African American History: Primary source websites

Digital collections and presentations from the Library of Congress

All 103 issues of Freedom's journal, an African-American New York newspaper printed from March 1827 to March 1829, is available online in PDF form thanks to the efforts of the Wisconson Historical Society.

From 1936 to 1938, over 2,300 former slaves from across the American South were interviewed by writers and journalists under the aegis of the Works Progress Administration. This web site provides an opportunity to read a sample of these narratives, and to see some of the photographs taken at the time of the interviews.

Virtual exhibits, digital collections, and research tools courtesy of one of the country's largest museums to specialize in African American history.

A mapping project based on statistics taken from various New York archives. Digital Harlem forms one part of a collaborative research project on everyday life in Harlem between 1915 and 1930. Created by researchers at the University of Sydney, in Australia.

Provides access to information gathered and analyzed over an eighteen-year period from petitions to southern legislatures and country courts filed between 1775 and 1867 in the fifteen slaveholding states in the United States and the District of Columbia.

3,000 FBI documents available for public viewing online through the Freedom of Information Act. Includes a Civil Rights section, and files onfamous historical figures.

The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, often referred to as the Freedmen's Bureau, was established in the War Department by an act of March 3, 1865. The Bureau supervised all relief and educational activities relating to refugees and freedmen, including issuing rations, clothing and medicine.

Drawing upon the rich resources of the National Archives of the United States, the editors of this project explain how black people traversed the bloody ground from slavery to freedom between the beginning of the Civil War in 1861 and the beginning of Radical Reconstruction in 1867. Supported by the University of Maryland.

Harlem 1900-1940 is a brief survey of some of the main personalities and events that shaped this Manhatten neighborhood in the early days when it became known as the "Capital of the Negro World". Presented by the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

A large database containing texts, images, maps, and educational resources based around thirteen defining migrations that have formed and transformed African America and the nation. Presented by the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

Search through approximately 500 historical photographic portraits including daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes, and cabinet card photographs. Digitized courtesy of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.