Research Guides: AAS 326: Topics in African American Culture & LIfe: Early African American Literature:

Newspapers and Periodicals

African American Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Complete text of the major African-American newspapers published in the United States during the 19th century.
ProQuest African American Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window
African-American Newspapers, 1827-1998 This link opens in a new window
Full-text collection of African American newspapers printed across the U.S. during the 19th and 20th centuries.
African American Periodicals, 1825-1995 This link opens in a new window
Online collection of academic and political journals, commercial magazines, institutional newsletters, organizations' bulletins, annual reports and other diverse periodicals.
American Pamphlets Series I 1820-1922: From the New York Historical Society This link opens in a new window
Digital edition of pamphlets from the collections of the New-York Historical Society. Includes more than 25,000 short works printed in every region of the United States between 1820 and 1922.
African American Periodicals, 1825-1995 This link opens in a new window
Online collection of academic and political journals, commercial magazines, institutional newsletters, organizations' bulletins, annual reports and other diverse periodicals.

Literature

African American Poetry Database This link opens in a new window
Contains nearly 3,000 poems by African-American poets of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Black Drama Third Edition This link opens in a new window
Full text of plays written by dramatists from Africa, the Caribbean, and North America, and detailed information about productions, theaters, production companies, and other ephemera related to the plays.

1850+

Personal Papers

Black Abolitionist Papers This link opens in a new window
Primary sources from African Americans actively involved in the movement to end slavery in the United States between 1830 and 1865.
Manuscript Women's Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new window
Collection of previously unpublished letters and diaries by women of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries documenting the details of their lives and illuminating the roles women played within their families, their communities, and the social and political movements of their times. The collection is drawn entirely from the extensive holdings of the American Antiquarian Society.
North American Women's Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new window
Full text database of women's personal writings.

SOUND RECORDINGS

Library of Congress Audio Recordings
Digitized recordings going back to the 19th century
African American Song
Documents the history of African American music in an online music listening service. Contains a diverse range of genres such as jazz, blues, gospel, ragtime, folk songs, and narratives, among others.

Images

ARTstor This link opens in a new window
Digital library of more than one million images in the areas of art, architecture, the humanities, and social sciences with a set of tools to view, present, and manage images for research and pedagogical purposes.

Legal materials

Hein Online Library This link opens in a new window
Contains several libraries containing government information including Congressional Documents, Attorney General Decisions, Presidential Documents, and others.

Finding Primary Sources in Books

Some primary sources are collected in books, which you can find the library catalog.

To find the papers of an individual, search for that person as an author, e.g. jackson, andrew

To find the records of an organization or government body, use the name of the organization as an author e.g. United States. Dept. of State

Include one of these words as a keyword or a subject:

sources
diaries
correspondence
[place name]—Description and travel
personal narrative

If you find something that looks useful, look at the detailed view of the catalog record and try to identify the "subject" assigned. For many topics in history, there's an official term used in all Anglo-American library catalogs, like:

Cuba--History--Revolution, 1959--Sources.
Argentina --History--Sources.
United States--Foreign relations--Cuba--Sources.
Coups d'état--Venezuela--History--Sources.

To find works published in a particular time and place, explore the search options. It is usually possible to limit your search by date, language, or location of publication.

For Context

African American Experience This link opens in a new window
Full-text digital resource exploring African American life and culture. Targeted and thematic search options are featured to find articles, documents, images, and more.
Oxford African American Studies Center This link opens in a new window
Access to the finest reference resources in African American studies. At its core, AASC includes the new Encyclopedia of African American History 1619-1895; the forthcoming companion set, the Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896 to the Present; the second edition of Black Women in America; and the much-anticipated African American National Biography. Also includes the highly acclaimed Africana, a 5 volume history of the African and African American experience. In addition to these major reference works, AASC offers other key resources from Oxford's reference series, including the Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature.