Digital Libraries and Collections

 

ProQuest Black Studies is a vast conglomeration of primary and secondary source material.

--Contains numerous "Primary Sources Collections" (List of those included). Some are also in ProQuest History Vault  Black Freedom Struggle.

--Includes the searchable full text of about 300 biographical dictionaries and related works.  Limit to the biographical material at Publication/Collection title. Look up and add to search: African American Biographical Database.  There is no name-form control, so search unique last names alone (Pyrtle), and try various forms of more common names ("James Sanders" OR "Sanders James").

Indexing of these 300 works, not provided by ProQuest Black Studies, is available in print in:
Black biography, 1790-1950 : a cumulative index, ed. by Randall K. Burkett, Nancy Hall Burkett, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Alexandria : Chadwyck-Healey, 1991. 3 v.
HOLLIS Record    In bookcase beside door into the Atkins Reference Room (Widener 2nd floor)
--Index entries include name (in inverted form; useful for browsing similar names), place of birth, birth/death dates, occupation, religion, gender.

--Newspapers  (List of those included). Some are also in ProQuest Historical Newspapers

--Includes the former International Index to Black Periodicals Full Text (1900- ; full text 1998- ) which indexes over 150 scholarly and popular journals, newspapers, and newsletters from the US, Africa and the Caribbean.  Under Content Type, choose Journals and/or Magazines and Historical Periodicals.

--Includes the former Black literature Index, 1827-1940.  2997 microfiches and printed guide
HOLLIS Record
----Full text of over 86,000 literary works on microfiche, including fiction, poetry, book reviews and other literary forms by African-Americans and Whites writing in African-American periodicals and newspapers. Online index to article authors/titles and periodical titles (In Wayback; only periodical title list available).
List of periodicals indexed with links to lists of article in each.

Umbra Search is a search engine for African American digitized materials in numerous repositories

Civil Rights Movement Web Links

HathiTrust Digital Library is a huge collection of digitized books and periodicals. Each full text item is linked to a standard library catalog record, thus providing good metadata and subject terms. Most items pre-1925 will be full text viewable.  After 1925, a much smaller number will be full text viewable.  You can search within non-full text viewable works and obtain the pages numbers where your search terms occur.   Most US, and some state, government documents will be full text viewable.

There is also a separate full text search for US government documents.

Advanced Full Text Search

In the first (Full Text) Advanced Full Text Search field, you can put terms for a full text search.  Phrases and proper names work best (exact phrase).  If you search two or more separate keywords, when you search within particular volumes, those pages containing all the keywords will sort first.

In the second search field, you can limit your full text search by:

  • Title, searching the contents of a particular work, including periodical titles
  • Author, searching the works of a particular author, including names of organizations and government entities.
  • Subject, searching the Subject terms (same Subject terms as those used in HOLLIS) for a particular topic

Internet Archive .

  • Full text for a variety of digitized print materials and archived web pages (Wayback Machine), as well as manuscripts (a few), digitized microfilm, films, audio files, TV News, and more.

Digital Public Library of America offers textual, visual, and sound resources contributed by numerous libraries, archives, and museums.  Searches catalog records, not full text.​

Finding Primary Sources Online  offers methods for finding digital libraries and digital collections on the open Web

Catholic Research Resources Portal

Digital Libraries by State: These websites list hundreds of local, state, and regional resources.

African American communities offers pamphlets, newspapers and periodicals, correspondence, official records, oral histories, photographs, maps and ephemera. Includes Atlanta, Chicago

ProQuest History Vault  Black Freedom Struggle (1901-1975) includes:

