Digital Archive Collections: African Americans

Part of American Memory, this site provides access to the Frederick Douglass papers, the WPA Slave Narratives, and other digital collections related to the African American experience.

This subsite of American Memory presents 369 pamphlets from the Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress by African American authors writing about slavery and other related issues.

This digitized collection belonging to Anti-Slavery International tells the story of the Transatlantic Slave Trade through the narratives of slaves, traders, abolitionists, clergymen, and others involved with the trade.

The Digital Library offers a searchable database of detailed personal information about slaves, slaveholders, and free people of color drawn from petitions to southern legislatures and county courts between 1775 and 1867.

This collection contains historical images of slavery and slaves' lives from the colonial period through U.S. emancipation.

The almost seven hours of recorded interviews presented here took place between 1932 and 1975 in nine Southern states. Twenty-three interviewees, born between 1823 and the early 1860s, discuss how they felt about slavery, slaveholders, coercion of slaves, their families, and freedom.

"From the 1820s to the Civil War, African Americans assumed prominent roles in the transatlantic struggle to abolish slavery. In contrast to the popular belief that the abolitionist crusade was driven by wealthy whites, some 300 black abolitionists were regularly involved in the antislavery movement, heightening its credibility and broadening its agenda. The Black Abolitionist Digital Archive is a collection of over 800 speeches by antebellum blacks and approximately 1,000 editorials from the period. These important documents provide a portrait of black involvement in the anti-slavery movement; scans of these documents are provided as images and PDF files." - from website

The Civil Rights Digital Library brings together the resources of the University of Georgia and 75 other institutions from across the country to aid the study and understanding of the Civil Rights Movement. The site also contains access to more than 30 hours of unedited historical news film from the University of Georgia collections.

Compiled by the University of Michigan law school, this site collects information about and documents of civil rights cases in a variety of topics from across the United States.

This collection includes sound and video recordings, photographs, and documents collected by Rabin during his years working in Alabama and with local law enforcement.

"The Mission of the Alabama State University Center for the Study of Civil Rights and African-American Culture is two-fold: to serve as a clearinghouse for information concerning Montgomery, Alabama's pivotal role in the shaping and development of the modern civil rights movement, and to preserve and disseminate information reflective of socioeconomic conditions, political culture, and history of African-Americans in Montgomery."