LibGuides: Black Studies Guide: Find Journal Articles (& other databases)

Multi-disciplinary Databases that include Black Studies-related Materials

Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
Comprehensive scholarly, multi-disciplinary full-text database, with more than 8,500 full-text periodicals, including more than 7,300 peer-reviewed journals.
Off Campus Access: Authenticate with your MyDenison login.

Subject Areas: All Subjects

Academic Search Complete is a comprehensive scholarly, multi-disciplinary full-text database, with more than 8,500 full-text periodicals, including more than 7,300 peer-reviewed journals. In addition to full text, this database offers indexing and abstracts for more than 12,500 journals and a total of more than 13,200 publications including monographs, reports, conference proceedings, etc. This scholarly collection offers unmatched full text coverage of information in many areas of academic study including: animal science, anthropology, area studies, astronomy, biology, chemistry, civil engineering, electrical engineering, ethnic & multicultural studies, food science & technology, general science, geography, geology, law, materials science, mathematics, mechanical engineering, music, pharmaceutical sciences, physics, psychology, religion & theology, veterinary science, women's studies, zoology, and many other fields.

Format: Full Text, Index and Abstracts
Dates of Coverage: 1887 - Present
Update Schedule: Daily
Database Producer: EBSCO
Dissertations and Theses (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
Contains almost 2.5 million entries for doctoral dissertations and master's theses.
Off Campus Access: Authenticate with your MyDenison login.

Subject Areas: General

Dissertations and Theses (ProQuest) contains almost 2.5 million entries for doctoral dissertations and master's theses. The database includes citations and full text of materials ranging from the first U.S. dissertation, accepted in 1861, to those accepted as recently as last semester. Since 1997, new publications have been available electronically, and many publications can be ordered through the system for a fee. The database represents the work of authors from over 1,000 North American graduate schools and European universities.

Format: Index and full text to Dissertations
Dates of Coverage: 1861-
Update Schedule: Daily.
Database Producer: ProQuest.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Digital library containing over 10 million academic, full text online resources.
Off Campus Access: Authenticate with your MyDenison login.

The JSTOR Archive is a digital collection of eBooks and academic journals, which extend back to the first volume published. This digital library is particularly strong in the humanities, but covers all subject areas. The database itself supports data and text mining as well. For additional information, visit the JSTOR Research Guides.
Please note, Artstor is now a part of JSTOR. Looking for ways to use Artstor in JSTOR? Visit Artstor on JSTOR Guides.

Format: Full Text
Dates of Coverage: Vary by title
Update Schedule: Annual
Database Distributor: JSTOR
Periodicals Archive Online (PAO) This link opens in a new window
Archive of hundreds of digitized journals published in the arts, humanities and social sciences.
Off Campus Access: Authenticate with your MyDenison login.

Subject Areas: General, Fine Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences

Periodicals Archive Online is an archive of hundreds of digitized journals published in the arts, humanities and social sciences. It provides researchers with access to more than 200 years of scholarship, spread across a wide variety of subject areas, direct from their computer.

Format: Full Text Journals
Database Producer: ProQuest / Chadwyck-Healey.
Project Muse This link opens in a new window
Digital humanities and social sciences books and journals, from university presses and scholarly societies.
Off Campus Access: Authenticate with your MyDenison login.

Subject Areas: General

Project MUSE is an online archive of digital humanities and social sciences content; since 1995, its electronic journal collections have supported a wide array of research needs at academic, public, special, and school libraries worldwide. Project MUSE contains Open Access (OA) content. To see the title list of OA books and journals, click here.

Format: Full Text Journals and eBooks
Database Producer: Johns Hopkins University Press
Please Note: Project MUSE provides access to alumni as well as current members of the Denison community.

SocArXiv
Open access to preprints in the Social Sciences.

Databases of Archival/Primary Source Materials

American Slavery Collection, 1820-1922 This link opens in a new window
This digital edition of the American Antiquarian Society’s holdings of US slavery and abolition materials contains more than 3,600 print works.
Off Campus Access: Authenticate with your MyDenison login.

Subject Areas: History, Black Studies, Sociology/Anthropology

Winner of the 2017 Outstanding Academic Title Award from the Association of College & Research Libraries' Choice magazine! This digital edition of the American Antiquarian Society’s extraordinary holdings of slavery and abolition materials delivers more than 3,600 works published over the course of more than 100 years.

Format: Full Text
Dates of Coverage: 1820-1922
Database Distributor: Readex
Collection: Part of "America's Historical Imprints"
Black economic empowerment: the National Negro Business League This link opens in a new window
Includes 15,779 images from the archives of the National Negro Business League, 1901-1928.
Off Campus Access: Authenticate with your MyDenison login.

