Black History: Chronological Topics
Features for Black History Month
We have added many new resources on these pages, and they are marked 
- NARA
Records pertaining to American Slavery and the International Slave Trade
- Walter B. Hill Jr. has completed his publication, "NARA Records pertaining to American Slavery and the International Slave Trade", just in time to make the information accessible to online researchers during February, Black History Month.
Online Resources:
- General Collection:
- Chronological Topics:
Slavery
NARA Resources
- Amistad
- NARA offers an insider look into a trial that changed legislative history. This site includes a lesson plan for teachers.
- NARA:
Records pertaining to American Slavery and the International Slave Trade
- This compilation of information on slavery and the international slave trade, found in the records of the National Archives and Records Administration, was compiled by Walter B. Hill Jr.
- Living with Hydra: The Documentation of Slavery and the Slave Trade in Federal Records
- This survey of federal records appeared in the Winter 2000 issue of Prologue.
- From Slave Women to Free Women: The National Archives and Black Women's History in the Civil War Era
- This article from NARA's publication, Prologue, was written by Noralee Frankel and appeared in the Summer 1997 edition.
- Slave Emancipation through the Prism of Archives Records
- This article, written by Joseph P. Reidy, appeared in the Summer 1997 Prologue, a NARA publication.
- African American Odyssey
- Part of the Library of Congress's American Memory pages, this site looks at slavery through paintings and original documents.
- Africans in America
- Based on a PBS series, this site covers 1450-1865, from the beginning of slave migration across the Atlantic to the abolition movement. Each section includes narratives, a resource bank of people, events, historical documents, interviews with historians, and a teacher's guide.
- Afro-Louisiana History and Genealogy, 1719-1820
- Database of information on 100,000 slaves brought to Louisiana during the 18th and 19th centuries.
- American Slave Narratives: An Online Anthology
- From 1936 to 1938, over 2,300 former slaves from across the American South, most born in the last years of the slave regime or during the Civil War, were interviewed by writers and journalists under the aegis of the Works Progress Administration.
- The Amistad Research Center
- This Tulane University Research Center contains over ten million items documenting African American history and race relations.
- The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record
- An excellent resource for images, this site includes maps of Africa, the New World, and slave trade routes along with photographs and paintings covering the Atlantic Crossing through Emancipation.
- Born in Slavery
- (Library of Congress)
This Library of Congress site presents digitized transcripts from interviews of former slaves. The interviews were conducted by the Federal Writers Project between 1936 and 1938.
- Dred Scott Digital Project
- (Washington University in St. Louis)
This site presents in digital format a remarkable collection of documents involving one of the most significant episodes in Antebellum U.S. history, the Dred Scott Case.
- Freedom's Journal
- The State Historical Society of Wisconsin has made available in digital format all 103 issues of the first African-American owned and operated newspaper published in the United States (1827-1829).
- Freedom Suits Case Files, 1814-1860
- From the Saint Louis Circuit Court, Office of the Circuit Clerk, these suits "were brought by or on behalf of persons of color held in slavery within the St. Louis area from 1814 to 1860." The records are now housed in the Circuit Court's Record Center.
- The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition
- Located at Yale University, the Gilder Lehrman Center is "dedicated to the investigation and dissemination of information concerning all aspects of the Atlantic slave system and its destruction."
- North American Slave Narratives
- Part of the University of North Carolina's "Documenting the American South" series, this site "documents the individual and collective story of the African American struggle for freedom and human rights in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries."
- Race and Place
- (University of Virginia)
This web site, on slavery, emancipation, Reconstruction, and the era of Jim Crow, is by the Virginia Center for Digital History at UVA in collaboration with the Woodson Institute for Afro-American and African Studies at UVA.
- Rhetoric of freedom: Lincoln, Emerson, Douglass
- (Atlantic Monthly)
Noting that the Atlantic was a "proponent of abolition and a mouthpiece for the rhetoric of freedom" since its beginning in 1857, the editors have now provided online complete texts of articles by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Frederick Douglas, to complement Garry Will's article on Lincoln, thereby providing the text of three of the most effective prose writers of their time, and of the abolition movement.
- Slavery Era Insurance Registry
- The California Department of Insurance has identified insurance companies that issued slavery-era policies on this web site. This links to the Insurance Department reports, insured slaves' names, and shareholders names.
- Slave Movement During the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
- This University of Wisconsin site provides access to raw data on slave trade topics.
- Slavery and Resistance
- (National Park Service)
This National Park Service site covers slavery, Frederick Douglass, the Underground Railroad and the Natchez Court Records Project.
- Slaves and the Courts, 1740-1860
- (Library of Congress)
This Library of Congress site contains over 100 pamphlets and books concerning legal issues relating to African-American slaves.
- Statutes of the United States concerning Slavery: Chronological
- From the Avalon Project at Yale Law School.
- Third Person, First Person: Slave Voices from the Special Collections Library
- This Duke University site is based on an exhibition at the Special Collections Library; many of the items have been made electronically accessible.
- Up from Slavery: An Autobiography of Booker T. Washington
- The founder of the Tuskegee Institute's autobiography is available online.
