HIST 3251: Race & Violence in U.S. History
Primary Sources -- Library Databases
- Proquest Historical Primary Sources This link opens in a new windowProvides access to 50 different databases containing primary sources relating to a variety of disciplines, including Art, Art History, Film Studies, History, Southern Studies, and Women's/Gender Studies. Contains an extensive collection focusing on African American studies and the civil rights movement, which includes the NAACP papers and the Chicago Defender Archive. Also contains historical documents from the Digital National Security Archive, as well as historical newspapers and periodicals.
- ProQuest History Vault This link opens in a new windowCollection areas in History Vault focus on the Black Freedom Movement of the 20th Century, Southern Life and Slavery, Women's Rights, International Relations, American Politics and Society with a strong focus on the 20th Century, and labor unions, workers and radical politics in the 20th Century. On the topic of civil rights and Black Freedom, History Vault contains records of four of the most important civil rights organizations of the 1950s and 1960s: NAACP, SCLC, SNCC, and CORE.
- Oxford African American Studies Center This link opens in a new windowA comprehensive online collection from Oxford University Press focusing on the lives and events which have shaped African American and African history and culture. This database contains both primary and secondary sources.
- Black Thought and Culture This link opens in a new windowContains 1,303 sources with 1,210 authors, covering the non-fiction published works of leading African Americans. Particular care has been taken to index this material so that it can be searched more thoroughly than ever before. Where possible the complete published non-fiction works are included, as well as interviews, journal articles, speeches, essays, pamplets, letters and other fugitive material.
- Documenting White Supremacy & its Opponents in the 1920s This link opens in a new windowThis collection includes papers promoting and opposing white supremacy, published mainly in the 1920s. It brings together for the first time local, regional, and national newspapers published by Klan organizations and by sympathetic publishers from across the US. It also includes key anti-Klan voices from newspapers published by American Black, Catholic, and Jewish communities.
Primary Sources Online
- Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror.Equal Justice Initiative. 2017.
Click on "Report" for full text.
What Are Primary Sources?
Primary sources are generally defined as first-hand accounts by a direct participant or observer of an event. Some examples are:
- Diaries, letters, or interviews
- Official government or court records
- Newspaper articles, written at the time of the event
- Audio recordings or oral histories
- Speeches
- Scrapbooks
- Paintings or photographs
- Films, television, or even advertisements
Primary Sources in ThomCat & PASCAL
Search for primary sources in ThomCat [or any library catalog] by using the following keywords in combination with other search terms relevant to your topic.Not the truncation (*) symbol used at the end of certain words to retrieve singular or plural forms.
- sources
- diaries
- letters
- correspondence
- personal narratives
- oral history
- interview*
- speech*
- document*
- memoir*
Examples:
- "freedom summer" AND interview*
- "Fannie Lou Hammer" AND speech*
- "Civil Rights" AND sources