LibGuides: AFRS 3998: Africana Studies Senior Seminar: Primary Sources

Approaches to Finding Primary Sources

The "primaryness" of a source emerges in relation to the researcher's engagement with it. The UC Berkeley Libraries define primary sources as "either created during the time period being studied or...created at a later date by a participant in the events being studied (as in the case of memoirs)."

(source: Finding Historical Primary Sources: Getting Started, last updated 8/12/18, http://guides.lib.berkeley.edu/c.php?g=4409&p=15606)

When determining primary sources for your research, it's helpful to give yourself a historical context that defines your search. This could be a range of dates. It could also be determined by geographical sites of origin. You might also be interested in a specific type of source. Some examples include:

photographs
diaries
newspaper articles
advertisements
films
web sites
sound recordings
government documents
works of art

Databases and digital repositories can offer a multitude of paths to potential primary source material for your research. In addition, you might want to try searches in the CLIO catalog, limited by date of publication.

Primary Sources in Africana Studies: Digital Collections and Repositories

African American Communities
Focusing predominantly on Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis, New York, and towns and cities in North Carolina, this resource presents multiple aspects of African American community history through pamphlets, newspapers and periodicals, community case studies, correspondence, official records, images, reports and in-depth oral histories.
Afro-Americana Imprints, 1535-1922
Collection of books, pamphlets and broadsides, including many lesser-known imprints, presenting a record of Afro-American history, literature and culture. Books, pamphlets, and broadsides, including many lesser-known imprints. Spans nearly 400 years, from the early 16th to the early 20th century
Black Abolitionist Papers
Black Abolitionist Papers gathers and makes accessible primary sources created African Americans actively involved in the movement to end slavery in the United States between 1830 and 1865. Content includes letters, speeches, editorials, articles, sermons, and essays.
Black Drama
Contains over 1,200 plays by 300 playwrights from North America, Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, Australia, and other locations. Also included, selectively, are production photographs, as well as images of playbills and other ephemera. Many of the plays are previously unpublished.
Black Short Fiction and Folklore
offers access to the digitized full text of stories, folktales, and short fiction by African, African American, and Caribbean authors.
Black Studies Center
combines Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience, The HistoryMakers Videos and full transcripts for interviews with 100 contemporary African Americans, International Index to Black Periodicals (coverage up to 2006), historical black newspapers, Black Abolitionist Papers, and the Black Literature Index.
Black Thought and Culture
offers full text access to works of non-fiction by African American authors. Sources represented include books, articles essays, interviews and letters. Sources can be browsed by year of publication, historical events, author names, and more. Of note: The database includes fully scanned copies of the Black Panther Party newspaper from 1967-1980.
The Bush presidency and development and debate over civil rights policy and legislation
This collection contains materials on civil rights, the development of civil rights policy, and the debate over civil rights legislation during the administration of President George H.W. Bush (1989-1993) and during his tenure as vice president (1981-1989). Contents of this collection include memoranda, talking points, correspondence, legal briefs, transcripts, news summaries, draft legislation, statements of administration policy (SAP's), case histories, legislative histories and news-clippings covering a broad range of civil rights issues.
Confidential Print: Africa: 1834-1966
Includes digitized documents from the National Archives of Great Britain, covering the main years of British colonization of Africa. Features 300 full color maps. Other materials included are reports, dispatches, correspondence, descriptions of leading personalities, political summaries, and economic analyses.
Federal surveillance of African Americans, 1920-1984
Contains reproductions of hundreds of FBI files documenting the federal scrutiny, harassment, and prosecution which the United States subjected Black Americans of all political persuasions. File topics cover such subjects as organizations like the NAACP and the Black Panther Party, as well as individual Black activists and public figures including Malcolm X and Marcus Garvey.
History Vault: Slavery & the Law
Provides access to primary source, cross-searchable, full-text, full-image documents on widely studied topics in 19th and 20th-century American history. Content is applicable to research in history, African American studies, women's studies, political science, social sciences, sociology, and international studies. Contents include NAACP Papers' Southern Life and African American History, 1775-1915, Plantations Records from 1775-1915; Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century, and more.
Race Relations in America
Record of speeches, reports, surveys, and analyses produced by Fisk University's Race Relations Department from 1943-1970. Serves as a document of the civil rights fight during those crucial years, with focusing on desegregation, migration of African Americans from the rural South to urban centers, the role of the Church in the Civil Rights Movement, race riots and tensions, and the activities of the Civil Rights movement. Includes photographs, posters, scrapbooks, audio recordings of speeches, biographies, an interactive map, teacher's guide, and more. Allows for keyword and full text searches as well as thematic browsing.
Slavery, Abolition & Social Justice
This digital collection documents key aspects of the history of slavery worldwide over six centuries, with 16 key areas of focus: slavery in the early Americas; African coast; the Middle Passage; slavery and agriculture; urban and domestic slavery; slave testimony; spiritualism and religion in slave communities; resistance and revolts; the Underground Railroad; the abolition movement and the slavery debate; legislation and politics; freed slaves, freedmen and free black settlements; education; slavery and the Islamic world; varieties of slave experience; slavery today and the legacy of slavery. The collection also includes case studies from America, the Caribbean, Brazil, and Cuba.

