Africana Studies

Although you will of course find relevant materials in many other databases, the resources below are specifically focused on various key aspects of Africana Studies from a variety of disciplinary perspectives.

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Africana Studies

Scholarly Journal Databases

Alexander Street Press - Black Studies

Black Studies offers a variety of African American studies databases, including full-text, audio and video, across a range of History, Literature, and Performing Arts sources. The current version of ASP's Black Studies includes Black Studies in Video, with full-text and audio resources forthcoming.

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America: History & Life

Provides a robust source of information focusing on the history and life of the United States and Canada. Selective indexing includes over a thousand journals dating back over 55 years.

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Communication & Mass Media Complete (EBSCO)

Provides content in areas related to communication and mass media. CMMC incorporates the content of CommSearch (formerly produced by the National Communication Association) and Mass Media Articles Index (formerly produced by Penn State) along with numerous other journals in communication, mass media, and other closely-related fields of study to create a research and reference resource encompassing the breadth of the communication discipline.

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Diversity Studies (Gale OneFile)

Gale OneFile: Diversity Studies prepares researchers for social science, history, and liberal arts coursework. This collection explores cultural differences, contributions, and influences in the global community.

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HeinOnline

Contains more than 1,200 law and law-related periodicals. Coverage is from the first issue published for all periodicals and goes through the most-currently published issues allowed based on contracts with publishers. Retrieve articles by citation, browse, or search across nearly 50 million pages of content. HeinOnline also contains many useful resources for criminology, and public and international affairs, such as the Congressional Record Bound volumes in entirety, complete coverage of the U.S.

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JSTOR

Archive of selected scholarly journals in anthropology, art, art history, communication studies, criminology, ecology, economics, education, English, film studies, foreign languages and literatures, geography, geology, history, mathematics, music, philosophy, political science, public and international affairs, religion, social work, sociology, statistics, theatre, and other humanities and social sciences.

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Literature Databases

African-American Poetry

Contains nearly 3,000 poems from African-American poets in the late 18th and 19th centuries.

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African-American Poetry (20th Century)

Contains nearly 9,000 poems from African American poets of the 20th century.

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Black Drama: Third Edition

1,700 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. More than 40 percent of the collection consists of previously unpublished plays by writers such as Langston Hughes, Ed Bullins, Willis Richardson, Amiri Baraka, Randolph Edmonds, Zora Neale Hurston, and many others.

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Twentieth Century African-American Poetry

African-American poetry 1900-1999

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Open Access Repositories

The resources below are freely available databases that may include a variety of material: preprint (draft or preliminary) versions of articles, conference papers and/or posters, book chapters, white papers, and more. These repositories help speed up dissemination and enhance discoverability and access to early-stage scholarship across disciplines.

It is important to note that these materials have likely not been edited or benefited from the pivotal role of peer-review, which validates and improves the quality of final published journal articles.

ICPSR (Inter University Consortium for Political and Social Research)

ICPSR maintains and provides access to a vast archive of social science data for research and instruction, including a data archive of more than 500,000 files of research in the social sciences. It hosts 16 specialized collections of data in education, aging, criminology, criminal justice, social work, sociology, substance abuse, terrorism, and other fields.

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Race and Social Inequity hub

Open access repository includes early-stage research related to systemic racism, racial violence, law enforcement reform, and social justice movements.

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Sociology Research Network (SociologyRN)

Open access preprint server that provides a venue for sociology scholarship.

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A colorful quilt with a pattern of repeated, overlapping circles hangs on a blank wall in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts
Double Wedding Ring Quilt, unknown African American artist, 194?, shown here as part of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts' "Fabric of a Nation: American Quilt Stories" exhibition (image free under CC0)

Historical Primary Sources

Accessible Archives

Diverse primary source materials reflecting broad views across American history and in a comprehensive databases.

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American Rhetoric

Database of public speeches, sermons, legal proceedings, lectures, debates, interviews, other recorded media events.

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Civil Rights and Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century

Features records of NAACP, SCLC, SNCC, CORE, and federal records on the black freedom struggle. Part of the History Vault database.

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Civil Rights Digital Library

Resource for Civil Rights Movement primary sources and other educational materials from libraries, archives, museums, public broadcasters, and others on a national scale.

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Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)

Provides access to millions of images, photographs, manuscripts, books, sounds, and more from libraries, archives, and museums across the U.S.

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Federal Surveillance of African Americans

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 provide a wealth of detail on "Negro" radicals and their organizations that can be found nowhere else.

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Documenting the American South

Resource providing documents, images, and audio files related to the history, literature, and culture of the American South.

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History Vault

Researchers can access digitized letters, papers, photographs, scrapbooks, financial records, diaries, and many more primary source materials taken from the University Publications of America (UPA) Collections. Our collections include Civil Rights and the Black Freedom Struggle, Southern Life and Slavery, American Politics and Society and Women’s Studies.

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North American Women's Letters and Diaries

Resource includes the immediate experiences of 1,325 women and 150,000 pages of diaries and letters. The collection also includes biographies and an extensive annotated bibliography of the sources in the database.

