U.S. History: Slavery
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Amistad Research CenterOnline exhibits, digitised primary-source collections and archival materials documenting African-American history, civil-rights movements and related cultural themes.
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Enslaved: Peoples of the Historical Slave TradeData, documents, and digital collections that trace the lives, movements, and networks of enslaved people across the Atlantic world from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries.
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Frederick Douglass PapersSpeeches, correspondence, autobiographical writings, and other documents that trace Douglass’s life as an abolitionist, writer, and statesman.
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The Geography of Slavery in VirginiaMore than 4,000 digitized runaway and captured slave and indentured servant ads from Virginia and Maryland newspapers, with full transcripts, images, and maps and timelines covering 1736 to 1803.
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Secession Era Editorials ProjectTanscribed, searchable newspaper editorials from the 1850s through the Civil War era, enabling comparison of regional perspectives on slavery, secession, and national politics.
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Slavery and Abolition in the U.S.: Select PublicationsA digital collection of nineteenth-century books and pamphlets from Dickinson College and Millersville University that presents first-person narratives, legal records, sermons, and anti-slavery tracts with searchable transcriptions.
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Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture & Law This link opens in a new windowAll known legal materials on slavery in the United States and the English-speaking world, as well as materials on free African-Americans in the colonies and the U.S. before 1870. Included are every statute passed by every state and colony, all federal statutes, all reported state and federal cases on slavery, and hundreds of books and pamphlets on the subject.
NOTE: The EMU Library does NOT subscribe to the HeinOnline collection materials listed under the tab Scholarly Articles & Other Documents.
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Digital Library on American Slavery (University of North Carolina at Greensboro)Public records about enslavement in the American South with detailed personal and property data for over 100,000 individuals.
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North American Slave NarrativesDocumenting autobiographical narratives and related works of enslaved and self-emancipated people from the eighteenth through early twentieth centuries.
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Slavery and Abolition in the U.S.: Select PublicationsA digital collection of nineteenth-century books and pamphlets from Dickinson College and Millersville University that presents first-person narratives, legal records, sermons, and anti-slavery tracts with searchable transcriptions.
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Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave LifeHistorical images that document the African slave trade and the lives of enslaved people and their descendants across the Atlantic world.
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Slaves and the CourtsIncludes 105 digitized books and manuscripts totaling about 8,700 pages that document legal cases, statutes, and debates about slavery in the United States and Great Britain.
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Slave Societies Digital ArchiveProvides access to more than 700,000 digitized records from the sixteenth through twentieth centuries documenting Africans and their descendants across the Atlantic world.
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The Texas Slavery ProjectA digital history site on the Republic of Texas (1837–1845) that visualizes the spread of slavery with interactive maps and a searchable database built from surviving tax records.
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Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade DatabaseA research portal with primary datasets on the slave trade across the Atlantic and within the Americas, including more than 36,000 documented voyages, plus maps, visualizations, and tools to explore routes, ships, and people.
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Umbra Search - African American HistoryA portal that aggregates hundreds of thousands of digitized materials on African American history from more than 1,000 libraries and archives.
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Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture: A Multi-Media ArchiveA multimedia archive of primary sources on Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel and its impact, including editions of the text, contemporary reviews, songs, plays, films, illustrations, and material culture.
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Unknown No Longer: A Database of Virginia Slave NamesSearch for legal, estate, court, and other historical records that reflect the lives of free and enslaved African Americans in Virginia, especially from the colonial through antebellum period.
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Voices Remembering Slavery: Freed People Tell Their StoriesFirsthand narratives and interviews with formerly enslaved people recorded between 1932 and 1975, preserving their memories of slavery and its aftermath.
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Yale Slavery & Abolition PortalFind primary sources on slavery, abolition, and resistance across Yale libraries and galleries, with options to browse by repository or search by topic.
U.S. History: Black Americans
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AACHM Living Oral History Digital Collection ( African American Cultural & Historical Museum of Washtenaw County and the Ann Arbor District Library)Includes historical photographs and news articles from Ann Arbor District Library's Community Collections on topics such as community centers, education, housing, employment, entrepreneurship, and faith.
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African-American Mosaic (Library of Michigan)More than 240 books, government documents, manuscripts, maps, musical scores, films, and recordings that trace the African American experience from slavery through the twentieth century.
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African American Heritage (National Archives)A portal to federal records, images, and documents chronicling the African American experience in the United States, including slavery, migration, military service, civil rights, and social change.
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African American Migration ExperienceAn archive of over 16,500 pages of texts, 8,300 illustrations, and 67 maps documenting thirteen major migration movements of people of African descent and the shaping of African-American history in the U.S. and the Western Hemisphere.
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African American Odyssey (Library of Congress)Over 240 digitized books, manuscripts, maps, images, music scores, films, and recordings that chart the African American experience and the long struggle for citizenship from the early national era through the twentieth century.
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Africans in AmericaOnline archive with historical documents, images and primary-source materials that trace the history of slavery and its legacy in the United States.
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American Black Journal: Documenting Detroit & American History from African-American Perspectives (Michigan State University)The digital archive of the television program American Black Journal presents a searchable collection of interviews, roundtable discussions, field-produced segments, and other audiovisual materials featuring African American perspectives on politics, culture, and community life in Detroit and beyond, dating back to 1968.
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Black Freedom Struggle in the United States: A Selection of Primary SourcesDigitized primary sources curated by time periods: Slavery and Abolitionist Movement (1790-1860); Civil War and Reconstruction Era (1861-1877); Jim Crow Era from 1878 to the Great Depression (1878-1932); New Deal and World War II (1933-1945); Civil Rights and Black Power Movements (1946-1975); Contemporary Era (1976-2000s).
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Booker T. Washington Online ResourcesLibrary of Congress research guide with digitized papers, speeches, correspondence, and photographs by and about Booker T. Washington.
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Digital Public Library of America - African AmericansPhotographs, manuscripts, records, and other primary sources that document the history and experiences of African Americans in the United States.
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Digital Records of the Colored Conventions ProjectHundreds of digitized documents, including minutes, letters, speeches, and images that document the nineteenth-century organizing efforts of free and fugitive Black Americans through the Colored Conventions Movement from 1830 to 1890.
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Freedom Summer ProjectOver 40,000 pages of documents, letters, diaries, and photographs that record the efforts of civil rights activists who worked to challenge segregation and expand voting rights in Mississippi.
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Historical African American Newspapers Available OnlineLinks to digitized African American newspapers you can read online, grouped by era from Antebellum and the Civil War through Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, with notes on titles and coverage.
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Jim Crow and Segregation (from the Library of Congress)Photographs, newspapers, and legal documents for studying segregation and the civil rights struggle.
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Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers ProjectOffers introductions, sample documents, photo and sound archives, and publication information that document Marcus Garvey, the UNIA, and the broader Garvey movement.
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Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education InstituteAccess to the King Papers and the OKRA database, offering searchable primary sources such as speeches, sermons, letters, and manuscripts.
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Rosa Parks PapersPresents approximately 7,500 manuscripts and 2,500 photographs spanning 1866 to 2006 that document Parks’s private life and public civil rights activism, with the strongest coverage from the 1950s through the 1990s.
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Schomburg Center for Research in Black CultureCurated, multimedia explorations of Black history and the African diaspora featuring digitized items, essays, videos, and related resources from New York Public Library collections.
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Who Speaks for the Negro?A collection of 2,000+ political speeches from the U.S. civil rights era, with transcripts and audio.