Historical Studies

A digital collection of books and articles documenting the individual and collective story of Black people struggling for freedom and human rights in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. Alphabetical list of North American Slave Narratives. From UNC-Chapel Hill.

Full text of both of Frederick Douglass' autobiographies, both of which are slave narratives. From Project Gutenberg.

Written by Harriet Anne Jacobs. From Project Gutenberg.

From Project Gutenberg.

Organized chronologically from 1745-1999. From the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

A collection of public domain slave narratives transcribed by the Federal Writer's Project and housed online by Project Gutenberg.

Over 2,300 oral histories of people born in slavery who were still alive in the 1930s. From the Library of Congress.

The Jean Blackwell Hutson Research & Reference Division contains primary source materials from the Americas, the Caribbean, and Sub-Saharan Africa. From NYPL's Digital Collections.

A resource guide for the study of Black history and culture, covering Colonization, Abolition, Migration, and the Federal Works Progress Administration. From the Library of Congress.

From the Digital Schomburg project of the New York Public Library.

Collection of 410 oral history interviews, taken in the 1990s, of the segregated American South from the 1890s to the 1950s. From Duke University Libraries' Digital Collections.

Two eBooks written by 19th century African American abolitionist, physician, newspaper editor, and explorer. From Project Gutenberg.

Vast collection of digital primary sources relating to the history of the U.S. South, including slavery, slave rebellions, and resistance. Includes materials relating to the history and culture of the African diaspora in the Caribbean and Central and South America as well.

A digital collection of texts, illustrations, and maps documenting the movement of Africans into North America and cultural impact. From the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library.

By former slave and influential 19th-century African American abolitionist David Walker, whose writings challenged the institution of slavery in America. From Project Gutenberg.

Records documenting movements to support African liberation movement in the United States. From Michigan State University.

Digital collection of African countries' constitutions. From the African Studies Centre at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

The organization's website contains primary sources, including its constitution and charter, and multiple reports.

An archived digital collection of oral and life histories, folklore, and songs from Ethiopia, Ghana, and South Africa. From Michigan State University.

Digital collection of African cultural heritage materials created by Michigan State University in collaboration with museums, archives, scholars, and communities around the world.

A contemporary English translation of the 16th century Berber-Andalusi ethnographer of Africa, al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Fasi, whose pen name in translation was Leo Africanus. His book describes not only North Africa (particularly Egypt) but the sub-Saharan empire of Songhai and its university city of Timbuktu. From the University of Michigan Library Digital Collections.

Multimedia digital collection of items related to the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. Physical items accessible at the Kigali Genocide Memorial.

Analysis and primary source documents, mainly from the U.S. Department of State and Department of Defense. From The National Security Archive.

Primary source materials related to the colonization of Liberia with U.S. freed slaves and free Blacks. From Internet Archive.

Documentation of South Africa's recovery from apartheid. Published in 2003.

eBook from the U.S. Department of State.

Photographs, periodicals, collections of personal papers, historical and literary manuscripts, primary sources from the war for Cuban Independence from Spain, maps, law and governance, refugee records, the Human Rights Oral History Project, StoryCorps Histories, etc. From the University of Miami Libraries.

Multi-country, multi-lingual repository of text, image, and audio-video content from institutes in and around the Caribbean. Includes news, archival and manuscript materials, maps, art, and ephemera. Topics range from the era of colonization and slavery to the present. Sources relating to Caribbean Judaica, Voudou, and LGBTQ issues are available.

Vast collection of digital primary sources relating to the history of the U.S. South, including slavery, slave rebellions, and resistance. Includes materials relating to the history and culture of the African diaspora in the Caribbean and Central and South America as well.

A digital collection of texts, illustrations, and maps documenting the movement of Africans into North America and cultural impact. From the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library.

Full-text travelogues (travel memoirs) from the 16th-19th centuries, written by travellers in Central and South America, the Caribbean, and Mexico, including Baja California. From the Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies at Brown University.

Historical photographs, prints, drawings, pamphlets, manuscripts, books, rare maps, and other unique materials on slavery, riots, and rebellions, as well as biographies and images.

Documentation of Afro-British history in the British National Archives.

Scanned images and documents, organized by geographic area. Directed by Jane Landers and hosted at Vanderbilt University. (Formerly, Ecclesiastical and Secular Sources for Slave Societies.)