Library Research Guides: AFR 244: Women & Slavery: Home

Biographical Sources

Oxford African American Studies Center This link opens in a new window
Rich source of biographies for both people of African descent throughout the Americas, and a wide array of topics relating to slavery.
Biography (Gale In Context) This link opens in a new window
Over 650,000 biographical entries covering international figures from all time periods and areas of study; search by name, occupation, nationality, ethnicity, birth/death dates and places, or gender.

Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938
From the Library of Congress, a collection of Slave Narratives recorded in the 1930s and transcribed. This is a searchable database of 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves.
North American Slave Narratives
Autobiographies of former slaves, from Documenting the American South (UNC-Chapel Hill)
Last Seen: Finding Family after Slavery
Thousands of advertisements placed in in hundreds of African-American newspapers by former enslaved people searching for family members and loved ones after emancipation.
Fugitive slave advertisements
A selection of databases (scroll down for links), including Freedom on the Move, ads from Haiti (in French), and more.

North American Women's Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new window
Mostly white women observers of women in slavery, including the American South, parts of the Caribbean, and Brazil.

America: History & Life with Full Text This link opens in a new window
Many great articles on all aspects of U.S. history

African American Newspapers, 1827-1998 This link opens in a new window
270 newspapers published in 36 states, including rare 19th-century titles.

Mainstream historical newspapers
compare how your topic was covered by mainstream media