- Virginia Runaways
- This University of Virginia web site offers access to advertisements about runaway slaves.
- Abolition & Slavery
- (Library of Congress)
This Library of Congress site features Charles Sumner's 1863 speech, "The Barbarism of Slavery".
- African American Newspapers and Periodicals
- All 103 issues of Freedom's Journals, the first African American newspaper in the United States, have been digitized and made accessible by the Wisconsin Historical Society.
- Conflict of Abolition and Slavery
- (Library of Congress)
This site illustrates the conflict between abolition and slavery through the use of maps.
- Death or Liberty: Gabriel, Nat Turner, and John Brown
- (University of Virginia)
Companion web site to a UVA exhibit on the spirit of the Black revolt between the Revolution and the Civil War.
- The Emancipation Proclamation: An Act of Justice
- This NARA site features an article by John Hope Franklin. Celebrate the issuance of this landmark document in the Summer 1993 issue of Prologue Quarterly, vol. 25, no. 2.
- Fredrick Douglas Papers
- (Library of Congress)
This Library of Congress site on Frederick Douglass, black abolitionist and orator, offers a time line of Douglass' life, a Douglass family tree, and links to the online texts of all three of Douglass's autobiographies.
- Influence of Prominent Abolitionists
- (Library of Congress)
This site describes the influence of the abolitionist movement by describing the Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia (1833) and publications such as Fredrick Douglas's North Star.
NARA Resources
- Citations to Record Group 105, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands
- (National Archives and Records Administration)
This is a list of articles based on research into the records RG105.
- Freedman's Bank Records
- Reginald Washington, NARA Staff member spoke at the National Press Club on February 26th, 2001, for the announcement of the Mormon Church's Freedman's Bank Records CD-ROM. A copy of the CD-ROM is available at the Archives I Library or online at http://www.familysearch.org.
- Freedman's Bureau Records
- This article by NARA's Elaine C. Everly was published in the Summer 1997, volume 29, number 2 issue of Prologue.
- "The Freedman's Savings and Trust Company and African American Genealogical Research"
- This article, by NARA staff member Reginald Washington, appeared in the Summer 1997 issue of Prologue.
- Freedman's Bureau Preservation Project
- (Prologue Summer 2002)
Reginald Washington's article on the preservation of post-Civil War era records documenting the federal government's assistance to newly freed slaves by the National Archives and Records Administration.
- The Freedman's Savings and Trust Company -- Appendix
- Prologue is the quarterly journal of the National Archives and Records Administration.
- Marriage Registers of Freedman
- Elaine Everly, NARA Staff member, wrote this article on Freedman's marriage registers, an invaluable source of family history, for the Fall 1973 issue of Prologue Quarterly.
- Rost Home Colony, St. Charles Parish, Louisiana
- This article about the Freedmen's Bureau "home colonies" or agriculture collectives, appeared in the Fall 2001 issue of Prologue: Quarterly of the National Archives and Records Administration
- The Awakening of the Negro
- (The Atlantic Monthly)
This essay, written by Booker T. Washington, was originally published in the September 1896 issue of The Atlantic Monthly.
- Darkness and Light: The Interwar Years, 1865-1898
- (United States Army)
This chapter from the Army Historical Series features information on the reconstruction years.
- Freedman & Southern Society Project
- (University of Maryland)
Digital documents transcribed from slave narratives and interpretive essays make up this useful and informative site.
- Freedman's Bureau Online
- A collection of online records relating to the Freedman's Bureau. This web site has been awarded Ancestry.com's "Family History Favorite" designation.
- Freedmen's Bureau Preservation Act: Are These Reconstruction Era Records Being Protected?
- (House Subcommittee on Government Management, Information, and Technology)
This hearing includes the testimonies by NARA's African-American Genealogy Subject Area Specialist Reginald Washington and Dr. Michael J. Kurtz, Assistant Archivist of the United States for Records Services.
- Gaining Freedom: Worse than Bondage Itself
- (National Park Service)
This NPS site focuses on reconstruction along the Savannah River.
- Oliver Otis Howard: The Freedmen's Bureau
- (Bowdoin College)
This Bowdoin College web site features Oliver Otis Howard, Commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau and founder of Howard University in Washington D.C.
- Race and Place
- (University of Virginia)
This web site on slavery, emancipation, Reconstruction, and the era of Jim Crow, is by the Virginia Center for Digital History at UVA in collaboration with the Woodson Institute for Afro-American and African Studies at UVA.
- Reconstruction
- This article, entitled Reconstruction was written by Frederick Douglass and published in The Atlantic Monthly.
- Toward Racial Equality: Black America , 1857-1874
- (Harper's Weekly)
This site provides a Reconstruction time line, illustrating events occurring in this period.
NARA Resources
- Black Domestics During the Depression: Workers, Organizers and Social Commentators
- This article, written by Phyllis Palmer, focuses on black workers in domestic workplaces. It was published in the Summer 1997 issue of Prologue Quarterly.
- Desegregation of the Armed Services Subject Guide - Truman Library
- President Truman's secretary's files on the topic.
