LibGuides: Primary Resources Guide: Black Studies

Black Studies Related Primary Resource Databases

African American Communities This link opens in a new window
Online archive focused on African American culture, social conditions, and identity. Containing pamphlets, newspapers, correspondence, oral histories and archival ephemera from Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis, New York, and towns in North Carolina.
Off Campus Access: Authenticate with your MyDenison login.

Subjects: African American History, US History

Focusing predominantly on Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis, New York, and towns and cities in North Carolina, this resource presents multiple aspects of the African American community -- revealing the prevalent challenges of racism, discrimination and integration, and a unique African American culture and identity.

Format: Full Text
Dates of Coverage: 19th - 20th Century, varies by collection
Database Distributor: AM (Adam Matthew Digital)
African American Newspapers, 1827-1998 This link opens in a new window
Chronicles over a century (1827-1998) of the African American experience through 270+ U.S. newspapers.
Off Campus Access: Authenticate with your MyDenison login.

Subject Areas: U.S. History, Black studies

This invaluable collection provides online access to approximately 270 U.S. newspapers chronicling a century and a half of the African American experience. African American Newspapers, Series 1 (1827-1998) and Series 2 (1835-1956), feature titles from more than 35 statesincluding many rare and historically significant 19th century titles.

Published by or for African Americans, these newspapers cover life in the Antebellum South, growth of the Black church, the Jim Crow Era, the Great Migration, Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights movement, political and economic empowerment and much more.

Format: Full Text
Dates of Coverage: 1827-1998
Database Producer: Readex
Collection: Part of "America's Historical Newspapers"
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
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
Afro-Americana Imprints, 1535-1922 This link opens in a new window
Online archive of Afro-Americana, covering the early 16th to 20th centuries.
Off Campus Access: Authenticate with your MyDenison login.

Subject Areas: U.S. History, Black studies, Literature, Sociology / Anthropology

Afro-Americana Imprints, 1535-1922, covers almost 400 years of African American history, literature, and culture.

Subjects include:
- discovery and exploitation of Africa
- slavery in the New World
- growth and success of Abolitionist movements
- development of racial thought, including politics, protest, and resistance
- descriptions of African American life, including both slave and free accounts
- slavery and race in literature

Format: Full Text
Dates of Coverage: 1535-1922
Database Producer: Readex
Collection: Part of "America's Historical Imprints"
The Making of Modern Law: American Civil Liberties Union Papers This link opens in a new window
This online collection includes newspaper clippings, scrapbooks, court files, memorandums, telegrams, minutes, legal case records, and other primary source material relating to the ACLU.
Off Campus Access: Authenticate with your MyDenison login.

Subjects: History, Sociology/Anthropology

The ACLU Papers concern free speech, citizenship, race, discrimination, immigration, labor, radicalism, and related topics and complements the modules in the Making of Modern Law series.

This collection consists of two major collections, The Roger Baldwin Years and the Years of Expansion, with a myriad of sub-series.

- The Roger Baldwin Years, 1912-1950, contains sub-series with clippings and files on academic freedom; censorship; legislation; federal departments and federal legislation; state activities; conscientious objectors; injunctions; and labor and labor organization correspondence.

- Years of Expansion, 1950-1990, encompasses foundation project files on the Amnesty Project, 1964-1980; the Lawyers Constitutional Defense Committee, 1964-1976; and subject files on freedom of belief, expression, and association; due process of law; equality before the law; international civil liberties; and legal case files, 1933-1990.

Format: Full Text
Dates of Coverage: 1912-1990
Database Distributor: Gale / Cengage
Baltimore Afro-American (ProQuest Historical Newspapers) This link opens in a new window
This historical newspaper provides online coverage from 1893 to 1988.
Off Campus Access: Authenticate with your MyDenison login.

Subject Areas: History, Black Studies

This historical newspaper provides genealogists, researchers and scholars with online, easily-searchable first-hand accounts and unparalleled coverage of the politics, society and events of the time.

Format: Full Text
Dates of Coverage: 1893 to 1988
Database Producer: ProQuest
Black Authors, 1556-1922 This link opens in a new window
This online archive looks at the creative efforts of black authors over three centuries, and includes works by authors of African or African-American descent.
Off Campus Access: Authenticate with your MyDenison login.

Subject Areas: History, U.S. History

Black Authors, 1556-1922 is a collection highlighting works by authors of African or African-American descent. This online archive from the Library Company of Philadelphia provides a fascinating look at the creative efforts of black authors.

Compiled by the curators of the acclaimed Afro-Americana Imprints collection, this collection may be cross-searched alongside documents from and about the African-American experience across three centuries.