Subject Areas: Black Studies, Sociology & Anthropology, U.S. History

Booker T. Washington, founder of the National Negro Business League, believed that solutions to the problem of racial discrimination were primarily economic, and that bringing African Americans into the middle class was the key. In 1900, he established the League "to promote the commercial and financial development of the Negro," and headed it until his death.

This collection from the Library of Congress contains 15,779 images of the papers of the League from 1901-1928.

Format: Full Text
Dates of Coverage: 1901 - 1928
Update Schedule: Completed Archive
Database Distributor: Gale / Cengage
Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century: History Vault This link opens in a new window
Includes organizational records, personal papers and Federal government records.
Off Campus Access: Authenticate with your MyDenison login.

Subject Areas: History, Black Studies

Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century, part of the History Vault database, contains primary source material from federal agencies, letters, papers, photographs, scrapbooks, financial records, and diaries are among the unique resources available in digital format for the first time.

Collections within this database (Civil Rights and the Black Freedom Struggle) include:
- Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century: Federal Government Records
- Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century: Federal Government Records, Supplement
- Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century: Organizational Records and Personal Papers, Part 1
- Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century: Organizational Records and Personal Papers, Part 2

Format: Full Text
Dates of Coverage: 20th century
Database Producer: Gale
Black Liberation Army and the Program of Armed Struggle This link opens in a new window
Online archive with 8,452 images from The FBI Library about The Black Liberation Army (BLA), an underground, black nationalist-Marxist militant organization that operated from 1970 to 1981.
Off Campus Access: Authenticate with your MyDenison login.

Subject Areas: Black Studies, Sociology & Anthropology, U.S. History

The database contains 8,452 images from The FBI Library about The Black Liberation Army (BLA).

The Black Liberation Army (BLA) was an underground, black nationalist-Marxist militant organization that operated from 1970 to 1981. Composed largely of former members of the Black Panther Party (BPP), the organizations program was one of "armed struggle" and its stated goal was to "take up arms for the liberation and self-determination of black people in the United States." The BLA carried out a series of bombings, robberies (what participants termed "expropriations"), and prison breaks.

Format: Full Text
Dates of coverage: 1970-1983
Database producer: Gale
Black Nationalism and the Revolutionary Action Movement This link opens in a new window
This collection of records reproduces the writings and statements of the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) and its leaders.
Off Campus Access: Authenticate with your MyDenison login.

Subject Areas: Black Studies, Sociology & Anthropology, U.S. History

This collection of records reproduces the writings and statements of the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) and its leaders. It also covers organizations that evolved from or were influenced by RAM and persons that had close ties to RAM. The most prominent organization that evolved from RAM was the African Peoples Party.

Organizations influenced by RAM include the Black Panther Party, League of Revolutionary Black Workers, Youth Organization for Black Unity, African Liberation Support Committee, and the Republic of New Africa.

Individuals associated with RAM and documented in this collection include Robert F. Williams, Malcolm X, Amiri Baraka, General Gordon Baker Jr., Yuri Kochiyama, Donald Freeman, James and Grace Lee Boggs, Herman Ferguson, Askia Muhammad Toure (Rolland Snellings), and Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael).

Format: Full Text
Dates of coverage: 1962-1999
Update Schedule: Completed Archive
Database Distributor: Gale / Cengage
Federal surveillance of African Americans, 1920-1984 This link opens in a new window
Contains US Justice Department and FBI reports on members of various protest groups who were deemed politically suspect.
Off Campus Access: Authenticate with your MyDenison login.

Subject Areas: History, Political Science

Between the early 1920s and early 1980s, the Justice Department and its Federal Bureau of Investigation engaged in widespread investigation of those deemed politically suspect. Prominent among the targets of this sometimes coordinated, sometimes independent surveillance were aliens, members of various protest groups, Socialists, Communists, pacifists, militant labor unionists, ethnic or racial nationalists, and outspoken opponents of the policies of the incumbent presidents.

Black Americans of all political persuasions were subject to federal scrutiny, harassment, and prosecution. The FBI enlisted black "confidential special informants" to infiltrate a variety of organizations. Hundreds of documents in this collection were originated by such operatives. The reports in this collection provide a wealth of detail on "Negro" radicals and their organizations that can be found nowhere else.

Includes 88,021 images from the Federal Bureau of Investigation Library.

Format: Full Text
Date range: 1920-1984
Database Producer: Archives Unbound, Gale.
James Meredith, J. Edgar Hoover, and the integration of the University of Mississippi This link opens in a new window
FBI documentation on African American James Merediths battle to enroll at The University of Mississippi.
Off Campus Access: Authenticate with your MyDenison login.

