LibGuides: Digital Primary and Secondary Sources: African American History

Lowcountry Digital History Initiative Exhibits

LDHI publishes digital exhibits highlighting underrepresented race, class, gender, and labor histories within the Lowcountry region, and in historically interconnected Atlantic World sites. These accessible online exhibits can be viewed anywhere.

A History of Burke High School in Charleston, South Carolina since 1894

A Tribute to Mother Emanuel Church

The Stono Preserve's Changing Landscape

Nat Fuller's Feast: The Life and Legacy of an Enslaved Cook in Charleston

Web Sources (Slavery)

The Abolition of the Slave Trade
The Abolition of the Slave Trade presents more than 8,000 pages of original essays, primary documents—books, pamphlets, articles, and illustrations—as well as secondary sources and original maps. The site is organized around eight themes that tell the forgotten story of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade to the United States and, more generally, to the Western Hemisphere. Each theme is presented through an essay, images, and texts.
African American Pamphlet Collection, 1822-1909 | Library of Congress
"African American Perspectives" gives a panoramic and eclectic review of African American history and culture and is primarily comprised of two collections in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division: the African American Pamphlet Collection and the Daniel A.P. Murray Collection with a date range of 1822 through 1909. Most were written by African-American authors, though some were written by others on topics of particular importance in African-American history.
African Americans at Jamestown | National Park Service
Description of early history of slavery at Jamestown, timeline of pertinent events, and bibliography of further reading.

Databases

AM Explorer This link opens in a new window
Due to excessively high inflation, as of January 2025, the College of Charleston's subscription to AM Explorer will be canceled. We may still retain access to a very limited number of collections. For more information, please contact Allison Jones, Electronic Resources and Serials Librarian (jonesak@cofc.edu). Provides millions of pages of primary sources, spanning the 15th to 21st centuries, with various themes including Borders and Migrations, Gender and Sexuality, Global History and more.
From Slavery to Freedom: The African-American Pamphlet Collection 1822-1909 This link opens in a new window
From the Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress. Presents 396 pamphlets published from 1822-1909 by African-American authors and others who wrote about slavery, African colonization, Emancipation, Reconstruction, and related topics.
Ralph J. Bunche Oral Histories Collection on the Civil Rights Movement This link opens in a new window
Includes transcriptions of close to 700 interviews with those who made history in the struggles for voting rights, against discrimination in housing,for the desegregation of the schools, to expose racism in hiring, in defiance of police brutality, and to address poverty in the African American communities.
Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive This link opens in a new window
This database is an archive of millions of pages of content thematically arranged to provide an understanding of slavery from a multinational perspective, divided into four parts: Part 1: Debates over Slavery and Abolition; Part 2: Slave Trade in the Atlantic World; Part 3: The Institution of Slavery; Part 4: The Age of Emancipation.
Accessible Archives This link opens in a new window
Encompasses diverse primary sources including 18th and 19th century newspapers, periodicals, American county histories, and more.
African American Experience This link opens in a new window
An American Mosaic Online Resource. Developed with the guidance of African American librarians and subject specialists, The African American Experience is both a broad and deep online database collection on African American history and culture. Providing thesis-driven, peer-reviewed scholarly essays, as well as primary source documents and classroom resources, it is a collection that taps a tremendous variety of sources essential to understanding African American history and its relation to greater U.S. history.

Archive of Americana
Searches Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans 1639-1800, Early American Imprints, Series II: Shaw-Shoemaker 1801-1819, and Early American Newspapers, Series I.

British Records on the Atlantic World, 1700- 1900 This link opens in a new window
This series brings together a wealth of collections spanning two centuries of Britain's colonization, commercial, missionary and even literary relations with Africa and the Americas.
The College of Charleston Libraries provides access to British Records of the Atlantic World, 1700-1900, a specialized series of British Online Archives collections. To access the collections in this series, check the “Subscribed Content Only” button.
Caribbean Newspapers, 1718-1876 This link opens in a new window
Created in cooperation with the American Antiquarian Societyone of the world's largest and most important newspaper repositoriesthis collection will provide students and scholars with easy access to more than 150 years of Caribbean and Atlantic history, politics and daily life. Featuring more than 140 eighteenth and nineteenth century titles, this unique resource is essential for researching Colonial history, the Atlantic slave trade, and many other aspects of the cultures and societies of the West Indies.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Offers archival journal collections in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences as well as robust image collections from libraries, museums, and archives including Artstor.
Making of America This link opens in a new window
Making of America (MoA) is a digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction.
America: History & Life This link opens in a new window
Index of literature covering the history and culture of the United States and Canada, from prehistory to the present. The database indexes journals from 1964 to present. This citation-only index provides links to full text via other CofC resources when available.
Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Contains digital facsimile images of both full pages and clipped articles for hundreds of primary source 19th century U.S. newspapers.
Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture and Law This link opens in a new window
Brings together all essential legal materials on slavery in the United States and the English-speaking world. This includes every statute passed by every colony and state on slavery, every federal statute dealing with slavery, and all reported state and federal cases on slavery.
Southern Life and African American History, 1775-1915, Plantations Records, Part 1 This link opens in a new window
Impact of plantations on both the American South and the nation.
U.S. History (Gale In Context) This link opens in a new window
Provides access to thousands of historical (primary) documents, as well as reference titles and full-text journals. Covers themes, events, individuals and periods in U.S. history from pre-Colonial times to the present.
World History (Gale In Context) This link opens in a new window
Provides access to historical (primary) documents, as well as reference titles and full-text journals. Covers themes, events, individuals and periods in world history from ancient times to the present.
African American Historical Serials Collection This link opens in a new window
Developed in conjunction with ATLA, a membership association of collectors and connectors in religion and theology, as part of an effort to preserve endangered serials to African American religious life and culture.

Select e-Books

Online Resources

Black Past Research Guide
List of online African American history resources organized by time period. Includes links to digitized versions of The Western Journal of Black Studies and Freedom's Journal.
International African American Museum (IAAM)
Center for Family History. Research center with a special focus on African American genealogy, includes digitized voter registration records, censuses, obituaries, family Bibles, etc.
Lowcountry Digital Library
Digitized collections of local area repositories. Some collections of interest to those researching African American history.
Lowcountry Africana
Searchable database of records that document the family and cultural heritage of African Americans in the historic rice-growing areas of South Carolina, Georgia and northeastern Florida.
SCIWAY: South Carolina’s Information Highway
Resources for African American history and culture.
Library of Congress: American Memory
African American History. Oral histories, church histories, music, legal documents, and more.
Freedman's Bureau Database Project
Digitized, transcribed documents from Freedman's Bureau Collection.

Adam Matthew Highlights

Slavery, Abolition, and Social Justice
Bringing together primary source documents from archives and libraries across the Atlantic world, this resource allows students and researchers to explore and compare unique material relating to the complex subjects of slavery, abolition and social justice. In addition to the primary source documents there is a wealth of useful secondary sources for research and teaching; including an interactive map, scholarly essays, tutorials, a visual sources gallery, chronology and bibliography.
African American Communities
Focusing predominantly on Atlanta, Chicago, New York, and towns and cities in North Carolina this resource presents multiple aspects of the African American community through pamphlets, newspapers and periodicals, correspondence, official records, reports and in-depth oral histories, revealing the prevalent challenges of racism, discrimination and integration, and a unique African American culture and identity.