Format: Full Text
Date range: 1556-1922
Database Producer: Readex
Collection: Part of "America's Historical Imprints"
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
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
History Vault: Civil Rights and the Black Freedom Struggle This link opens in a new window
Includes organizational records, personal papers and Federal government records.
Off Campus Access: Authenticate with your MyDenison login.

This resource offers the opportunity to study the most well-known and also unheralded events of the Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century from the perspective of the men, women, and sometimes even children who waged one of the most inspiring social movements in American history. This category includes NAACP Papers, federal government records, organizational records, and personal papers regarding the 20th Century Black Freedom Struggle. NAACP Papers consists of 6 modules. Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century consists of four modules.

Subject Coverage: American History, African American History, Black Freedom Struggle, Civil Rights Movement, Political History, NAACP

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
- NAACP Papers: Board of Directors, - Annual Conferences, Major Speeches, and National Staff Files
- NAACP Papers: The NAACP's Major Campaigns--Education, Voting, Housing, Employment, Armed Forces
- NAACP Papers: The NAACP's Major Campaigns--Legal Department Files
- NAACP Papers: The NAACP's Major Campaigns--Scottsboro, Anti-Lynching, Criminal Justice, Peonage, Labor, and Segregation and Discrimination Complaints and Responses

Format: Full Text
Dates of Coverage: 20th century
Database Producer: Proquest
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
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.
Documenting White Supremacy and its Opponents in the 1920s This link opens in a new window
This archival collection covers newspapers published by the KKK during its peak in the 1920's.
Subjects: History, Black Studies, Political Science

In the 1920's, the KKK re-emerged with a great deal of successful marketing strategies, employing a national newspaper, the Imperial Night-Hawk, as well as local newspapers throughout the U.S.

This online, archival collection contains over 546 issues and almost 5,000 pages from these newspapers and offers a glimpse into the workings of this organization.

The Documenting White Supremacy and its Opponents in the 1920s collection brings together for the first time local, regional, and national newspapers published by Klan organizations and by sympathetic publishers across the U.S. during its period of greatest popularity.

This collection also includes the voices from several anti-Klan newspapers.

Format: Full Text
Dates of Coverage: 1920s
Update Schedule: Continuously Updated
Database Distributor: Reveal Digital
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.
Global missions and theology This link opens in a new window
Documents the broad range of Nineteenth Century religious missionary activities, practices and thought in the United States. Keywords: christianity, religion
Off Campus Access: Authenticate with your MyDenison login.

Subject Areas: Religion, History

This collection documents the broad range of Nineteenth Century religious missionary activities, practices and thought in the United States by reproducing pivotal personal narratives, organizational records, and biographies of the essential leaders, simple missionaries, and churches.

This collection includes materials on missionary activities among Native Americans and African Americans, both slaves and freedmen. In addition, it highlights activities in far-flung regions and countries, such as Africa, Fiji and Sandwich Islands, India, China, Southeast Asia, Japan, and Hawaii. Contains 23,869 images from the Lost Cause Press.

Format: Full Text
Date range: 1800-1899
Database Producer: Archives Unbound, Gale.
HistoryMakers This link opens in a new window
Largest African American oral video history archive in the world.
Off Campus Access: Authenticate with your MyDenison login.

Subject Areas: Black Studies

HistoryMakers is the largest African American oral video history archive in the world. HistoryMakers provides access to over 119,684 stories from oral history interviews with 2,694 historically significant African Americans.

Format: video
Dates of Coverage: current
Update Schedule: unknown
Database Distributor: HistoryMakers
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
Race Relations in America This link opens in a new window
Online archive of the Race Relations Department of the United Church Board for Homeland Ministries, an influential think tank, covering the years 1943-1970.
Off Campus Access: Authenticate with your MyDenison login.

Subject Areas: History, Black Studies, Sociology / Anthropology

This online collection provides access to the records of the Race Relations Department of the United Church Board for Homeland Ministries (1943-1970), a highly influential think tank.

Topics include racial segregation, discrimination, the civil rights movement, and racial theory in America.

Format: Full Text
Dates of Coverage: 1943-1970
Database Producer: AM (Adam Matthew Digital)
Republic of New Afrika This link opens in a new window
This collection provides documentation collected by the FBI through intelligence activities, informants, surveillance, and cooperation with local police departments.
Off Campus Access: Authenticate with your MyDenison login.

Subject Areas: History, Political Science

Format: Full Text
Dates of Coverage: 1968-1980
Database Producer: Gale
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