Arts, Music, Photography, and Theatre

• PBS: I'll Make Me a World
  Celebrates the achievements of 20th-century African-American writers, dancers, painters, actors, filmmakers, musicians, and other artists.
  
  
• Separate Cinema
  Archive of movie posters, lobby cards, stills, and assorted ephemera of historic black drama.
  
  
• A Great Day in Harlem
  Explores Jazz history through a photograph of Jazz musicians taken by Art Kane in Harlem in August 1958.
  
  
• Library of Congress American Memory
  African-American sheet music from 1850-1920, sound recordings primarily of blues and gospel songs and related documentation.
  
  
• Center for Black Music Research
  Information about the history of black music worldwide such as jazz, gospel, calypso, rhythm & blues, reggae, ragtime, blues, hip-hop, salsa, samba, son, zydeco. Includes bibliographies and sample discographies.
  
  
• Louis Armstrong Online
  Primary materials on Louis Armstrong and information about his archives at Queens College, CUNY.
  
  

• African-American Journey
  Biographical information on contemporary and historical African-American figures.
  
  
• Library of Congress American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940
  First person accounts of African-Americans describing the informant's family education, income, occupation, political views, religion and mores, medical needs, diet and miscellaneous observations collected by employees of the US Work Projects Administration (WPA) from 1936-1940.
  
  
• First Person Narratives of the American South, 1860-1920
  Part of the Library of Congress American Memory collection. Includes a number of narratives by ex-slaves. Click Search and type slave narrative.
  
  
• North American Slave Narratives, Beginnings to 1920
  Full text narratives including "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" by Harriet Jacobs and Booker T Washington's "Up from Slavery: A Biography."
  
  
• Remembering Slavery
  Companion to the book "Remembering Slavery: African-Americans Talk about Their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Emancipation."
  
  
• United States Colored Troops Database
  A database of more than 20,000 names of individuals who served in the United States Colored Troops. Also includes regimental histories of the units in which they served.
  
  
• American Visionaries: Frederick Douglass
  An online exhibit of the life and achievements of Frederick Douglass.
  
  

History

• Library of Congress
  Rare books, government documents, manuscripts, maps, musical scores, plays, films, and recordings about African-American history & culture. Click Index A-Z and scroll down to “African-American History.”
  
  
• Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)
  An index of more than 100 PBS sites related to the African-American experience, including African-American farms and farmers, the African-American press, slavery, and class divisions within the African-American community.
  
  
• National Park Service
  Documents on African-American history including the Underground Railroad, slavery, and military service.
  
  
• The Marcus Garvey Papers Project
  Provides sample documents from each volume of the Marcus Garvey Papers and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers. Work in progress.
  
  
• The Martin Luther King Papers Project
  Primary and secondary research materials about Martin Luther King, Jr. Work in progress.
  
  
• Records of Ship Movement between Africa and the Americas 1817-1843
  Provides access to some raw data and documentation on ship movements between Africa and the Americas from 1817-1843. Includes ship’s port of arrival, data of arrival, type of vessel, tonnage, master’s name, number of guns, number of crew, national flag, number of slaves, port of departure, number of days of voyage, and mortality. For more comprehensive datasets ask for the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade database on CD-ROM at the 1st floor reference desk.

Literature

• African-American Women Writers of the 19th Century
  Full text works of biography and autobiography, fiction, poetry and essays by African-American women writers.
  
  
• Givens Collection of African American Literature
  Contains more than 6,000 books, pamphlets, manuscripts, letters, and ephemera of African-American literature from the eighteenth century to the present.
  
  

Research Centers, Museums, and Libraries

• The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem
  Manuscripts, archives, rare books, film, sound recordings on African-American history and culture.
  
  
• Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia
  Cartoons, postcards, prints, posters, signs, "colored" theatre tickets jokes, artifacts, golliwog toys, magazine advertisements, etc. Virtual equivalent of the Jim Crow Museum at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Michigan.
  
  
• Library of Congress
  Digitized documents, photographs, sound recordings, film, slave narratives, and other resources on African-American history and culture.
  
  
• African-American Studies Libraries, Museums and Repositories
  Historical documents, bibliographies, biographies, and statistics.
  

Return to: African-American Studies at NYU Libraries