Black History Month Resources: Reading & Research

• Black Freedom Struggle This link opens in a new window

  In this website [developed by ProQuest], we present primary source documents from several of the time periods in American History when the river of the Black Freedom Struggle ran more powerfully, while not losing sight of the fierce, often violent opposition that Black people have faced on the road to freedom.

  This website contains approximately 1,600 documents focused on six different phases of Black Freedom:

  • Slavery and the Abolitionist Movement (1790-1860)
  • The Civil War and the Reconstruction Era (1861-1877)
  • Jim Crow Era from 1878 to the Great Depression (1878-1932)
  • The New Deal and World War II (1933-1945)
  • The Civil Rights and Black Power Movements (1946-1975)
  • The Contemporary Era (1976-2000)

  The documents presented here represent a selection of primary sources available in several ProQuest databases. -- ProQuest

• Black Life in America This link opens in a new window

  "From the early days of slavery to modern times, people of African descent have had a profound impact on American history. This primary source collection offers an expansive window into centuries of African American history, culture and daily life—as well as the ways the dominant culture has portrayed and perceived people of African descent. Where does the content come from? The content in this database is sourced from more than 19,000 American and global news sources, including over 400 current and historical Black publications. What time period does it cover? From the early 18th century to the early 21st – from pre-Revolution America to the modern era." -- NewsBank

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  This resource is provided by the Tulsa City-County Library. In order to access it you must have a valid public library card. Your TU login will not work. If you do not have a library card you may apply online for one by clicking here.
• Independent Voices This link opens in a new window

  "Independent Voices is an open access digital collection of alternative press newspapers, magazines and journals, drawn from the special collections of participating libraries. These periodicals were produced by feminists, dissident GIs, campus radicals, Native Americans, anti-war activists, Black Power advocates, Hispanics, LGBT activists, the extreme right-wing press and alternative literary magazines during the latter half of the 20th century." -- website
• Born in Slavery This link opens in a new window

  "Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and assembled and microfilmed in 1941 as the seventeen-volume Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves. This online collection is a joint presentation of the Manuscript and Prints and Photographs Divisions of the Library of Congress and includes more than 200 photographs from the Prints and Photographs Division that are now made available to the public for the first time. Born in Slavery was made possible by a major gift from the Citigroup Foundation." -- Library of Congress
• American Politics and Society from Kennedy to Watergate (1960-1975) This link opens in a new window

  "American Politics and Society consists of a wide range of 19th and 20th century material. Going in chronological order, the first module in this category are the papers of one of the most prolific inventors in American History, Thomas A. Edison Papers. The other modules in this category consist of immigration records to the United States during the massive immigration wave from 1880-1930; legal collections from the Harvard Law School Library featuring the papers of three Supreme Court Justices, the first Black federal judge, and one of the most infamous criminal cases of the 20th century; papers of the Progressive leader Robert M. La Follette; records from the Franklin D. Roosevelt White House and other federal agencies on the New Deal and World War II; FBI Files on radical politics; records of the Truman and Eisenhower Presidencies; records of Students for a Democratic Society, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and other anti-Vietnam War organizations; and records on American Politics from the beginning of the Kennedy administration through the Nixon Administration." -- ProQuest