GSU Library Research Guides: *Africana Studies: Subject Guide: Primary Sources

Looking for Statistics/Data?

The Library's Research Data Services team can help you find and use statistics and data for your research projects!

You can meet with a RDS team member during their drop-in hours (held in the Library's CURVE space on Library South 2) or by scheduling an appointment. RDS also offers workshops on various aspects of data searching, analysis, and visualization.

For more information about team members, areas of expertise, and scheduling, see the Research Data Services guide (or click on the "Research Data Services" tab above).

Searching GIL and GIL-Find

Use GIL or the newer GILFind, the two versions of GSU's library catalog, to find books in our library. The catalog also lists other materials in the library - including microfilm, dissertations, movies, music and special collections.

Try using these keywords with your search to turn up primary sources:

(image from http://www.wordle.net/)

Finding Images

Zora Neale Hurston, Rochelle French, and Gabriel Brown, Eatonville, Florida

Photograph by Alan Lomax, June 1935.

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

These websites are good sources for historical images of African-Americans:

Digital Library of Georgia
Connects users to a million digital objects in more than 200 collections from 60 institutions and 100 government agencies in Georgia.
Digital Public Library of America
Collection of primary sources from libraries and other institutions across the country. For African-American history, try starting with the DPLA's exhibition Activism in the United States.
Africa and the African Diaspora
One of the New York Public Library Digital Gallery's collections. Images relating to African-American history from the 16th century to the present.
The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record
A joint project of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and the University of Virginia.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
Contains image collections sorted by subject.
Library of Congress American Memory Project
Many primary-source materials, including images, available online. For a guide to African-American collections, click here.

Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice This link opens in a new window
A portal for slavery studies bringing together documents and collections covering an extensive time period spanning six centuries from libraries and archives across the Atlantic world. Information about participating libraries available here. **Access for GSU affiliaties only.

Digital Collections available at GSU

These primary-source databases are available to GSU affiliates.

If you are accessing them from off campus, you will be asked to sign in with your Campus ID and password.

AM This link opens in a new window
Over 50 Adam Matthew Digital primary source databases covering a wide variety of historical topics. Note: Selecting this link will bring you a filtered list of all Adam Matthew content within the Database A-Z list. Includes such collections as Confidential Print: Africa, 1834-1966, Global Commodities, and Apartheid South Africa.
African American Newspapers, Parts I - VIII This link opens in a new window
Selection of African-American newspapers published during the 19th century
Archives Unbound This link opens in a new window
Includes numerous collections on civil rights and 20th-century African-American history.
Atlanta Daily World, 1931 - 2003 (ProQuest Historical Newspapers) This link opens in a new window
Historical African-American newspaper
Black Thought and Culture This link opens in a new window
Studies the historical development of black culture by covering the non-fiction published works of leading African Americans.
Chicago Defender, 1910 - 1975 (ProQuest Historical Newspapers) This link opens in a new window
historical African-American newspaper
Ebony Magazine Archive This link opens in a new window
NEW! Ebony is one of the key African-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”. The Ebony Magazine Archive contains indexing, abstracting and full text for the complete archive (including Covers and Advertisements) beginning in November 1945 to June 2014.
History Vault: Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century This link opens in a new window
Primary sources related to 20th-century African American history and the Civil Rights Movement, including federal government records, organizational records, and personal papers.
New York Times, 1851 - 2017 (ProQuest Historical Newspapers) This link opens in a new window
Coverage from 1851-2012.
Readers' Guide Retrospective: 1890 - 1982 (H.W. Wilson) This link opens in a new window
Articles in popular magazines from 1890-1982. For post-1982 articles, see paper version.
Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice This link opens in a new window
Includes thousands of manuscripts, pamphlets, books, paintings, maps, and images from 1490 to 2007.

African American Newspapers

James P. Danky, ed., African-American Newspapers and Periodicals: A National Bibliography (1998) is a good starting point for identifying titles of historical African-American periodicals.

Atlanta Daily World, 1931 - 2003 (ProQuest Historical Newspapers) This link opens in a new window
The Atlanta Daily World is Atlanta's oldest continuously publishing African American newspaper and one of its oldest African American-owned business. Founded by W.A. Scott on August 5, 1928, it became America's first successful African American daily newspaper in 1933.
Chicago Defender, 1910 - 1975 (ProQuest Historical Newspapers) This link opens in a new window
The Chicago Defender was the most influential African-American newspaper of the 20th century, with more than two-thirds of its readership outside the Chicago area. This resource provides full page and article images with searchable full text.
African American Newspapers, Parts I - VIII This link opens in a new window
Subscription database available through GSU Library.

