For many more primary source collections, see our primary source guides for History and Literature. I'm happy to help you find primary sources relevant to your topic.
A growing collection of nearly 3,000 oral history video interviews with both well-known and unsung African Americans, highlighting the history, lives, careers, and accomplishments of African Americans across a wide variety of fields.
Thousands of articles by scholars focused on the lives and events that have shaped African American and African history and culture, along with primary source documents, encyclopedias, and biographies.
The following collections are part of AM Explorer, a large database of primary source collections from Adam Matthew Digital. A Wellesley login is required.
Archival records of the American Committee on Africa (ACOA), an organization whose mission was "to support African liberation struggles and inform the American public about African issues." Documents are primarily from an American perspective on Africa on colonialism, apartheid, religion, and more.
Dates: 1953-1981 CE
Primary sources on the history of South Africa's apartheid regime from South Africa, Britain, the United States, and other powers, including letters, telegrams, reports, trial papers, news clippings, activists' biographies, and first-hand accounts of events.
Dates: 1948-1980 CE
Focusing primarily on Atlanta, Chicago, New York, and North Carolina, this resource documents multiple aspects of African American communities through pamphlets, news, letters, photos, maps, and oral histories. Themes include arts and culture, civil rights and Black power, education, policing, and faith and religion.
Dates: 1810-2011 CE
British government documents from the modern period of European colonization of the African continent through independence movements.
Dates: 1834-1966 CE
Primary sources tracking forms of colonialism, empire, and imperialism, from the explorations of Columbus to recent decolonization, with an emphasis on the 19th and 20th Centuries.
Dates: 1482-2003 CE
Audio and video recordings, field notebooks, and journals documenting music from Africa, Asia, Australia and the Pacific islands, Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas.
Broad range of primary sources exploring the history of fifteen major commodities: chocolate, coffee, cotton, fur, opium, oil, porcelain, silver and gold, spices, sugar, tea, timber, tobacco, wheat, and wine and spirits, but other food and textile commodities are also included. Materials include maps, photographs, advertisements, paintings, statistics, and more.
Dates: 1500 CE-Present
Primary sources documenting slavery and abolition, including court records, slavery testimonies, pamphlets, books, maps, and more. Areas of focus include the African coast, the Middle Passage, slavery and the Islamic world, spiritualism and religion, resistance and the Underground Railroad, free Black settlements.
Dates: 1490-2007 CE
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