- The Blood Red Record: a review of the horrible lynching and burning of Negroes by civilized white men in the United States, as taken from the records
- (Library of Congress)
This full-text 27-page book, written by John Edward Bruce and published in 1901, has been mounted on the web as part of LC's "American Memory Project."
- Chicago: Destination for the Great Migration
- (Library of Congress)
This web site describes the plight of the Black migration to the Chicago area.
- Fatal Flood (Public Broadcasting Service)
- The Great Flood of 1927, and its devastation, were major causes of the Great Migration of Black Americans to the North.
- Great Migration Sources
- This UCLA site offers access to information on the Great Migration beginning with World War I.
- The Great Migration
- This web site, titled "Bronzeville, Engine of Progress" concentrates on the influx of black Americans to the Chicago area from 1900-1950. The site is interactive.
- The Great Migration: Sonny's New York
- This web site describes the migration of black Americans to the New York area and the resulting influence on cities of the north.
- Jump, Jim Crow or, What Difference did Emancipation Make?
- A glossary of terms used during the Reconstruction and Segregation Eras.
- North by South
- This web site, created by Kenyon College students under a NEH grant, describes the effects of northern migration on African-American culture. It focuses on the migration of Blacks from the Mississippi Delta to Chicago.
- Other Great Migrations: African-Americans in the West
- WestWeb provides a basic resource for studying the history of African Americans in the West.
- Records of Southern Plantations from Emancipation to the Great Migration
- This paper focuses on black American history from the Emancipation to the Great Migration.
NARA Resources
- African Americans and the American Labor Movement
- (National Archives and Records Administration)
This article was written by James Gilbert Cassedy and published in the Summer 1997 NARA publication of Prologue.
- An Archival Odyssey: The Search for Jackie Robinson
- (National Archives and Records Administration)
This article by John Vernon was published in the Summer 1997 NARA publication Prologue.
- Civil
Rights Electronic Records
- NARA's Center for Electronic Records Reference Report No. 19 describes electronic records held at the Center pertaining to civil rights.
- A Letter from Jackie Robinson: Civil Rights Advocate
- (National Archives and Records Administration)
On this site is a digital image of a letter from Jackie Robinson to President Eisenhower, May 13, 1958.
- Documenting the Struggle for Racial Equality in the Decade of the Sixties
- (National Archives and Records Administration)
This article by Geraldine N. Phillips was published in the Summer 1997 NARA publication of Prologue.
- From Sophie's Alley to the White House
- (National Archives and Records Administration)
This article by Nicholas Natanson was published in the Summer 1997 NARA publication of Prologue.
- LBJ Fights the White Backlash: The Racial Politics of the 1964 Presidential Campaign
- (National Archives and Records Administration)
This article was written by Jeremy D. Mayer and published in the Spring 2001 NARA publication of Prologue.
- Race Relations in the United States and American Cultural and Informational Programs in Ghana, 1957-1966
- (National Archives and Records Administration)
This article in the Winter 1999 issue of Prologue focuses on the significance of the independence of Ghana, and the reaction of the United States.
- African-American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship
- This Library of Congress exhibit "explores black America's quest for equality from the early national period through the 20th century."
- Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
- This site provides a range of exhibitions describing the history of the segregation era to the birth of the Civil Rights Movement.
- Civil Rights Oral History Bibliography and Transcripts
- The Civil Rights Documentation Project is sponsored by the Mississippi Humanities Council, the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Tougaloo College Archives, Mississippi Legislature, and USM's Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage.
- Martin Luther King Jr., Papers Projects at Stanford University
- (Stanford University)
This site features a searchable bibliography on Martin Luther King, links to Life magazine's archive of King photographs, and is in the process of placing King's papers online.
- National Civil Rights
- The National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee hosts a variety of exhibit topics focusing on events in the 1950s and 1960s. The Interactive Tour on the web site offers pertinent research information.
- The Negro is Your Brother
- (The Atlantic Monthly)
This letter by Martin Luther King, Jr. was originally written in longhand from his Birmingham jail cell. It was published in the August 1963 issue of The Atlantic Monthly.
- A Tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
- This article, devoted to the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., is presented by Long Island University. The web site also offers access to historical data about Dr. King and a bibliography of King's writings.
- U.S. Department of Justice Investigation of Recent Allegations Regarding the Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
- Published in June 2000, this site includes summaries of allegations, a description of the investigative process, and a summary of the facts related to the assassination.
- We Shall Overcome
- This web site describes historic places of the Civil Rights Movement maintained by the National Park Service
- The Thurgood Marshall Law Library
- The Thurgood Marshall Law Library is pleased to announce the release of 32 new documents to our Historical Publications of the United States Commission on Civil Rights digital collection. Highlights include the report of the first (1959) gathering of State Advisory Committees; studies on access to housing, justice and the effect of urban renewal programs on minority residents from the early 1960s; and a substantial number of State Advisory Committee reports on school integration (http://tinyurl.com/usccreducation) from the mid-1970s. All the documents are presented as fully-searchable PDFs.
- To see all the new additions as well as earlier digitized publications, visit us at http://www.law.umaryland.edu/marshall/usccr/
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