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Sabin Americana

Based on Joseph Sabin's landmark bibliography, this collection contains works about the Americas published throughout the world from 1500 to the early 1900's. Included are books, pamphlets, serials and other documents that provide original accounts of exploration, trade, colonialism, slavery and abolition, the western movement, Native Americans, military actions and much more.

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Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive

Primary source materials for the study and understanding of slavery from a multinational perspective. Our access includes the collections Debates over Slavery and Abolition, Slave Trade in the Atlantic World, The Institution of Slavery, and The Age of Emancipation. Includes newspaper collections, books and a broad selection of documents from several different archives.

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Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database

This database compiles information about more than 36,000 voyages that forcibly transported enslaved Africans across the Atlantic between 1514 and 1866. Search and analyze the database for information on the broad origins of enslaved people, the tortuous Middle Passage, and the destinations of Africans in the Americas.

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University of Florida Digital Collections (UFDC)

Archival data collected by the University of Florida. Includes documents such as historical newspapers, Florida law, maps, and records and organization information related to the fields of arts, humanities, social sciences, and science and technology.

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Women and Social Movements in the United States - Scholar's Edition

Women and Social Movements in the United States brings together primary documents, books, images, scholarly essays, book reviews, Web site reviews, and teaching tools, all documenting the multiplicity of women’s activism in public life.

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World Digital Library

The World Digital Library (WDL) is a project of the U.S. Library of Congress, carried out with the support of the United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (UNESCO), and in cooperation with libraries, archives, museums, educational institutions, and international organizations from around the world.

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Newspaper and Magazine Databases

African American Newspapers Series 1

Chronicling a century and a half of the African American experience, African American Newspapers, Series 1, features 280 newspapers from 35 states, including many rare and historically significant 19th-century titles. These titles published for or by African Americans constitute valuable primary sources for researchers exploring such diverse disciplines as cultural, literary and social history; ethnic studies and more.

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African American Newspapers Series 2

African American Newspapers, Series 2, 1835-1956 complements and expands on African American Newspapers, Series 1. Published in 22 states and the District of Columbia, the more than 75 newly available newspapers in Series 2 significantly increase access to primary sources for researchers across African and African American studies; political science; ethnic studies; diaspora studies; women’s studies; and cultural, literary and social history.

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African American Newspapers, 19th century

This collection of African American newspapers contains information about cultural life and history during the 1800s and first-hand reports of the major events and issues of the day, including the Mexican War, Presidential and Congressional addresses, Congressional abstracts, business and commodity markets, the humanities, world travel and religion. The collection also provides a great number of early biographies, vital statistics, essays and editorials, poetry and prose, and advertisements all of which embody the African-American experience.

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Ebony Magazine Archive

Ebony is one of the key Afro-American magazines of the 20th century, covering 20th and 21st-Century current events, art, design, politics and culture, literature, advertising, and more. Their editorial philosophy is to “showcase the best and brightest as well as highlighting the disparities in Black life in the United States and worldwide”. This archive contains indexing, abstracting and full text for the complete archive (including Covers and Advertisements) beginning in November 1945 to June 2014.

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Ethnic NewsWatch

Ethnic NewsWatch is a current resource of full-text newspapers, magazines, and journals of the ethnic and minority press, providing researchers access to essential, often overlooked perspectives. The database now also contains Ethnic NewsWatch: A History, which provides historical coverage of Native American, African American, and Hispanic American periodicals from 1959-1989.

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Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive

An archival research resource containing the essential primary sources for studying the history of the film and entertainment industries, from the era of vaudeville and silent movies through to 2000.

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Historical Black Newspapers

This collection of historical black newspapers provides genealogists, researchers and scholars with online, easily-searchable first-hand accounts and unparalleled coverage of the politics, society and events of the time. Publications include:

The Baltimore Afro-American (1893-2010)
Chicago Defender (1909-1975)
Michigan Chronicle (1934-2010)
New York Amsterdam News (1922 - 1993)
Norfolk Journal and Guide (1916-2010)
Pittsburgh Courier (1911 - 2002)

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Life Magazine Archive

Presents an extensive collection of the famed photojournalism magazine, spanning from its very first issue in November, 1936 through December, 2000 in a comprehensive cover-to-cover format. Published by Time Inc., the magazine has featured story-telling through documentary photographs and informative captions. Each issue visually and powerfully depicted national and international events and topical stories, providing intimate views of real people and their real life situations.

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Time Magazine Archive

The Time Magazine Archive presents an extensive collection of the prominent weekly news magazine dating back to its first issue in March 1923 through December 2000, presented in a comprehensive cover-to-cover format. Published weekly by Time Inc., the magazine has focused on conveying to a broad audience both domestic and international news and analysis on a spectrum of subjects. Intended to be read in under an hour, each issue of Time contains reports of national and international current events, politics, sports, and entertainment.

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Related Journals

African American Review

Black History Bulletin

Black Issues Book Review

Black Issues in Higher Education

Black Music Research Journal

Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noire

The Black Scholar

Black Women, Gender, and Families