Introduction
This page provides access to selected primary source collections, organized by topic. Primary sources are original materials that document an era or event, created by someone who witnessed or lived through it. Examples include letters, diaries, photographs, manuscripts, magazines, and newspapers. More primary source collections are linked in the Southern Studies and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Guides above, and in the History Resource Guide linked to the left.
Primary Source Collections by Topic
- David Walker Lupton African American Cookbook CollectionOne of the largest collections of African American cookbooks in the country, with almost five hundred volumes covering the period from 1827, when the first book with recipes by an African American was published, through 2011, the collection allows users to explore various aspects of the relationship between food and African American history and culture.
- Black Studies Center This link opens in a new window
Black Studies Center supports research, teaching, and learning in Black Studies and other disciplines that benefit from a more detailed coverage of the black experience such as history, literature, political science, sociology, philosophy, and religion.
- Black Drama (Second Edition) This link opens in a new window
Black Drama contains the full text of plays written by more numerous playwrights from North America, English-speaking Africa, the Caribbean, and other African diaspora countries. Many of the works are rare, hard to find, or out of print.
- African American Periodicals, 1825-1995 This link opens in a new window
This database provides access to periodicals by and about African Americans. Representing 26 states, the publications offer a range of material, including academic and political journals, commercial magazines, institutional newsletters, organizations’ bulletins, annual reports and other genres.
- African American Historical Serials Collection This link opens in a new windowReports, annuals, magazines, and newspapers from African-American churches and social service agencies. Includes materials from the African Methodist Zion Church, African Methodist Episcopal Church, as well as many Baptist churches, seminaries, hospitals, charities, orphanages, schools, and advocacy groups.
- Digital HarlemDigital Harlem is an element of the project, Black Metropolis: Harlem, 1915-1930, which was supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant. Unlike most studies of Harlem in the early twentieth century, this project focuses not on black artists and the black middle class, but on the lives of ordinary African New Yorkers. It seeks to capture the range of activities, places, and relationships that made up everyday life, bringing into focus the multiple rhythms that shaped life in Harlem, the repetitive as well as the linear, the daily, weekly and seasonal variations as well as features that characterized the period as a whole.
- In Motion: The African-American Migration ExperienceImages, texts, and maps, compiled by New York Public Library.
- African American Women Writers of the 19th CenturyA collection of 52 printed works by 19th-century African American women from the Schomburg Collection at New York Public Library.
- Schomburg Center for Research in Black CultureThe Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem is one of the world’s leading cultural institutions devoted to the research, preservation, and exhibition of materials focused on African American, African Diaspora, and African experiences.
- Research Portal: Slavery, Abolition, and EmancipationThis guide is designed to give an overview of our holdings on the subject of the slavery debate and emancipation, with commentary to put various categories of resources into perspective. It offers a robust list of resources reflecting the history of and discourse surrounding domestic slavery in the United States, as well as advice on how to find more such items and collections.
- Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive (Gale Primary Sources) This link opens in a new window
Includes collections on the transatlantic slave trade, the global movement for the abolition of slavery, the legal, personal, and economic aspects of the slavery system, and the dynamics of emancipation in the U.S. as well as in Latin America, the Caribbean, and other regions.
- National Anti-Slavery Standard This link opens in a new window
Part of Accessible Archives, National Anti-Slavery Standard was the official weekly newspaper of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Part I covers 1840-1844, Part II covers 1845-1849, Part III covers 1850-1854, Part IV covers 1855-1859, Part V covers 1860-1864 and Part VI covers 1865-1870.
- The Avalon Project: Documents on SlaveryPrimary sources from Yale Law School's "Avalon Project" on law, history, economics, politics, diplomacy and government.
- Slave VoyagesA collaboration among dozens of scholars over decades of research, this digital memorial raises questions about the largest slave trades in history and offers access to the documentation available to answer them. European colonizers turned to Africa for enslaved laborers to build the cities and extract the resources of the Americas. They forced millions of mostly unnamed Africans across the Atlantic to the Americas, and from one part of the Americas to another. Analyze these slave trades and view interactive maps, timelines, and animations to see the dispersal in action.
