Find Primary Sources - BLST-231/HIST-247 African American History: Slave Trade to Reconstruction - Course Guide

Digitized Archival Collections

American Slavery Collection (1820-1922)
Digital edition of the American Antiquarian Society's holdings of slavery and abolition materials, with more than 3,500 works.
Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice (1490-2007)
Thousands of pamphlets, books, paintings, maps and images documenting the varieties and legacy of slavery, the social justice perspective, and the continued existence of slavery today.

African American Perspectives
Rare books, pamphlets and other materials with a date range of 1822 through 1909. From the Library of Congress Rare Books and Special Collections Division.
Colored Conventions
From 1830 until the 1890s, already free and once captive Black people came together in state and national political meetings called "Colored Conventions." This project brings together digitized versions of proceedings, newspaper coverage, and petitions related to the Conventions.
Frederick Douglass Papers
The Frederick Douglass Papers at the Library of Congress presents the papers of the nineteenth-century African-American abolitionist who escaped from slavery and then risked his own freedom by becoming an outspoken antislavery lecturer, writer, and publisher.
Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection
This collection from Cornell University includes pamphlets and leaflets documenting the anti-slavery struggle at local, regional, and national levels.
Umbra Search: African American History
Collection of over 400,000 digitized sources in African American history, from more than 1,000 libraries, museums and archives.

Historical Newspapers and Periodicals

African American Newspapers (History Commons) (1827-1902)
Starting with Freedom's Journal in 1827, the database will eventually contain all major African-American newspapers published in the U.S. during the 19th century.
African American Newspapers (Readex) (1827-1998)
Provides access to approximately 270 U.S. newspapers from more than 35 states and chronicles a century and a half of the African American experience.
America's Historical Newspapers (1690-1980)
Searchable archive of American newspapers including Early American Newspapers (1690-1922) and Hispanic American Newspapers (1808-1980).
American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals Collection (1684-1912)
Comprehensive collection of early American periodicals, with coverage of advertising, health, women's issues, science, the history of slavery, religious issues, culture and the arts, and more.
American Periodicals (1740-1940)
Digitized reproductions of more than 1,100 18th and 19th century newspapers and periodicals.

Microfilm

These collections are available on Microfilm at Frost Library. If you are new to microfilm, check out this video tutorial on using microfilm, microfiche, and the machines you use to read them.

American Negro Historical Society Collection, 1790-1905
See the Guide to Scholarly Resources Microfilm Edition (REF E185 .A48 1998) for an index to this collection.
Black Abolitionist Papers 1830-1865
See the Guide to the Microfilm Edition (REF E449 .B625 1981) for an index to this collection.

Find primary sources in the library catalog

Scholars and publishers compile collections of primary sources that can be found in library catalogs, such as the Amherst Catalog, the Five Colleges Catalog, or World Cat. Examples include published manuscripts, diaries, or letters of an individual (In Lincoln's Hand: His Original Manuscripts), or sources related to a particular topic (The Nazi Concentration Camps, 1933-1939: A Documentary History).

Like every other item in the catalog, these collections are assigned standardized subject headings or subheadings, making them easier to find. To locate primary sources in a library catalog, it is best to use the "Advanced Search" feature, with keywords for your topic in the first search box, and the subject headings for the kind of source you are looking for in the second search box (make sure the two boxes are connected with the "and" dropdown, so you are searching for both concepts).

Example:

You can search for a variety of primary sources by inserting "or" between each type of source.

Example:

Once you find an item that looks appropriate, you can identify the relevant subject headings to modify your search, or click on the link to see if there are other works with the same subjects. For example, having found a relevant book in the Amherst catalog using the above search terms, you would find the following subject headings:

Clicking on the first link takes you to a list of subject headings that you can click on to find more sources:

Common sub-headings for primary sources include:

Archival Resources
Archives
Correspondence [note: use this if you are looking for letters]
Diaries
Interviews
Notebooks, sketchbooks
Personal narratives
Photographs
Pictorial works
Sources
Speeches

For a more exhaustive list, with examples, see MIT Libraries' page on primary source subject headings. You can copy and paste the following into a search box as "Subject Keywords" [the 'or' between terms allows the catalog to search for any of the terms, not all of them]:
"archival resources" or archives or correspondence or diaries or interviews or notebooks or sketchbooks or "personal narratives" or photographs or "pictorial works" or sources or speeches