LibGuides: Africana Studies: Collections & Archives

Oral Histories

Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers Project, 1936-1938 (Library of Congress)
DocSouth: Documenting the American South (UNC-Chapel Hill)
Sixteen thematic collections of primary sources for the study of southern history, literature, and culture, including "The Church in the Southern Black Community," "First-Person Narratives of the American South," "North American Slave Narratives," and "Oral Histories of the American South"
Civil Rights Documentation Project: Civil Rights Oral History Bibliography
Project of the University of Mississippi documenting oral histories of the civil rights movement in Mississippi, focusing on the years between 1954 and 1972.

Black Culture Collection--Microfilm

The Black Culture Collection is a set of 652 reels of microfilm consisting of books, pamphlets, theses, and periodicals found in the "Negro Collection" of the Trevor-Arnett Library at Atlanta University during the 1970s.The microfilm reels, produced by Bell & Howell, were cataloged by College of Wooster librarians and published as a 6 volume print catalog and Contents by Reel index. These print guides have since been completely incorporated into the College of Wooster's online catalog, CONSORT, and may be searched under the title Black Culture Collection, along with keyword(s) for the topic of interest. For reference,

Reels 1-182 are the African section.
Reels 183-599 are the United States section.
Reels 600-633 are the South America and West Indies section.
Reels 634-652 are the Slavery in History section.

The Collection is housed on the Lower 1 level of Andrews Library, and is located under the microfilm call number GN 645 .B53.

Online Collections & Archives

African-American Poetry, 1760-1900 (OhioLINK) This link opens in a new window
Publication Dates: 1760-1975. Historical Coverage: 1760-1900. Full text of almost 3000 poems written by African-American poets in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Included are 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.
Black Economic Empowerment: The National Negro Business League (Gale Archives Unbound) This link opens in a new window
Comprises the National Negro Business League files in Part III of the Booker T. Washington Papers in the possession of the Library of Congress. Covers 1901-1928.

Black Drama, 2nd ed: African, African American, and Diaspora 1850 - present (Alexander Street Press)
Contains approximately 1,462 plays by 233 playwrights, with detailed information on related productions, theaters, and production companies. Also includes selected playbills, production photographs, and other ephemera related to the plays.

Federal Surveillance of African Americans, 1920-1984 (Gale Archives Unbound) This link opens in a new window
includes files from the Federal Bureau of Investigation Library and includes smaller sets of FBI files on groups and individuals
James Meredith, J. Edgar Hoover & the Integration of the University of Mississippi (Gale Archives Unbound) This link opens in a new window
Contains extensive FBI documentation on Meredith's 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.
Papers of Amiri Baraka (Archives Unbound) (Gale/Cengage) This link opens in a new window
Consists of rare works of poetry, organizational records, print publications, over one hundred articles, poems, plays, and speeches by Baraka, a small amount of personal correspondence, and oral histories. It is arranged into eighteen series.
We Were Prepared for the Possibility of Death: Freedom Riders in the South, 1961 (Gale Archives Unbound) This link opens in a new window