Research Guides: HY244/RM244 Black People in the US Since the Civil War: CC Databases of Interest

Online Archives (CC and others)

Race, Ethnicity, and Migration Studies: CC Archives
Local history materials available at CC in special collections and the archives
Colorado Springs Black History materials in CC Special Collections
Blair-Caldwell African American Research Library, Denver Public Library
The Blair-Caldwell Archives consist of more than 150 collections of personal and professional papers, artifacts, photos, and scrapbooks (all original) of great African Americans who helped shape the West.
Online Archive of California
The Online Archive of California (OAC) provides free public access to detailed descriptions of primary resource collections maintained by more than 200 contributing institutions including libraries, special collections, archives, historical societies, and museums throughout California and collections maintained by the 10 University of California (UC) campuses.
Bancroft Library Digital Collections
From the University of California Berkeley
Archival Collection - Robert Penn Warren's Who Speaks for the Negro
The "Who Speaks for the Negro?" website is a digital archive of materials related to the book of the same name published by Robert Penn Warren in 1965. The archive consists of digitized versions of the original reel-to-reel recordings that Warren compiled for each of his interviewees as well as print materials related to the project.
Black Civil Rights: Primary Source Collections Online
A Research Guide from Sam Houston State University's Library. Find and search American History primary source collections on the Internet.
Civil Rights Digital Library
The CRDL features a collection of unedited news film from the WSB (Atlanta) and WALB (Albany, Ga.) television archives held by the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia Libraries. The CRDL provides educator resources and contextual materials, including Freedom on Film, relating instructive stories and discussion questions from the Civil Rights Movement in Georgia, and the New Georgia Encyclopedia, delivering engaging online articles and multimedia.
Chronicling America
From the Library of Congress. Search and view newspaper pages from 1880-1910 and find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present. Chronicling America is sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress as part of the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP).
Moving Image Resource Center at the Library of Congress
The Moving Image Research Center exists to provides access and information services to an international community of film and television professionals, archivists, scholars and researchers.
African American Film Materials at SMU Libraries
The African American Film Materials digital collection provides a sample of photographs and pressbooks from films featuring African American actors. The collection is from SMU's DeGolyer Library, and includes 4,254 film stills, lobby books, pressbooks, posters, and related items from motion pictures spanning nearly 40 years.
Black Film Center/Archive at Indiana University
Digital Schomburg Library (NYPL)
Relying on the expertise of distinguished curators and scholars, Digital Schomburg provides access to trusted information, interpretation, and scholarship on the global black experience 24/7. Users worldwide can find, in this virtual Schomburg Center, 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.
1968 U.S. Olympic Team Oral History Project
From the Stark Center for Physical Culture and Sports. There are more than 100 oral history interviews in the 1968 U.S. Olympic Team Oral History collection. Some of the interview transcripts have been synced with their audio recordings and are currently available for reading, listening, searching, and sharing online through the links provided below. We are working to make all of the interviews in this collection accessible to the public.
Sports Illustrated Vault
An extensive online archive of Sports Illustrated articles and photographs.

