Guides: Black History Month Resources Guide: Primary Sources

CPP Databases - Primary Sources

Primary Source Databases

The University Library subscribes to multiple databases that provide you with access to primary sources. Primary Sources are "material that contains firsthand accounts of events and that was created contemporaneous to those events or later recalled by an eyewitness" (Society of American Archivists).

Gale Primary Sources
Gale Primary Sources is an online collection of primary sources with access to books, newspapers, photographs, maps, and more. This resource includes access to: Archives Unbound, 19th Century U.S. Newspapers, Sabin Americana, History of the Americas (1500-1926), and The Times of London Digital Archive (1785-2014).
Archives Unbound
Content includes primary sources regarding African American studies; American Indian studies; Asian studies; British history; Holocaust studies; LGBT studies; Latin American and Caribbean studies; Middle East studies; political science; religious studies; and women’s studies.
Sabin Americana: History of the Americas, 1500-1926
An online collection of books, pamphlets, serials and other works about the Americas, from the time of their discovery to the early 1900s. Covering a span of 400 years in North, Central and South America, as well as the Caribbean, this fully searchable digital archive is an essential tool for the study of the western hemisphere. It provides primary source material critical to the understanding of the society, politics, religious beliefs, literature, customs and momentous events of the times.

Newspapers

19th Century U.S. Newspapers
Primary source newspaper content from 1800-1899, featuring full-text content and images from about 500 newspapers from a range of territories and urban and rural regions throughout the U.S. Includes topics such as the American Civil War, the Confederacy, African-American culture and history, Western migration, immigration, elections and Antebellum-era life. Funded by the History Department.

Directory of Black Newspapers
Directory of black newspapers and websites
BlackPressUSA
An organization of black community newspapers across the United States.
Chicago Defender
Now a weekly paper in Chicago, this newspaper was once the only daily Black publication in the country. CNN contributor Roland Martin used to be the publisher.
Los Angeles Sentinel
The Los Angeles Sentinel is an African-American owned newspaper and started publishing in 1933.

Library of Congress Digital Collections

African-American Band Music & Recordings, 1883 to 1923
The core of this presentation consists of "stock" arrangements for bands or small orchestras of popular songs written by African Americans. In addition, we offer a smaller selection of historic sound recordings illustrating these songs and many others by the same composers (the arrangements might not necessarily be the same as those on the stocks). Educational materials include short biographies of composers and performers of the time and historical essays.
African American Perspectives: Materials Selected from the Rare Book Collection
"African American Perspectives" gives a panoramic and eclectic review of African American history and culture and is primarily comprised of two collections in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division: the African American Pamphlet Collection and the Daniel A.P. Murray Collection with a date range of 1822 through 1909. Most were written by African-American authors, though some were written by others on topics of particular importance in African-American history. Among the authors represented are Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Benjamin W. Arnett, Alexander Crummel, Emanuel Love, Lydia Maria Child, Kelly Miller, Charles Sumner, Mary Church Terrell, and Booker T. Washington, among others.
African American Photographs Assembled for 1900 Paris Exposition
The Paris Exposition of 1900 (Exposition universelle internationale de 1900) devoted a building to matters of "social economy." The United States section of the building featured an exhibit that, according to W. E. B. Du Bois, attempted to show "(a) The history of the American Negro. (b) His present condition. (c) His education. (d) His literature." 1
Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 to 1938
Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project (FWP) of the Works Progress Administration, later renamed Work Projects Administration (WPA).
By Popular Demand: Jackie Robinson and Other Baseball Highlights, 1860s-1960s
Jackie Robinson was an extremely talented multi-sport athlete and a courageous man who played an active role in civil rights. This presentation was created to commemorate his achievements and describe some aspects of the color line's development and the Negro Leagues. Materials that tell his story, and the history of baseball in general, are located throughout the Library of Congress.
Frederick Douglass Newspapers, 1847 to 1874
This online collection presents newspapers edited by Frederick Douglass (1818-1895), the African American abolitionist who escaped slavery and became one of the most famous orators, authors, and journalists of the 19th century.
Frederick Douglass Papers at the Library of Congress
The Frederick Douglass Papers at the Library of Congress presents the papers of the nineteenth-century African American abolitionist who escaped from slavery and then risked his freedom by becoming an outspoken antislavery lecturer, writer, and publisher. The online collection, containing approximately 7,400 items (38,000 images), spans the years 1841-1964, with the bulk of the material dating from 1862 to 1865. Many of Douglass’s earlier writings were destroyed when his house in Rochester, New York, burned in 1872.
Gladstone Collection of African American Photographs
The William A. Gladstone Collection of African American Photographs provides almost 350 images showing African Americans and related military and social history. The Civil War era is the primary time period covered, with scattered examples through 1945. Most of the images are photographs, including 270 cartes de visite.
Rosa Parks Papers
The papers of Rosa Parks (1913-2005) span the years 1866-2006, with the bulk of the material dating from 1955 to 2000. The collection, which contains approximately 7,500 items in the Manuscript Division, as well as 2,500 photographs in the Prints and Photographs Division, documents many aspects of Parks's private life and public activism on behalf of civil rights for African Americans.
William A. Gladstone Afro-American Military Collection
he William A. Gladstone Afro-American Military Collection (ca. 500 items) spans the years 1773 to 1987, with the bulk of the material dating from the Civil War period, 1861-1865. The collection consists of correspondence, pay vouchers, orders, muster rolls, enlistment and discharge papers, receipts, contracts, affidavits, tax records, miscellaneous military documents, and printed matter. Most items document African Americans in military service, especially the United States Corps d'Afrique and the United States Colored Troops, which were organized during the Civil War. Also included are many documents concerning slavery and various other Civil War documents that mention African Americans. The Revolutionary War items are primarily pay vouchers to Connecticut blacks who served in the Continental Army. World War I is represented by the papers of Lieutenant Edward L. Goodlett of the 370th Infantry, 93rd Division. Printed matter includes nineteenth-century speeches and writings on slavery, government orders, broadsides, and twentieth-century booklets and journal articles for scholars or collectors
Zora Neale Hurston Plays at the Library of Congress
This collection present ten plays written by Hurston (1891-1960), author, anthropologist, and folklorist. Deposited as unpublished typescripts in the United States Copyright Office between 1925 and 1944, most of the plays remained unpublished and unproduced until a manuscript curator rediscovered them in the Copyright Deposit Drama Collection in 1997. The plays reflect Hurston's life experience, travels, and research, especially her knowledge of folklore in the African-American South. Totaling 1,068 images, most of the scripts are housed in the Library's Manuscript Division with one each in the Music and in the Rare Book and Special Collections Divisions. There are four sketches and six full length plays in this group. Previously known mainly for her fiction and autobiography, Hurston here reveals her high ambitions as a dramatist.