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African American History Research Seminar

Databases

Black Thought and Culture
The full text of approximately 100,000 pages of non-fiction writing by leading figures in African American life and culture. Includes books, articles and essays, speeches, interviews, pamphlets and correspondence. Includes 135 items relating to the Black Panther Party, as well as the complete run of the Black Panther newspaper, 1966 through 1980. Rutgers-restricted Access
Black Drama: 1850 to the Present
Full text of 1,200 plays written from the mid-1800s to the present by 201 playwrights from North America, English-speaking Africa, the Caribbean, and other African diaspora countries. Includes more than four hundred previously unpublished plays by writers such as Amiri Baraka, Ed Bullins, Randolph Edmonds, Femi Euba, Zora Neale Hurston, and many others. Rutgers-restricted Access

Digital Collections

Library of Congress: African American History Collections
22 digital collections from the Library of Congress.
African Activist Archive
Online archive of almost 14,000 documents, photos, posters, remembrances and interviews from the 1950s through the 1990s relating to the U.S. African solidarity movement.
In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience: Source Materials
Images, texts, maps and other source materials
Brown v. Board of Education Digital Archive
Court cases, oral arguments, oral histories, images, statistics, and a bibliography.
Digital Harlem
Information, drawn from legal records, newspapers and other archival and published sources, about everyday life in New York City's Harlem neighborhood in the years 1915-1930.
Scottsboro Boys
Digital collection from Michigan State University.
Uncle Tom's Cabin & American Culture: A Multi-Media Archive
National Museum of African American History & Culture: The Collection
Historical artifacts, documents, photography and media.

Oral History

The Krueger-Scott Oral History Collection
Audio files of over 100 interviews with African American Newarkers who had migrated to the city between 1910-1970, as well as those whose local roots spanned generations. Interviews were conducted in 1995-1999 as a project of the Krueger-Scott Cultural Center.
Krueger Scott Transcripts
The Newark Public Library has transcripts of the Krueger Scott interviews; a number of them are available as part of the Newark Public Library Digital Collections.
Inventory to the Rutgers-Newark in the 1960s and 1970s Oral History Collection, 1990-1992.
"The collection consists of cassette recordings of oral history interviews conducted by librarian emeritus Gilbert Cohen. These interviews document the city of Newark and Rutgers University-Newark in the 1960s and 1970s. Sixty people associated with the Rutgers-Newark campus were interviewed including students, faculty, administration, and staff representing a wide spectrum of political beliefs and levels of activism." Includes links to online audio and transcripts.
Queer Newark Oral History Project
Includes video interviews, with transcripts, of LGBTQ indivuals associated with Newark, as well as a rich collection of resources including a Queer Newark Bibliography and a History of Queer Club Spaces in Newark.
The HistoryMakers
Video interviews with some 2500 historically significant African Americans. Rutgers-restricted Access

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

SNCC 50th Anniversary Conference. San Francisco, Calif., California Newsreel, 2011.
Streaming videos of the conference proceedings of veteran and youth activists gathered at Shaw University in North Carolina to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), an organization which formed the vanguard of the Civil Rights Movement. 37 videos of presentations, discussions, and concerts. Many of the programs feature SNCC veterans who provide an invaluable oral history of the Movement. Rutgers-restricted Access

FBI Surveillance

Archives Unbound: Federal Surveillance of African Americans, 1920-1984. FBI files on prominent African Americans and African-American organizations. The documents total approximately 88,000 pages and include published material such as newspaper clippings, transcripts of public meetings and speeches, and reports of special agents. Subjects of the investigations include Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, Paul Robeson, Thurgood Marshall, the NAACP, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Black Panther Party, and the Highland Folk School.

Negro Motorist Green Book

Negro Motorist Green Book. 1949 edition. Listed businesses (hotels, boarding houses, restaurants, beauty shops, barber shops, etc.) that welcomed African American travelers.

1956 Negro Motorist Green Book

The New York Public Library has digitized The Green Book from 1936-1967

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