Primary Sources

This collection offers more than 1,000 works curated from the Library Company of Philadelphia’s acclaimed collection Afro-Americana Imprints, 1535-1922. It covers many topical categories such as the growing body of work by African American writers; the portrayal of African Americans in art and literature; religion; race; early histories of slavery; the Civil War; Reconstruction; and others.

This collection offers more than 1,400 works curated from the Library Company of Philadelphia’s acclaimed collection Afro-Americana Imprints, 1535-1922. It covers many topical categories such as Reconstruction by state; works by African- American writers on race, slavery, and civil rights; the portrayal of African Americans in the Arts; early histories of the Civil War and slavery; and others.

The African American Historical Serials Collection features 173 periodicals spanning from 1816 through 1922. The periodicals in this collection include newspapers and magazines, in addition to reports and annuals from various African American organizations, including churches and educational and service institutions.

This collection from the American Antiquarian Society (AAS) contains five series of full-text periodicals covering all aspects of American life.

• Series 1 (1691 - 1820): Presents over 500 titles from 1691 through 1820. Representing over two centuries of print culture from early colonial imports to titles published on American soil during the Revolution and early republic.
• Series 2 (1821 - 1837): Presents over 1000 titles dating from 1821 through 1837. The subject matter covered in Series 2 represents the Jacksonian Democracy era in history. It is broad in scope and includes coverage of agriculture, entertainment, history, literary criticism, and politics.
• Series 3 (1838 - 1852): Presents over 1,800 titles dating from 1838 through 1852. The themes presented in Series 3 reveal a rapidly growing young nation, where industrialization, the railroads, regional political differences, and life on the western frontier were daily realities.
• Series 4 (1853 - 1865): Presents over 1,100 titles dating from 1853 through 1865. While the Civil War is a focal point of the collection, there is also a diverse record of the continuance of daily life for many Americans—both leading up to and during the war.
• Series 5 (1866 - 1877): Presents over 2,500 titles dating from 1866 through 1877. The themes presented in Series 5 reflect a nation following the Civil War, emancipation, and westward expansion.

Featuring select primary source documents related to critical people and events in African American history. Black Freedom Struggle in the United States contains over 3,000 documents focused on six different phases: Slavery and Abolitionist Movement (1790-1860), Civil War and Reconstruction Era (1861-1877), Jim Crow Era from 1878 to the Great Depression (1878-1932), New Deal and World War II (1933-1945), Civil Rights and Black Power Movements (1946-1975), Contemporary Era (1976-2000s).

This database fills the gap in academic literature about the community and contributions of people who experience disability, with a comprehensive and international set of resources to enrich study in a wide range of disciplines from media studies to philosophy. Includes 150,000 pages of primary sources, supporting materials, archives, documentaries, and interviews along with 125 hours of video.

The Archives of Sexuality and Gender program provides a robust and significant collection of primary sources for the historical study of sex, sexuality, and gender. With material dating back to the sixteenth century, researchers and scholars can examine how sexual norms have changed over time, health and hygiene, the development of sex education, the rise of sexology, changing gender roles, social movements and activism, erotica, and many other topical areas.

The Indigenous Peoples of North America Archive has been crafted with the guidance of an advisory board to support research into the history of indigenous peoples from the sixteenth century into the twentieth century, through a diverse range of document types ranging from newspapers to census records. Part I provides users with a robust set of resources that will enhance research and increase understanding of the historical experiences, cultural traditions and innovations, and political status of indigenous peoples in the United States and Canada. This module will help researchers to explore the impact of invasion and colonization on Indigenous Peoples in North America, and the intersection of Indigenous and European histories and systems of knowledge. Indigenous Peoples of North America, Part II: The Indian Rights Association, 1882-1986 provides much of the record of the efforts of the first such organization to address Native American interests and rights.

Archives Unbound includes more than 20 collections of primary source documents related to the Civil Rights Movement.

Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive consists of more than five million cross-searchable pages sourced from books, pamphlets, newspapers, periodicals, legal documents, court records, monographs, manuscripts, and maps from many different countries covering the history of the slave trade. The collection is made up of four parts:

• Part I: Debates over Slavery and Abolition
• Part II: Slave Trade in the Atlantic World
• Part III: The Institution of Slavery
• Part IV: Age of Emancipation

History Vault: Civil Rights and the Black Freedom Struggle contains the following collections:

• NAACP Papers: Board of Directors, Annual Conferences, Major Speeches, and National Staff Files; 
• NAACP Papers: Branch Files and Youth Department Files; 
• NAACP Papers: Special Subjects; 
• NAACP Papers: The NAACP's Major Campaigns--Education, Voting, Housing, Employment and Armed Forces; 
• NAACP Papers: The NAACP's Major Campaigns--Legal Department Files; 
• NAACP Papers: The NAACP's Major Campaigns--Scottsboro, Anti-Lynching, Criminal Justice, Peonage, Labor and Segregation and Discrimination Complaints and Responses.

History Vault: Women's Studies contains the following collections:

• Struggle for Women's Rights, Organizational Records, 1880-1990
• Women's Studies Manuscript Collections from the Schlesinger Library: Voting Rights, National Politics, and Reproductive Rights

A multidisciplinary digital library that includes all 2,800+ academic journals on JSTOR; spanning more than 60 disciplines across the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Access also includes more than two million primary source documents.

And, with the incorporation of Artstor's collections, JSTOR is now home to more than two million images.

Periodicals Archive Online is an archive that makes the backfiles of scholarly periodicals in the arts, humanities and social sciences available electronically, providing access to the searchable full-text of hundreds of titles. The database spans more than two centuries of content, 37 key subject areas, and multiple languages.

This collection is organized around the history of women in social movements in the U.S. between 1600 and 2000. It currently includes 124 document projects in addition to an archive of more than 5,100 documents; two biographical dictionaries, Online Biographical Dictionary of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the United States and Notable American Women; book, film, and website reviews; notes from the archives; and teaching tools.