ProQuest Historical Black Newspapers
Online full-text access to selected historical African-American newspapers. Subscription databases, available for viewing at the Auburn Avenue Research Library. ***If you have a Fulton County library card, you can access these newspaper databases from home. All GSU affiliates are able to get a Fulton County library card regardless of where they live. For information about Fulton County library cards, click here.***

Baltimore Afro-American (1893-1988)
Cleveland Call and Post (1934-1991)
Los Angeles Sentinel (1934-2005)
New York Amsterdam News (1922-1993)
Norfolk Journal and Guide (1921-2003)
Philadelphia Tribune (1912-2001)
Pittsburgh Courier (1911-2002)

African American Newspapers at Emory
Lists Emory's microfilm holdings of historical African-American newspapers from across the United States.
Atlanta Independent (1904-1928)
Available through Google News.

Selected Freely Available Digital Collections

Umbra Search: African American History
Large online portal of African-American history sources, including more than 400,000 digitized materials from over 1,000 libraries and archives across the US.
The Black Population in the United States, 1790 - 1915 (US Census Bureau)
Civil Rights Digital Library
Multimedia and other primary resources relating to the Civil Rights movement, especially in Georgia.
Civil Rights History Project
Portal for audiovisual oral histories of the civil rights movement. Cosponsored by the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African American History and Culture
Civil Rights in a Northern City: Philadelphia
Temple University's collection of digitized archival resources detailing the history of the modern civil rights movement in Philadelphia. Includes photographs, newspapers, manuscripts, film footage, and oral histories.
Colored Conventions Project
University of Delaware project documenting state and national political "Colored Conventions," attended by free and fugitive Blacks from 1830 until after the Civil War.
Digital Harlem: Everyday Life 1915-1930
Mapping project providing information, drawn from legal records, newspapers and other archival and published sources, about everyday life in Harlem during the years 1915-1930.
Digital Library on American Slavery
University of North Carolina Greensboro site featuring primary sources about slavery, with emphasis on slavery in North Carolina.
Digital Public Library of America
Collection of primary sources from libraries and other institutions across the country. For African-American history, try starting with the DPLA's exhibition Activism in the United States.
Documenting Ferguson | Washington University in St. Louis
Growing collection of digital primary sources relating to recent events in Ferguson, Missouri.
EBONY Archives
Partnership between Google and EBONY Magazine; full-text digitized copies of EBONY magazine's entire 65-year archive. Pair this with our new Ebony Magazine Archive (EBSCO) database. This Google collection is full-text searchable, meaning you can search for any words used in any article or advertisement. Once you have an article's title, you can look it up in the EBSCO Ebony Magazine Archive database and get a PDF of the article.
Library of Congress Digital Collections
Starting page for digital collections at the Library of Congress' website. Click here to limit your search to collections identified as about African-American History. Or search across all their collections.
Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the American City
See also companion scholarly book, Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City.
Mapping the African American Past
Columbia University project featuring interactive maps of African-American sites in New York City.
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Database
Information about over 35,000 slave trading voyages.
Includes the African Names Database, which identifies over 67,000 Africans aboard slave ships, using name, age, gender, origin, and place of embarkation.

Evaluating Primary-Source Sites

Many libraries and organizations are making digital materials available online.

To find these collections, use a search string with terms relevant to your topic in Google or another search engine. For example:

digital collection site:edu "african methodist episcopal church"

You can also try the same search limiting to site:org rather than site:edu BUT:

Be careful!

EDU = educational institution
ORG = organization, which can mean almost ANY kind of noncorporate organization. If you aren't familiar with the organization, do some research on it! Who are they? What do they promote? Are they reliable?

* * * * * *

Questions to ask when you are assessing online primary-source collections:

Who is the author or creator of the page/site? Is there an institution involved? What is the name of the institution?
What are the credentials of the author or institution (what qualifies the author or institution to present these sources objectively? Do they represent a university? A library? An individual?)
Who sponsors the site? Is there information about funding?

Use Google, Wikipedia, & other sources to research the authors, organizations, or institutions responsible for the page and its funding.

Don't just trust the About page!

What is the purpose of the site - To inform? To entertain? To sell you something? To argue for a certain point of view?
Who is the intended audience?
Are the sources cited? Where did the author(s) get the information?
Can the information on the page be verified with other sources?
How current is the information? How recently has the website been updated?**
(**This question may be less important for historians looking for historical primary sources)