CC Databases

Access to archival databases (AAD) system This link opens in a new window
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National Archives.gov: "The Access to Archival Databases (AAD) System gives you online access to electronic records that are highly structured, such as in databases. The initial release of AAD contains material from more than 30 archival series of electronic records, which include over 350 data files totaling well over 50 million unique records. The series selected for AAD identify specific persons, geographic areas, organizations, or dates ..."
Some of these series serve as indexes to accessioned archival records in non-electronic formats ... AAD allows you to search for and retrieve specific records from selected series and data files over the Internet. Using AAD, first select a series of electronic records, then select a specific data file within a series, and search for pertinent records by entering unique values, such as personal names, dates, cities, and states. AAD displays the records that match the search criteria. You may then view the records, print the records, or copy the records to your own computer and save them as an electronic file."
African American Newspapers, Series 1 This link opens in a new window
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Full text of 270 African American Newspapers from 35+ states. Covers topics such as 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. Based on James P. Danky's bibliography "African-American Newspapers and Periodicals."
America: History and Life This link opens in a new window
Covers the history and culture of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present.
Black Drama, 1850 to Present This link opens in a new window
Coverage: 1846 - current. Contains the full text of over 1,400 rare and hard-to-find plays written from the 1850's to the present by playwrights from North America, English-speaking Africa, the Caribbean, and other African Diaspora countries. Search by author, title, subject, date, full-text, etc. Cross-searchable under North American Theater Online.
Black Thought and Culture: African Americans from Colonial Times to the Present This link opens in a new window
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Coverage: 1700 - 2006. Black Thought and Culture contains 1,200+ sources covering the non-fiction published works of leading African Americans. Includes non-fiction works, interviews, journal articles, speeches, essays, pamphlets, letters and other fugitive material. Also includes the Black Panther newspaper from 1967-1980. Allows for advanced browsing and searching. Some materials are cross-searchable under Social and Cultural History
Federal Surveillance of African Americans, 1920-1984 This link opens in a new window
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Coverage: 1920-1984. Collection of documents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation Library. Includes COINTELPROs file on Black Nationalist groups from 1956-1971; also contains FBI files on notable figures such as Malcom X, Paul Robeson, Jesse Jackson and W. E. Dubois, as well as groups such as the Black Panthers and NAACP. Illustrative of conservative and government concerns over communism, socialism, civil rights, and other issues of this era. Part of Archives Unbound.
Freedom Riders in the South, 1961: "We Were Prepared for the Possibility of Death" This link opens in a new window
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Database containing FBI files on the Freedom Riders who rode integrated buses through the South in 1961, protesting the non-enforcement of integration laws of public buses. The Riders encountered mob violence and biased courts, but their struggles propelled the Civil Rights Movement forward and helped end segregation in the South. Part of Archives Unbound.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window
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Coverage: 1800's - Provides complete, full-image access to historical articles from the Atlanta Constitution, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times from 1881 and the New York Times from 1851. For current online articles use Access World News or Nexis Uni.
America: History and Life This link opens in a new window
Covers the history and culture of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present.
American Civil War: Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new window
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Coverage: 1848 - 1897. 100,000+ pages of diaries, letters and memoirs by 2000+ authors. Includes many previously unpublished manuscripts. Organized for detailed browsing and searching. Some materials are cross-searchable under Social and Cultural History.
Civil War in Words and Deeds This link opens in a new window
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Coverage: 1861-early 20th century. Regimental histories and personal narratives of the Civil War compiled in the postwar era through the early 20th century. Part of Archives Unbound.
Civil War Primary Source Documents This link opens in a new window
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Diaries, letters, and other manuscript materials pertaining to the Civil War. These primary sources are digitized from originals, frequently written in cursive. From the New York Historical Society.
Civil War Service Reports of Union Army Generals This link opens in a new window
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Coverage: 1864-1887. Union generals reports submitted to the Adjutant Generals Office (AGO) on their service during the Civil War period. The reports were submitted over a 23-year period and varied widely in length and subject matter. Content includes accounts of major battles in the Civil War, interactions with Native Americans, recruitment of African Americans for the Union forces, and Reconstruction. Part of Archives Unbound.
Confederate Newspapers: A Collection from Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia and Alabama This link opens in a new window
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Coverage: 1858-1866. Digitized Confederate papers from the Western Reserve Historical Society. Part of Archives Unbound.
Ethnic American Newspapers, 1799-1971 This link opens in a new window
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130+ digitized newspapers in 10 languages from 25 states. Covered topics include Japanese internment camps, significant immigration laws, and contributions of immigrants to American society. Emphasis is on Americans of Czech, French, German, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Jewish, Lithuanian, Polish, Slovak, and Welsh descent.

Chicago Tribune (ProQuest Historical Newspapers)
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Coverage: 1849 - 1996. One of the oldest continuously published newspapers in the United States. Historical coverage of prohibition debates, mercantile development of the midwest, westward expansion, Settlement House Movement - Jane Addams, Al Capone, and more. Full image and full text newspaper articles. (See Access World News or Nexis Uni for more current news from the U.S. Midwest).

Historical Statistics of the United States: Earliest Times to the Present This link opens in a new window
Coverage: 1600s - current. Annual time series of the U.S. population, economic indicators, social conditions, and government. From colonial times to the present.
Oral History Online This link opens in a new window
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Coverage: 1930 - 2008. Growing index to 2,700+ collections of oral history in English from around the world; 280,000+ pages by over 9,000 individuals and pointers to thousands of audio/video files. Browse the Table of Contents by repository, interview, date, place, event or subject. Advanced search allows for detailed searching by factors like names, ages, historical events discussed, and more.