school* OR teach* OR class* OR educat* OR learn* OR instruct*

By Old Widener Call Number

Some historical materials on Black education at Harvard are organized using the Widener Call Number system. You can try the following searches:

By Library of Congress Call Number

Some historical materials on Black education at Harvard are organized using the Library of Congress Call Number system. You can try the following searches:

  • Visit the HOLLIS "Starts with/Browse" page
  • In the "Browse by" drop-down, select: "Call Number - Library of Congress"
  • Enter:
    • E184.5
      • Results related to Black Americans are in the call number range E184.5 - E185.98
    • LC2701 
      • Results related to Black education are in the call number range  LC2701-LC2785

  • See the HOLLIS User Guide for other advice on how to save searches, search results and more.