Federal Records

  • African Americans in the Military
  • Black Workers in the Era of the Great Migration, 1916-1929
  • Centers of the Southern Struggle: FBI Files on Montgomery, Albany, St. Augustine, Selma, and Memphis
  • Civil Rights during the Bush Administration
  • Civil Rights during the Carter Administration, 1977-1981
  • Civil Rights during the Eisenhower Administration
  • Civil Rights during the Johnson Administration, 1963-1969
  • Civil Rights during the Kennedy Administration, 1961-1963
  • Civil Rights during the Nixon Administration, 1969-1974
  • Civil Rights Movement and the Federal Government, Records of the Interstate Commerce Commission on Discrimination in Transportation, 1961-1970
  • Civil Rights Movement and the Federal Government: Records of the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division, 1958-1973
  • Civil Rights Movement and the Federal Government: Records of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Police-Community Relations in Urban Areas, 1954-1966
  • Civil Rights Movement and the Federal Government: Records of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, School Desegregation in the South, 1965-1966
  • Civil Rights Movement and the Federal Government: Records of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Special Projects, 1960-1970
  • Department of Justice Classified Subject Files on Civil Rights, 1914-1949
  • East St. Louis Riot of 1917
  • FBI Files on Black Extremist Organizations
  • Federal Surveillance of Afro-Americans (1917-1925): The First World War, the Red Scare, and the Garvey Movement
  • Martin Luther King Jr. FBI File
  • New Deal Agencies and Black America
  • Peonage Files of the U.S. Department of Justice, 1901-1945
  • President Truman's Committee on Civil Rights
  • Records of the Committee on Fair Employment Practices, Part 1: Racial Tension File, 1943-1945
  • Records of the Tuskegee Airmen, Part 1: Records of the Army Air Forces
  • Civil Rights during the Ford Administration: Subject Files of Assistant Attorney General J. Stanley Pottinger (1973-1977) and Special Assistant Anne Clarke (1974-1977)
  • Civil Rights during the Reagan Administration

Personal Papers and Organizational Records

  • Bayard Rustin Papers
  • Mary McLeod Bethune Papers
  • Papers of A. Philip Randolph
  • Records of the American Committee on Africa
  • Records of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
  • Records of the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs, 1895-1992
  • Records of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 1954-1970
  • The Black Power Movement: Papers of the Revolutionary Action Movement, 1962-1996
  • The Black Power Movement: The League of Revolutionary Black Workers, 1965-1976
  • Black Power Movement, Part 2: The Papers of Robert F. Williams
  • The Claude A. Barnett Papers: The Associated Negro Press, 1918-1967
  • Arthur W. Mitchell Papers, 1898-1968
  • Congress of Racial Equality Papers, 1941-1967
  • Midwest Academy (Chicago, Illinois) Records, Heather Booth's Personal Files, 1964 and 1984
  • Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Papers, 1959-1972

 

Black Thought and Culture (ca. 1840-1975) includes monographs, essays, articles, speeches and interviews written by leaders within the black community.

Civil rights and social justice includes Congressional hearings and committee prints, legislative histories, CRS and GAO reports, Supreme Court briefs, and Commission on Civil Rights publications concerning minorities, LGBTQ, and disabled civil rights. Also: scholarly article bibliography, books on civil rights topics, and list of civil rights organizations.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Papers Project (Stanford University) includes written and audio excerpts of King speeches and sermons.

Congress of Racial Equality web site

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Legacy Project offers primary source materials, including documents, photographs, newsreels, and oral history interviews, together with contextual and secondary material.

Proquest History Vault: NAACP Papers

--Board of Directors, Annual Conferences, Major Speeches (1909-1950)
--Major Campaigns, Part 1: Education files document the NAACP's fight against segregated education, including materials related to the Brown v. Board of Education decision.
--Major Campaigns Part 2 focuses on the NAACP’s efforts regarding anti-lynching, peonage, and discrimination in employment and the criminal justice system.
--Major Campaigns, Part 3 - Legal Department Files consists of Papers of the NAACP Legal Department from 1956-1972

Sixties: Primary Documents and Personal Narratives, 1960-1974 includes letters, diaries, and oral histories, together with posters, broadsides, pamphlets, advertisements, and audio and video materials.

Rock and roll, counterculture, peace and protest (1950-1975) includes primary sources on popular culture in the US and Great Britain. Topics include: Youth Culture; Student Protests; Mai ‘68; TV; Music; Movies; Civil Rights; Women’s Liberation; Minority Groups; The Space Race; Consumerism; Credit Cards; Computers; Vietnam War; and Nuclear Disarmament.

Slavery, Abolition, and Social Justice, 1490-2007 is a "portal for slavery and abolition studies, bringing together documents and collections from libraries and archives across the Atlantic world.

Women and Social Movements in the United States: 1600-2000 offers journal articles, manuscripts, books, pamphlets, bibliographies, images, and other sources.

Baltimore '68: Riots and Rebirth

Civil Rights in a Northern City: Philadelphia

Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia

Discovering American Women's History Online

Civil Rights Digital Library. Lots of film

Internet History Sourcebooks Project: Modern Social Movements

Rochester Black Freedom Struggle Online Project.

March on Milwaukee. Civil Rights History Project. (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries)

Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project

The Negro Motorist Green Book, by Victor Hugo Green. New York: Victor Hugo Green, 1936-1966. (NYPL version)

Smithsonian Institution version

  • Intended to guide traveling African Americans in the Jim Crow era.