Subject Areas: History, Political Science, Black Studies

This collection contains extensive FBI documentation on African American James Merediths battle to enroll at The University of Mississippi in 1962 and white political and social backlash, including his correspondence with the NAACP and positive and negative letters he received from around the world during his ordeal.

Includes 8,792 images from the Federal Bureau of Investigation Library.

Format: Full Text
Date range: 1961-1962
Database Producer: Archives Unbound, Gale.
Liberation movement in Africa and African America This link opens in a new window
Contains FBI files on the activities of the African Liberation Support Committee and All African People's Revolutionary Party.
Off Campus Access: Authenticate with your MyDenison login.

Subject Areas: History, Political Science, International Studies, Black Studies

Composed of FBI surveillance files on the activities of the African Liberation Support Committee and All African People's Revolutionary Party; this collection provides two unique views on African American support for liberation struggles in Africa, the issue of Pan-Africanism, and the role of African independence movements as political leverage for domestic Black struggles.

Includes 11,513 images reproduced from the originals from the Federal Bureau of Investigation HQ Library.

Format: Archival Resources
Dates of Coverage: 1970-1985
Database Producer: Gale Publishing
NAACP papers: History Vault This link opens in a new window
From the archives of the NAACP, this collection reveals a wealth of information on virtually every aspect of American race relations.
Off Campus Access: Authenticate with your MyDenison login.

Subject Areas: History, Black Studies

Part of History Vault, the NAACP Papers contains nearly 2 million pages of memos, legal briefings and summaries. This collection charts the NAACP's work and delivers a first-hand view into crucial civil rights issues.

Format: Full Text
Dates of Coverage: 20th century
Database Producer: ProQuest
Sixties: primary documents and personal narratives 1960-1974 This link opens in a new window
Diaries, letters, autobiographies, memoirs, written & oral histories, manifestos, government documents, memorabilia, & scholarly commentary.
Off Campus Access: Authenticate with your MyDenison login.

Subject Areas: US History; Sociology and Anthropology.

The Sixties brings the 1960s alive through diaries, letters, autobiographies and other memoirs, written and oral histories, manifestos, government documents, memorabilia, and scholarly commentary.

The database covers subjects in arts, music, and leisure, civil rights, counter-culture, law and government, mass media, new left and emerging neo-conservative movement, student activism, Vietnam War, women's movement, etc.

Format: Full Text, Archival Resources
Coverage: 1960-1969
Update Schedule: Completed Archive
Database Producer: Alexander Street Press
Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice, 1490-2007 This link opens in a new window
Full text collection documents key aspects of the history of slavery worldwide over six centuries.
Off Campus Access: Authenticate with your MyDenison login.

Subject Areas: History, U.S. History, Black Studies

Slavery, Abolition & Social Justice, 1490-2007 documents key aspects of the history of slavery worldwide over six centuries. Topics covered include the African Coast, the Middle Passage, the varieties of slave experience, religion, revolts, abolition, and legislation. The collection also includes case studies from America, the Caribbean, Brazil, and Cuba.

Format: Archival Materials
Dates of Coverage: 1490-2007
Database Producer: AM (Adam Matthew Digital)
We were prepared for the possibility of death: Freedom Riders in the South, 1961 This link opens in a new window
Full text documents from the FBI concerning the Freedom Riders' activities in the southern US during the early 1960's.
Off Campus Access: Authenticate with your MyDenison login.

Subject Areas: Political Science, U.S. History

Freedom Riders were civil rights activists that rode interstate buses into the segregated South to test the United States Supreme Court decision in Boynton v. Virginia. This decision had outlawed racial segregation in the restaurants and waiting rooms in terminals serving buses that crossed state lines. Riders were arrested for trespassing, unlawful assembly, and violating state and local Jim Crow laws, along with other alleged offenses.

The database contains 4,285 images from the Federal Bureau of Investigation Library from 1961.

Format: Full Text and Images
Dates of Coverage: 1961
Database Provider: Gale

Arts-related (Poetry, Theater)

African American Poetry 1760-1900 (via American & English Literature) This link opens in a new window
Full text poems and prose by African-American poets.
Off Campus Access: Authenticate with your last name and all the numbers on the back of your ID (or your D Number, with the D.)

Subject Areas: Black Studies, English

African-American Poetry 1760-1900, a collection within American and English Literature, includes the full text of almost 3000 poems written by African-American poets in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. African-American Poetry is a resource for literary scholars and for researchers in black studies, linguistics, women's studies, black literary heritage, and comparative studies.

The poetry explores a multitude of topics, including abolition, children, civil rights, dreams, education, fugitive slave law, Indian raids, liberty, political issues, prejudice, and slavery. The variety of poem types is equally broad. The database includes allegories, broadsides, children's poems, elegiac poems, epics, hymns, odes, patriotic poems, and sonnets.

