Research Guides: African American History: Primary Sources

What are primary sources?

Primary vs. Secondary Sources (DVC Research Guide)

A Pocket Guide to Writing in History by Mary Lynn Rampolla A Pocket Guide to Writing in History is the concise, trusted, and easy-to-use guide for the writing and research skills needed in undergraduate history courses.
Call Number: DVC - Pleasant Hill Library - Stacks D13 .R295 2015

Select Primary Sources on the Open Web

African American History: Primary Documents Find documents which have contributed to the shaping of African American history. These documents are a starting point for additional research and discussions that help further our understanding of the history of people of African ancestry in the United States.
African American Perspectives: Pamphlets from the Daniel A. P. Murray Collection, 1818-1907 From the Library of Congress
Black Panther Party Sound Recording Project The Pacifica Radio Archives is proud to present a sample of the many recordings held in our vaults of key activists and organizers of the Black Panther Party. Founded in Oakland, CA in 1966 as the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, the organization fought back against racial profiling and police harassment and abuse in Black communities and stressed self-determination, self-empowerment and Black autonomy through its Ten-Point Program. This collection of audio recordings documents speeches, interviews, news coverage and documentaries by or about the Black Panther Party as broadcast on Pacifica Radio stations between 1966 and 1989 and includes the voices of many notable members of the Panthers, including Huey P. Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Seale, H. Rap Brown (Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin), Kathleen Cleaver and Elaine Brown. The Pacifica Radio Archives worked in conjunction with the University of California, Berkeley's Moffitt Library to preserve the recordings offered here.
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). At the conclusion of the Slave Narrative project, a set of edited transcripts was assembled and microfilmed in 1941 as the seventeen-volume Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves. In 2000-2001, with major support from the Citigroup Foundation, the Library digitized the narratives from the microfilm edition and scanned from the originals 500 photographs, including more than 200 that had never been microfilmed or made publicly available. This online collection is a joint presentation of the Manuscript and Prints and Photographs divisions of the Library of Congress.
Civil Rights Movement Veterans This website has been (and is still being) created by veterans of the Southern Freedom Movement (1951-1968). It's an online archive to preserve and make available original-materials, histories, narratives, remembrances, and commentaries related to that movement. It is where we tell it like it was, the way we lived it, the way we saw it, the way we still see it.
The Crisis Magazine, 1910 - The Crisis, founded by W.E.B. Du Bois as the official publication of the NAACP, is a journal of civil rights, history, politics, and culture and seeks to educate and challenge its readers about issues that continue to plague African Americans and other communities of color. For nearly 100 years, The Crisis has been the magazine of opinion and thought leaders, decision makers, peacemakers and justice seekers. It has chronicled, informed, educated, entertained and, in many instances, set the economic, political and social agenda for our nation and its multi-ethnic citizens.
The History Makers The nation's largest African American video oral history collection. By recording, preserving and sharing the life stories of thousands of African Americans, from President Barack Obama to the oldest living black cowboy, The HistoryMakers is a leader in helping to educate and enlighten millions worldwide through refashioning a more inclusive record of American history.
Ida B. Wells Papers 1884-1976 Ida B. Wells, (1862-1931) teacher, journalist and anti-lynching activist. Paper contain correspondence, manuscript of Crusade for Justice: the Autobiography of Ida B. Wells, diaries, copies of articles and speeches by Wells, articles and accounts about Wells, newspapers clippings, and photographs. Also contains Alfreda M. Duster’s (Wells’ daughter) working copies of the autobiography which Duster edited. Correspondents include Frederick Douglass and Albion Tourgee. Includes photocopies of correspondence of Wells’ husband Ferdinand Barnett and a scrapbook of newspapers articles written by him.
Malcolm X Project Illuminates new research about the life of El Hajj Malik el-Shabazz.
National Museum of African American History and Culture It provides an opportunity for those who are interested in African American culture to explore and revel in this history through interactive exhibitions It helps all Americans see how their stories, their histories, and their cultures are shaped and informed by global influences It explores what it means to be an American and share how American values like resiliency, optimism, and spirituality are reflected in African American history and culture It serves as a place of collaboration that reaches beyond Washington, D.C. to engage new audiences and to work with the myriad of museums and educational institutions that have explored and preserved this important history well before this museum was created.
Television News of the Civil Rights Era 1950-1970 Television News of the Civil Rights Era, 1950-1970, aims to collect, digitize, and present in streaming video format over the World Wide Web television news footage from the period and to make these valuable materials available to scholars, teachers, and students.
TransAtlantic Slave Trade Voyages Database The SlaveVoyages website is a collaborative digital initiative that compiles and makes publicly accessible records of the largest slave trades in history. Search these records to learn about the broad origins and forced relocations of more than 12 million African people who were sent across the Atlantic in slave ships, and hundreds of thousands more who were trafficked within the Americas. Explore where they were taken, the numerous rebellions that occurred, the horrific loss of life during the voyages, the identities and nationalities of the perpetrators, and much more.

SELECTED PRINT SOURCES IN THE DVC LIBRARY

The Classic Slave Narratives by Henry Louis Gates (Editor, Introduction by) Henry Louis Gates, Jr., presents a seminal volume of four classic slave narratives, including the 1749 texts of The Life of Olaudah Equiano.
Call Number: E444 .C63 2012
Booker T. Washington Papers
Call Number: E185.97 .W274 1989
Freedom on My Mind: The Columbia Documentary History of the African American Experience by Manning Marable (Editor); John McMillian (Editor); Nishani Frazier (Editor) Freedom on My Mind reveals the richly diverse and complex experience of black people in America in their own words, from the Colonial era of Benjamin Banneker to the present world of Kweisi Mfume and Clarence Thomas.
Call Number: E184.6 .F74 2003
The Black American : a documentary history
Call Number: E184.6 .F57 1976
From Timbuktu to Katrina: Readings in African-American History by Quintard Taylor SOURCES IN AFRICAN-AMERICAN HISTORY, a new primary and secondary source reader.
Call Number: E184.6 .T395 2008
Historic Speeches of African Americans by Warren J. Halliburton A fascinating collection of speeches by great African Americans, including James Forten, Sr., Sojourner Truth, Blanche Bruce, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Shirley Chisholm, Barbara Jordan, Jesse Jackson, and many more.
Call Number: E184.6 .H57 1993
Jim Crow America: A Documentary History by Catherine M. Lewis (Editor); J. Richard Lewis (Editor) Also available as an eBook. This is an ideal resource on racism and segregation in American life. This unique book provides readers with a wealth of primary source materials from 1828 to 1980 that reveal how the Jim Crow era affects how historians practice their craft.
Call Number: E185.61 .J527 2009

SELECTED ONLINE SOURCES FROM DVC'S COLLECTION

Voices of the African American Experience by Lionel C. Bascom (Ed) From early accounts of free blacks in the Colonies to slave narratives recorded by Works Progress Administration employees in the 1930s to a recent speech by Senator Barack Obama, this collection offers a treasure trove of carefully selected primary documents from and concerning African Americans.
Call Number: eBook 2009
The Will of a People: A Critical Anthology of Great African American Speeches - eBook by Richard W. Leeman & Bernard K. Duffy (Eds) Drawing upon nearly two hundred years of recorded African American oratory, "The Will of a People: A Critical Anthology of Great African American Speeches" brings together in one unique volume some of the most noteworthy speeches.
Call Number: eBook 2012