Umbra Search
is a growing, searchable digital collection of over 400,000 sources related to African American history, from US cultural heritage institutions, museums, and archives. Umbra is developed by the Givens Collection of African American Literature at the University of Minnesota in partnership with the Penumbra Theatre Company.

Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000
Organized around the history of women in social movements in the U.S. between 1600 and 2000, this collection seeks to advance scholarly debates and understanding about U.S. women’s history generally and at the same time make those insights accessible to teachers and students at universities, colleges, and high schools. The collection currently includes 125 document projects and archives with more than 5,100 documents and 175,000 pages of additional full-text documents, written by 2,800 primary authors. It also includes book, film, and website reviews, notes from the archives, and teaching tools.

Historical Newspapers and Other Periodicals

Africa's Historical Newspapers
brings together collection of historical African newspapers. Includes newspapers published between 1800 and 1922 in Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. Titles include: East African Standard, Mombasa Times and Uganda Argus (Kenya), Leselinyana la Lesutho (Lesotho), O Africano (Mozambique), Lagos Standard (Nigeria), Cape Town Gazette and African Advertiser (South Africa), Ilanga Lase Natal (South Africa), and Buluwayo Chronicle (Zimbabwe
African American Historical Serials Collection
The African American Historical Serials Collection includes African American periodicals, annuals and reports published from 1829-1922 including materials from African American religious organizations and social service agencies.
African American Newspapers, 1827-1998
African American Newspapers, Series 1 and 2, 1827-1998, provides online access to more than 350 U.S. newspapers chronicling a century and a half of the African American experience. This unique collection, which includes historically significant papers from more than 35 states, features many rare 19th-century titles. Part of the America's Historical Newspapers collection, African American Newspapers was created from the most extensive African American newspaper archives in the world.
African American Periodicals, 1825-1995
African American periodicals, 1825-1995 enables users to search many periodicals by and about African Americans. The collection is based upon James P. Danky's African-American Newspapers and Periodicals: A National Bibliography (Harvard, 1998). Drawn from holdings of the Wisconsin Historical Society, African American Periodicals ranges over more than 150 years of American life, from slavery during the Antebellum Period to the modern era.
Ebony Magazine Archive
Ebony is one of the key Black magazines in the United States of the 20th century, covering 20th and 21st-Century current events, art, design, politics and culture, literature, advertising, and more. Their editorial philosophy is to "showcase the best and brightest as well as highlighting the disparities in Black life in the United States and worldwide". The Ebony Magazine Archive contains indexing, abstracting and full text for the complete archive (including Covers and Advertisements) beginning in November 1945 to June 2014.
Black Newspapers
allows users to search and access articles, images, and other content from six leading historical Black newspapers in the US:

Atlanta Daily World (1931-2003)
Baltimore Afro-American (1893-1988)
Chicago Defender (19019-1975)
Los Angeles Sentinel (1934-2005)
New York Amsterdam News (1922-1993)
Pittsburgh Courier (1911-2002)

AFRS 3998: Africana Studies Senior Seminar

Approaches to Finding Primary Sources

Primary Sources in Africana Studies: Digital Collections and Repositories

Historical Newspapers and Other Periodicals

Archives