University of Iowa Libraries LibGuides - African American Studies

Selected Web Resources

African American Perspectives: Pamphlets from the Daniel A.P. Murray Collection 1818-1907
A panoramic and eclectic review of African-American history and culture, spanning almost 100 years from the early 19th through the early 20th centuries, with the bulk of the material published between 1875 and 1900.
African American Poetry
The early history of African American poetry, from the first recorded poem by an African American (Lucy Terry Prince's 'Bars Fight', c.1746) to the major poets of the nineteenth century, including Paul Laurence Dunbar and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper.
African-American Cultural Museum of Iowa
The Cedar Rapids museum, opened in 2003, offers exhibits on the history of African and African Americans in the United States, with emphasis on Iowa.
African-American Women: On-line Archival Collection
The content for this website derives from the Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture, and provides access to online archival collections featuring scanned pages and texts of the writings of African-American women.
Amistad Research Center
An independent manuscripts library dedicated to preserving African American and ethnic history and culture.
Archives of African American Music and Culture (AAAMC)
Established in 1991, AAAMC is a repository of materials covering various musical idioms and cultural expressions from the post-World War II era.
Association of African American Museums
The Association of African American Museums (AAAM) is a non-profit membership organisation for black museums, cultural institutions and black museum professionals in America.
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.
Center for Black Music Research
The Centre for Black Music Research (CBMR), is a research unit of Columbia College Chicago, and is "devoted to research, preservation, and dissemination of information about the history of black music on a global scale".
Digital History : African American Voices
Using primary sources this site gives firsthand accounts of the slave trade. The narratives are divided into sections covering: enslavement; the middle passage; conditions of life; religion; punishment; resistance; escape; and emancipation.
Frederick Douglass Papers
The Frederick Douglass Papers provide full-text access to a wealth of materials relating to the life, work, and legacy of African-American slave and anti-slavery campaigner Frederick Douglass.
HistoryMakers : African American history archive
HistoryMakers is an American non-profit educational institution. It seeks to promote recognisition of the recognition of black African Americans to the history and culture of the USA.
In Motion: African American Migration Experience
It is an invaluable source for the study of Black American history, providing free access to over 16,000 texts, 8,000 images and 60 maps relating to Black migration movements from the 15th - 21st century.
Let Your Motto Be Resistance: African American Portraits
This site provides free access to an online exhibition from the National Portrait Gallery. It comprises a collection of photographs of key figures from the African American community from the 19-20th Centuries.
Say it Plain: A Century of Great African American Speeches
Provides access to materials relating to an American Radio Works documentary on famous Black American speeches of the 20th Century.
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
A national research library devoted to collecting, preserving and providing access to resources documenting the experiences of peoples of African descent throughout the world.
The African American Mosaic
A Library of Congress Resource Guide for the Study of Black History & Culture
The African American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship
This Special Presentation of the Library of Congress exhibition, The African-American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship, showcases the Library's incomparable African-American collections.
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database
Has information on almost 35,000 slaving voyages that forcibly embarked over 10 million Africans for transport to the Americas between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.
TheBlackPast.org : an online reference guide to African American history
This website has been created by staff associated with the University of Washington, Seattle. It provides free access to materials relating to Black African American history from the 18th Century to the present day.
Twentieth-Century African American Poetry
A database of modern and contemporary African American poetry, featuring almost 9,000 poems by 62 of the most important African American poets of the last century, including Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Imamu Amiri Baraka, Audre Lorde and Rita Dove.
W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research
The Du Bois Institute is the nation's oldest research center dedicated to the study of the history, culture, and social institutions of Africans and African Americans.