- Civil War Era This link opens in a new windowThis database offers primary source materials covering the American Civil War and the sectional controversies leading up to the war, and, additionally, offers several key newspapers. It is especially rich in pamphlets that expressed radical, alternative opinions on the issues of the era.
- American Civil War: Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new window
The American Civil War: Letters and Diaries is a comprehensive collection of original source material, including diaries, letters, and memoirs, from various perspectives, including politicians, generals, slaves, landowners, seamen, and spies.
- Images of the American Civil War: Photographs, Posters and Ephemera This link opens in a new window
Presents imagery of nineteenth-century Americana social, military, and political perspectives, documenting camp and battle experiences of soldiers, hospitals and prisons experiences, civilian life in cities and towns, as well as the demeanor of the politicians. Graphical content such as envelopes, song sheets, recruiting posters, imprints, and cartoons included.
- Research Portal: From Jim Crow to Black PowerThis guide is designed to show what kinds of materials are available at Hoole Library on topics related to African American history during the Jim Crow era, which starts with the end of Reconstruction in 1877 and ends in the 1960s, with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1960, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. This scope was considered broadly, so the guide presents a mix of items which reflect daily life, act as an information source, or chronicle attitudes about race and related topics.
- African Americans and Jim Crow: Repression and Protest, 1883-1922 This link opens in a new window
Searchable printed works covering the pivotal post-Reconstruction period. The most significant works by and about African Americans from the beginning of Jim Crow to post-World War I. New perspectives on African American culture, rights, and daily life during a time of segregation and disenfranchisement.
- Civil Rights and Social Activism in Alabama: The Papers of John LeFlore, 1926-1976 and Records of the Non-Partisan Voters League, 1956-1987 (Gale Primary Resources) This link opens in a new window
John L. LeFlore was a key figure in the fight for black equality in Mobile, Alabama, southern Alabama, Mississippi, and along the Florida Gulf Coast. He was the first African American appointed to the Housing Board and elected to the state legislature since Reconstruction. His work dates back to 1961-1975.
- ProQuest History Vault This link opens in a new window
Primary source material pertaining to the civil rights movement and to U.S. foreign policy during the Vietnam War era. Includes federal records, letters, papers, photographs, scrapbooks, financial records, and diaries is organized in five subject categories.
- Sixties: Primary Documents and Personal Narratives This link opens in a new windowThis collection of primary resources documents the history, culture, and politics of the 1960s and early 1970's. Included are diaries, letters, autobiographies and other memoirs, written and oral histories, manifestos, government documents, memorabilia, and scholarly commentary.
- Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000 This link opens in a new window
Collection seeks to advance scholarly debates and understanding about U.S. women’s history generally and includes document projects and archives with full-text. Topics include: suffrage, anti-slavery, women's rights, temperance, women's clubs. Also includes book, film, and website reviews, notes from the archives, and teaching tools.
- A. S. Williams III Americana CollectionThe African-American experience in the South is well represented in the Collections from original art, to photography, to extensive holdings in the book and pamphlet collection. A special effort has been made to collect significant material on Tuskegee Institute, Booker T. Washington, and George Washington Carver.
- W. S. Hoole Special Collections LibraryLocated in Mary Harmon Bryant Hall, Hoole's collections include significant holdings related to African American history and culture, including one of the largest collections of African American cookbooks in the country.
Government Documents
- Historical Publications of the United States Commission on Civil RightsA partnership of the United States Government Printing Office, The United States Commission on Civil Rights and the Thurgood Marshall Law Library, find digital documents here, as well as recommended background reading on the Commission.
More on Primary Sources
- History Resource Guide: Find Primary SourcesA comprehensive guide to finding and using primary sources at the University of Alabama.