The poets are among those included in the William French et al. bibliography, Afro-American Poetry and Drama, 1760-1975. The full-text of the poems is included and is fully searchable.

Format: Full Text Books
Dates of Coverage: 1760-1900
Database Producer: BiblioLabs, provided by OhioLINK
Black Drama, Second Edition This link opens in a new window
Full text of 1,310 plays, by more than 200 playwrights from North America, Africa, and the Caribbean, mid-1800s to the present.
Off Campus Access: Authenticate with your MyDenison login.

Subject Areas: Black Studies; Literature; Sociology and Anthropology; Theatre.

Black Drama Second Edition contains the full text of 1,310 plays written from the mid-1800s to the present by more than 200 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. Once complete, more than a quarter of the collection will consists of previously unpublished plays by writers such as Langston Hughes, Ed Bullins, Willis Richardson, Alice Childress, Amiri Baraka, Randolph Edmonds, Zora Neale Hurston, and many others.

The database covers key writings of the Harlem Renaissance, works performed for the Federal Theatre Project, and plays by critically acclaimed dramatists of the 1940s.

The collection includes musical comedies, domestic dramas, folk dramas, history plays, anti-slavery plays, one-act plays, and other works. The plays explore themes including civil rights, desegregation, and a wide range of ideologies - integrationist and separatist, revolutionary and nationalist.

Format: Full Text; Archival Resources
Coverage: 1850's to present
Update Schedule: Ongoing
Database Producer: Alexander Street Press
Twentieth Century African-American Poetry (via American and English Literature) This link opens in a new window
Works by over 100 poets, including established and emerging poets. Biographical profiles accompany each poet's work, 1900-2000.
Off Campus Access: Authenticate with your Denison ID (back of your Denison card)

Subject Areas: English, Black Studies

20th Century African-American Poetry, a collection within American and English Poetry, contains works by more than 100 poets, including Audre Lorde, Langston Hughes, Rita Dove, and emerging poets. Biographical profiles accompany each poet's work.

Format: Full Text Books
Dates of Coverage: 1900-2000
Database Producer: ProQuest / Chadwyck-Healey

Other Databases

African American Periodicals, 1825-1995 This link opens in a new window
Features more than 170 wide-ranging periodicals by and about African Americans, published between 1825 and 1995.
Off Campus Access: Authenticate with your MyDenison login.

Subject Areas: U.S. History, Black studies

African American periodicals, 1825-1995, features more than 170 wide-ranging periodicals by and about African Americans.

Format: Full Text
Dates of Coverage: 1825-1995
Database Producer: Readex
America: History & Life This link opens in a new window
Bibliography of the history and culture of America from prehistory to present.
Off Campus Access: Authenticate with your MyDenison login.

Subject Areas: U.S. History

America: History & Life (AHL) is a comprehensive bibliography of articles on the history and culture of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present.

AHL offers abstracts and citations for articles appearing in over 2,000 journals published worldwide in history, related humanities, and the social sciences. Coverage also includes citations to book reviews from approximately 100 major journals of American history and culture and relevant dissertations from Dissertation Abstracts International.

Subject keywords: History. Interdisciplinary Studies. Popular Culture. Multicultural Studies. American Studies. Women's Studies/Gender Studies. Anthropology. Literature/Folklore. Sociology. Genealogy. History of Science, Economics, Business, Education, Music, Art, and Law.

Format: Index to Journal Articles
Dates of Coverage: 1964 - Present
Update Schedule: Quarterly
Database Producer: EBSCO
Black Thought and Culture This link opens in a new window
Contains over 1000 sources and authors, covering the non-fiction published works of leading African Americans.
Off Campus Access: Authenticate with your MyDenison login.

Subject Areas: Black Studies, Sociology & Anthropology, U.S. History

Black Thought and Culture contains over 1000 sources and authors, covering the non-fiction published works of leading African Americans.

Particular care has been taken to index this material so that it can be searched more thoroughly than ever before. Where possible the complete published non-fiction works are included, as well as interviews, journal articles, speeches, essays, pamphlets, letters and other fugitive material.

Format: Full Text Books, Archival Resources
Dates of Coverage: Varies
Update Schedule: Completed Archive
Database Producer: University of Chicago and Alexander Street Press.

Index to Black Periodicals, 1984- (Z 1361 .N39 I5)
Can be found in the Library Annex Floor 1A
Index to Periodical Articles By and About Blacks, 1960-1983 (E185.5 .I541)

Scholarly vs. Popular Articles

Has your professor said that you have to use a certain number of scholarly articles for a paper, but you're not sure if a given article is scholarly or not? Well, this video provides tips on how to tell the difference between scholarly and popular articles/publications.