Background/Context/Biography
African Americans
Oxford African American studies center: the online authority on the African American experience contains reference articles and primary sources, including images and maps.
The Greenwood encyclopedia of African American civil rights: from emancipation to the twenty-first century, ed. by Charles D. Lowery and John F. Marszalek. 2nd ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003, 2 v. HOLLIS Record. Internet Archive Full Text (Vol. 2, S-Z plus primary documents only)
Encyclopedia of African American History, ed. by Leslie M. Alexander and Walter C. Rucker, Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2010. HOLLIS record. Available online via Internet Archive.
Negro yearbook. Tuskegee Institute, Ala. : Negro Year Book Pub. Co., 1914-1952, HOLLIS Record
- Continues: Negro year book and annual encyclopedia of the Negro. Tuskegee, Alb.: Monroe N. Work, [1912-1913] 2 v. HOLLIS Record. HathiTrust 1912-1922
- In Internet Archive 1931-1932 -- 1937-1938 -- 1947 -- 1952
Immigration
Anti-immigration in the United States: a historical encyclopedia, ed. by Kathleen R. Arnold. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Greenwood Press, 2011, 2 v.
HOLLIS Record. Available online via Internet Archive.
The making of modern immigration: an encyclopedia of people and ideas, ed. by Patrick J. Hayes. Santa Barbara, Calif. : ABC-CLIO, c2012
Law
Oxford Companion to American Law Offers a comprehensive guide to the development and current status of American law through an alphabetical organization that comprises several broad categories of entries.
General
The Oxford Research Encyclopedias: American History offers numerous articles reviewing specialized topics. Each article has sections on Discussion of the Literature and on Primary Sources, together with a Further Reading bibliography and footnotes.
The Wiley Blackwell encyclopedia of race, ethnicity, and nationalism, ed. by John Stone, Rutledge M. Dennis, Polly S. Rizova, Anthony D. Smith, and Xiaoshuo Hou. Chichester, West Sussex, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 2016, 5 volumes
American National Biography is the standard American source for biographies of major figures. Can do searches of occupations and limit by date.
World Biographical Information System includes full text of thousands of biographical dictionaries accessible by name of biographee.
The African American national biography, ed. by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Evelyn Brooks-Higginbotham, 2008, 8 v.
African American Biographical Database includes over 40,000 articles from about 300 works of collective biography. Profiles Search searches index entries by name, place of birth, birth/death dates, occupation, religion, gender, source. Full Text Search searches the biographical articles themselves.
Notable Black American women, Detroit: Gale Research, 1992-2003. HOLLIS record. Available online via Internet Archive.
Who's Who in Colored America: a biographical dictionary of notable living persons of Negro descent in America. 1927-1950. HOLLIS record.