Library Homepage: Black History &amp; Culture: Primary Sources

Black HIstory Month

Carter G. Woodson Memorial: Washington, DC. DC Department of Parks and Recreation.

The seed of what is now known as Black History Month was planted in the doctoral thesis of Carter G. Woodson, a noted scholar, author, and co-founder of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. The son of former slaves, Woodson received a Ph.D. in 1912 from Harvard University, where he studied under renowned historians who minimized the importance and vitality of black history. But Woodson would not be deterred. He believed the heritage and contributions of black Americans was excluded from history, and he saw this knowledge as essential to social change.

Anderson, Melinda D. (February 22, 2016). Black History Month in Schools—Retire or Reboot?. The Atlantic.

History - Primary Documents

What are Primary Sources?

Content created at the time under study. An original artifact, document, diary, manuscript, autobiography, recording, or any other source of information that was created.

African-American HIstory (Blackpast.org)
Reference center providing information on African American history and Global African history.
Black Freedom Struggle in the United States: A Selection of Primary Sources
This website contains approximately 1,600 documents focused on six different phases of Black Freedom.
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Slavery and the Abolitionist Movement (1790-1860), The Civil War and the Reconstruction Era (1861-1877), Jim Crow Era from 1878 to the Great Depression (1878-1932),
The New Deal and World War II (1933-1945), The Civil Rights and Black Power Movements (1946-1975), The Contemporary Era (1976-2000)
Black History (National Archives)
Extensive set of primary source documents on Black History. Documents cover slavery and abolition, segregation, the Great Migration, and Civil Rights.
Born in Slavery Collection (Library of Congress)
"Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves."
Digital Schomburg
Exhibitions, books, articles, photographs, prints, audio and video streams, and selected external links for research in the history and cultures of the peoples of Africa and the African Diaspora.
DPLA: Digital Public LIbrary of America
Includes topics such as: The Great Migration, Plains Migration, The Invisible Man, Blackface Minstrelsy, Voting Rights Act, The Fifteenth Amendment, School Desegregation, African-American Soldiers in the First World War, Women & The Blues, The Harlem Renaissance, Black Power Movement, Negro League Baseball.
Duke Libraries: Behind the Veil
A selection of 410 recorded oral history interviews chronicling African-American life during the age of legal segregation in the American South, from the 1890s to the 1950s.
Florida HIstory: Images of Florida's Black History
Images from the State of Florida Division of Library and Information Services.
Florida Memory: Black HIstory Month
Resources on African American history from the collections of the State Library and Archives of Florida.
LIbrary of Congress:African-American Mosaic
Collections of digitized documents and sound recordings. Conduct keyword searches to find content.
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Civil Rights, Freed People recordings, Slave Narratives, Blues & Gospel recordings, Band Music, Photographs Assembled for the 1900 Paris Exposition, Rosa Parks papers, Frederick Douglass Newspapers, Zora Neal Hurston Plays, Jackie Robinson, LGBTQ Studies, Maps of Liberia, Gladstone Collection of African American Photographs.
NAG: African American Artists in the Collection
Selection of works by African American artists included in the collection of the National Gallery of Art.
National Archives: Black History
Access resources through State, Regional, and Local Research collections that include the topics of: Military, Photographs, Culture, Slavery, Abolition, Reconstruction, Segregation and Black Migration, Civil Rights.
National Archives: Rosa Parks
An Act of Courage, The Arrest Records of Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks Papers (Library of Congress)
Over 7,500 manuscripts/documents and 2,500 photographs from the Rosa Parks Papers
SAAM: Art by African-Americans
SAAM is home to one of the most significant collections of African American art in the world, with more than 2,000 works by more than 200 African American artists.
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
One of The New York Public Library’s renowned research libraries, is a world-leading cultural institution devoted to the research, preservation, and exhibition of materials focused on African American, African Diaspora, and African experiences.
Subversion & The Art of Slavery Abolition (New York Public LIbrary)
This exhibition highlights several of the ways that abolitionists engaged with the arts to agitate for enslaved people’s liberty in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Travelling While Black (New York Public LIbrary)
Image collection: Since the start of their experience in the Americas, Black people have been defined by travel, displacement, and resistance.
U.S. Census: African-American (Black) History Month -2020
American historian Carter G. Woodson established Black History Week. The first celebration occurred on Feb. 12, 1926.
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For many years, the second week of February was set aside for this celebration to coincide with the birthdays of abolitionist/editor Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. In 1976, as part of the nation’s bicentennial, the week was expanded to a month. Since then, U.S. presidents have proclaimed February as National African-American History Month.
UNC-Chapel HIll: Documenting the American South
Three-year project to select, digitize and make available 500 oral history interviews gathered by the Southern Oral History Program (SOHP). Primary topic is school integration in Charlotte.
Zora Neal Thurston papers (University of Florida Digital Collections)
Zora Neale Hurston, (1891c-1960), was an African American anthropologist, folklorist, and author of African American literature. This collection, consisting of manuscripts, documents and photos saved from a burn barrel by a friend after Hurston’s death, was given to the University in the 1960s.
Zora Neal Thurston Plays at the Library of Congress
Ten plays written by Hurston (1891-1960), author, anthropologist, and folklorist. Deposited as unpublished typescripts, the plays reflect Hurston's life experience, travels, and research, especially her knowledge of folklore in the African-American South.