ProQuest presents primary source documents from several of the time periods in American History when the river of the Black Freedom Struggle ran more powerfully, while not losing sight of the fierce, often violent opposition that Black people have faced on the road to freedom. The documents presented here represent a selection of primary sources available in several ProQuest databases. The databases represented in this website include American Periodicals, Black Abolitionist Papers, ProQuest History Vault, ProQuest Congressional, Supreme Court Insight and Alexander Streets Black Thought and Culture.
The experience and impact of African Americans as recorded by the news media, from 1704 to 1975
Presents images, texts and maps that explore "thirteen defining migrations that formed and transformed African America" from 1450 to the present.
A digital collection of 52 published works by 19th-century black women writers. A part of the Digital Schomburg, this collection provides access to the thought, perspectives and creative abilities of black women as captured in books and pamphlets published prior to 1920.
Material for the study of African American history and culture. Examines colonization, abolition, migration and the WPA (Works Progress Administration).
Examines "America's journey through slavery" with historical documents. Primary source material is linked under "Resource Bank" in each of the four parts.
An image collection, with most dating from the period of slavery, that depicts the experiences of Africans who were enslaved and transported to the Americas and the lives of their descendants in the slave societies of the New World.
A selection of 100 oral history interviews, with transcripts, chronicling African American life during the age of legal segregation in the American South, from the 1890s to the 1950s. Interviews are browsable by state, interviewee name, gender and occupation.
Primary sources focused on "six different phases of Black Freedom." Slavery and the Abolitionist Movement (1790-1860); The Civil War and the Reconstruction Era (1861-1877); Jim Crow Era from 1878 to the Great Depression (1878-1932); The New Deal and World War II (1933-1945); The Civil Rights and Black Power Movements (1946-1975); and The Contemporary Era (1976-2000).
Thirteen volumes (plus an index) of Washington's papers. Volume 1 contains the autobiographical works.
Includes documents and photographs detailing the events surrounding the historic case of Brown v. Board of Education.
Primary documents that tell the story of ethnic groups along the Columbia River Basin (encompassing areas of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Wyoming, Utah and and British Columbia).
Includes images, texts, and sound/video clips.
A large selection of items that document Freedom Summer, a nonviolent effort by civil rights activists to integrate Mississippi's segregated political system during 1964.
Primarily a collection of advertisements, published in Virginia during the 18th- and 19th century, for runaway and captured slaves and servants. Additional related material included.
Online document collection with over 200 individual items, including speeches, letters, cartoons and graphics, interviews, and articles.
This collection from the Library of Congress includes oral histories, maps, photographs, newspapers, and newsreels pertaining to the migration of African Americans from rural to urban centers and from southeastern states to the north and west from the 1910s to 1970.
Provides a list of historical African American Newspapers available online as part of digitization projects at libraries and historical societies as well as digitization projects done by Google. Browse by title, time period, or geographic area.
Presents official records of the Commission from 1957 to the present.
Presents scanned images of letters, court documents and other pieces related to the 1962 integration of the University of Mississippi.
Compilation of documents, sound recordings, and visual images. Includes filmed interview of Stokely Carmichael in Montgomery; 450 photographs created by the Subversive Unit of the Investigative and Identification Division of the Alabama Department of Public Safety in the course of sit-ins, demonstrations, and marches in several Alabama cities during the early to mid-1960s; and surveillance tapes preserving speeches made at an anniversary of the Montgomery Improvements Association in 1963.
Volumes on the life and work of Marcus Garvey throughout the history of his Pan Africanist movement.
The King Institute presents primary and secondary source material from and about MLK. Includes speeches, sermons and photographs. Also has the full audio recording of the "I Have a Dream" speech.
"Books and articles that document the individual and collective story of African Americans struggling for freedom and human rights in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. This collection includes all the existing autobiographical narratives of fugitive and former slaves published as broadsides, pamphlets, or books in English up to 1920."
This collection documents many aspects of Parks's private life and public activism on behalf of civil rights for African Americans.
A digital collection of books and pamphlets that demonstrate the varying ideas and beliefs about slavery in the United States as expressed by Americans throughout the nineteenth century.
More than 100 pamphlets and books (1772-1889) from the Library of Congress on the experiences of African and African-American slaves in the colonies and the US: an assortment of trials and cases, reports, arguments, accounts, etc.
Includes text of the novel; responses to the novel by the press, African Americans and slavery proponents; and topically-related texts that predate publication of the novel.
Interviews of 23 individuals born into slavery between 1823 and the early 1960s, recorded between 1932 and 1975. Includes transcripts and streaming audio of the recordings.
The Tom & Ethel Bradley Center's archives contain more than one million images by Los Angeles-based freelance and independent photographers from the 1930s to the present. The core of the Center’s archive is a large collection of photographs by African-American photographers, including pioneer Los Angeles-based photographers like Harry Adams, Vera Jackson, Jack Davis, Charles Williams, and Bob Douglas, plus photographers of the next generation like Maxie Floyd, Guy Crowder, Roland Charles, Calvin Hicks, James Jeffrey, and Donald Bernard. In addition, the Center’s photographic repository includes the work of several photojournalists, such as Julián Cardona and Richard Cross, who did original work outside the Los Angeles area but whose photographs document the history of the border and Mexican and Central American people who migrated to the United States to escape violence, many of whom settled in Los Angeles. The collections also include the work of photographers John Kouns and Emmon Clarke, who documented the farmworker movement of the 1960s in California and the Southwest. In addition, John Kouns photographed the Freedom and Peace Movements in the South, San Francisco, and Berkeley.
The extensiveness of the Center’s collection and its illumination of significant regional, national, and international themes—including racial segregation and discrimination, African-American and Latino cultural contributions, the Civil Rights movement, unionization, and U.S. relations with its neighbors—have made it an essential and increasingly accessed local, regional, national, and international resource. The African American section of the collection contains rich documentation of the Civil Rights Movement and its leaders, as well as local churches, politicians, musicians, singers, entertainers, athletes, and social organizations. Coverage of Dr. King is very well represented in the collection as are other such luminaries as Mayors Tom Bradley and Sam Yorty, Rev. H. H. Brookins of 1st AME, Thurgood Marshall, Malcolm X, Earl Warren, Louis Armstrong, Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Muhammad Ali, Errol Garner, Dinah Washington, James Baldwin, Roy Wilkins, Nat King Cole, Joe Campanella, numerous jazz greats, and many, many others of national repute. The coverage of political campaigns and voter registration efforts is extensive. Included are thousands of images of daily life and public occasions such as Civil Rights marches and protests, celebrations, and parades. There is significant coverage of churches and church events in Los Angeles that is broad and unmatched in any other collections in the region.
Oral histories, manuscripts, and other ephemeral materials support the photographic collections. Additionally, the archives contain more than one hundred oral histories of African American photographers, Civil Rights leaders and organizers, individuals involved with the history of Los Angeles, Journalism, the group Mexicans in Exile in El Paso, Casa Amiga in Ciudad Juárez, and the United Farm Workers (UFW). Audio and video comprise the collection along with the personal papers of many individuals and organizations. Other collections include the archives of journalist Michael Emery and the collection of the San Fernando Valley newspaper, Sri Lankan Express, and the photographic collection of its founders, Hassina and Deeptha Leelarathna. Additionally, the Bradley Center's Border Studies Collection examines the issues surrounding the border between the United States and Mexico.
Report ADA Problems with Library Services and Resources. Resources on this page may require Document Viewers
