University Libraries: HIST 205: The African Experience in American History: Primary Document Collections

Primary Document Collections

Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive Parts 1 - 4 This link opens in a new window
RECOMMENDED: Part 1: Debates over Slavery and Abolition; Part 2: The Slave Trade in the Atlantic World; Part 3: The Institution of Slavery: Part 4: Age of Emancipation. Contains full-text documents books, manuscripts, newspapers, broadsides, and legal documents on the transatlantic slave trade, the global movement for the abolition of slavery, and the legal, personal, and economic aspects of the slavery system from the sixteenth through the nineteenth century.
History Vault This link opens in a new window
Civil Rights and the Black Freedom Struggle subcollection
Collection contains the NAACP Papers and federal government records, organizational records, and personal papers regarding the Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century
Southern Live, Slavery, and the Civil War subcollection
Records of antebellum Southern plantations from the Revolution through the Civil War. Includes business records and personal papers.
Federal Surveillance of African Americans, 1920-1984 This link opens in a new window
Documents originated by the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation on operatives investigating politically suspect figures and organizations. Topics include A. Philip Randolph, the Black Panther Party of NC, the Committee for Public Justice, Malcolm X, Mississippi Burning, NAACP, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, and many others. Dates of coverage: 1920-1984.
Federal Response to Radicalism in the 1960s This link opens in a new window
FBI Library documents on on the internal organization, personnel, and activities of some of the most prominent radical groups in the United States in the 1960s. Subjects include COINTELPRO, Abbie Hoffman, the United Farm Workers, Students for a Democratic Society, Kent State University, and Brown Berets. Dates of coverage: 1956-1971
We Were Prepared for the Possibility of Death: Freedom Riders in the South, 1961 This link opens in a new window
FBI Library documents on civil rights activists, the Freedom Riders, who rode interstate buses into the segregated South to test the United States Supreme Court decision in Boynton v. Virginia, which outlawed racial segregation in the restaurants and waiting rooms in terminals serving buses that crossed state lines.

Government Information

U.K. Parliamentary Papers This link opens in a new window
Provides full-text access to the Parliamentary Papers. They are the working documents of government for all areas of social, political, economic and foreign policy, showing how issues were explored and legislation was formed. Coverage 1801-2005.
Proquest Congressional This link opens in a new window
Indexes and abstracts of congressional committee publications, including hearings, committee prints, reports, documents, and public laws. It includes the full text of Congressional reports and documents (1789-1969), Executive branch documents (1789-1942), bills and resolutions (1789-present), hearings (1824-), Congressional Record (1985-1997), CRS Reports (1916-present), Statutes at Large (1789-), bill text (1989-), the Serial Set (1789-), Federal Register (1980-) and the current U.S. Code and the Code of Federal Regulations.