Research Guides: AFR202: The Black Archive: Home

Digital Archives | Recovery Projects

http://www.blvckvrchives.com/: An Archive of Black Life
Visual narratives of modern Black life across the Diaspora, from the history of Chicago's South Side, to the origins of the LA Uprising, to the personal story of Lauryn Hill."
Seeing Dark Matter
Historian Jessica Marie Johnson's Tumblr "exploring black diasporic visual culture across time and space." See also #ADPhD
The SNCC Legacy Project
Preserving the legacy of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
A People's Archive of Police Violence in Cleveland
An independent community-based archive established in 2015, collecting artifacts that document police killings of Black people. Connected to the call to #ArchiveBlackLives.

Notable Black History Archives

The Amistad Research Center
An independent archive housed on the campus of Tulane University. "The holdings include the papers of artists, educators, authors, business leaders, clergy, lawyers, factory workers, farmers and musicians." Focused on race relations, civil rights, and the African Diaspora in the US.
Atlanta University Center -- Robert W. Woodruff Library
"The Archives Research Center’s collections primarily document the African American experience through civil rights, race relations, education, literature, visual and performing arts, religion, politics, and social work."
Duke University -- John Hope Franklin & Sally Bingham Collections
The John Hope Franklin Research Center "collects, preserves and promotes the use of published and unpublished primary sources for the exploration, understanding and advancement of scholarship of the history and culture of Africa and people of the African Diaspora in the Americas."
Harvard University - Schlesinger Library
One of the largest collections of women's history, featuring notable African American women such as June Jordan, Pauli Murray, Florynce Kennedy, Ana Livia Cordero, and the Black Women's Oral History Project.
The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
The Schomburg Center is considered one of the most significant collections of African diaspora history, holding more than 10 million items. Features "unique, and primary materials that document the history and culture of people of African descent throughout the world, with a concentration on the Americas and the Caribbean."
Library of Congress: African American Digital Collections
"The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world, with millions of books, recordings, photographs, newspapers, maps and manuscripts in its collections. The Library is the main research arm of the U.S. Congress and the home of the U.S. Copyright Office." Led by Librarian Carla Hayden, the LOC seeks to make American cultural heritage more accessible through digitization.

Image Sources

Internet Archive
A growing collection of digitized materials, in the public domain or available for re-use through creative commons licenses.

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See the John Brown Carter Library collection, including the Haiti Collection, the Portugal and Brazil Collection, and the Spanish America Collection
NYPL Digital Collections
"New York Public Library's digital collections provide access to over 800,000 images digitized from primary sources and printed rarities in the collections of The New York Public Library, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints and photographs, illustrated books, fashion plates, printed ephemera, and more."

AP Images [EBSCO] 1840+
Easily search across 750,000+ images from the 1840s to the present. Also includes graphics, maps, illustrations, and logos dating back to the 1920s.

Primary Sources

DR. FLORENCE N'GENDO MWANGI, CLASS OF 1961, LEFT, AND A STUDENT FROM THE BLACK STUDENTS ALLIANCE, RIGHT, AT THE DEDICATION OF THE NGENDO MWANGI CULTURAL CENTER, 1973.

The Sophia Smith Collection
An internationally recognized repository of manuscripts, archives, photographs, periodicals and other primary sources in women's history. For a list of collections on Black Women, use this GUIDE.

Archive Grid
Detailed archival collection descriptions & finding aids from libraries, museums, historical societies & archives in the US.
HathiTrust
Full text books & journals digitized by HathiTrust partner libraries, Google, the Internet Archive, etc. Includes searchable access to over 10 million volumes total; 3 million public domain volumes are fully viewable online and allow downloading one page at a time. Complements Google Books.

Images from the US Marine Corps
Downloadable public domain photographs, as well as documents, orders, and speeches of the US Marine Corps. Documents United States military intervention in Haiti, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Mexico, and the Virgin Islands.

African American Newspapers: The 19th Century (Coverage varies by title)
Full text articles from The Christian Recorder, The Colored American/Weekly Advocate, Frederick Douglass Paper, Freedom's Journal, The National Era, The North Star, Provincial Freeman, and Douglass Monthly.

Caribbean Sea Migration Archive, Duke University
Materials from (or related to) the migration by sea of Cubans, Dominicans, and Haitians, including the refugee camp for Cuban and Haitian rafters that existed in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, largely dating from 1991-1996. Includes newspapers in Spanish and Haitian Kreyol, as well as photographs of rafters and rescuers, and camp residents from the US Coast Guard archives.

Archives Unbound [Gale]
Digital primary source collections on a wide variety of topics, countries, and time periods, from women's history and feminism, to civil rights, foreign policy, missionary societies, the Federal Writers' Project, etc.
Archives of Sexuality & Gender: LGBTQ History & Culture Since 1940 [Gale]
Primary source collection on social, political, health & legal issues impacting LGBTQ communities internationally: covers the gay rights movement, activism, the HIV/AIDS crisis, etc.

Discover

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Discover Advanced Search includes limiting options.

Watch a video tutorial on how to do an advanced search using the Libraries' Discover search box.

News and Other Media

ProQuest Historical Newspapers (Coverage varies by title)
Full text articles from the Boston Globe, Chicago Defender, Chicago Tribune, New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Atlanta Constitution, Jerusalem Post, New York Amsterdam News, and Times of India.
Alternative Press Index and Archive [EBSCO] 1969+
Indexes hundreds of alternative, radical and left periodicals, newspapers and magazines covering cultural, economic, political & social change.
Access World News [NewsBank] (Coverage varies by title)
Current and archived news content including local, state, national and international newspapers, broadcast transcripts, news wires, news blogs, video, etc.

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AFR202: The Black Archive: Home