Library Research Guides: AFR 242/REL 214: New World Afro-Atlantic Religions & Cultures: Find Primary Sources

Highlight: Dance & Music

The Films on Demand database includes many performances, documentaries, interviews, and other videos focused on dance and music from the African continent and the Diaspora.

Films on Demand This link opens in a new window
Video streaming service for educational films and documentaries, focusing on history, music, and dance.

Highlight: HistoryMakers

HistoryMakers Digital Archive This link opens in a new window
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.

Highlight: Umbra Search

Type keywords into this box to search for primary sources in African American history across many archives!

More Guides to Primary Sources

For more links to primary source collections, see our Primary Sources research guides:

Primary Sources - History

Primary Sources - Literature

Primary Sources

Films on Demand This link opens in a new window
Video streaming service for educational films and documentaries, focusing on history, music, and dance.

Global Music Archive
Multi-media archive and resource center for traditional and popular song, music, and dance of Africa and North and South America, with particular emphasis on the African Diaspora.

Ethnomusicology: Global Field Recordings This link opens in a new window
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.

African-American Religion: A Documentary History Project
There are primary sources tucked away in this website - reprinted articles, diary entries, and so on.
Association of Religion Data Archives
The Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA) strives to democratize access to the best data on religion. Includes both American and international user-submitted datasets. Data begins in 19th Century.
The Church in the Southern Black Community
""The Church in the Southern Black Community" collects autobiographies, biographies, church documents, sermons, histories, encyclopedias, and other published materials."

Church Missionary Society Periodicals This link opens in a new window
Primary sources like reports, news, letters, diaries, and more from British missionary societies serving as employer and community to Christian missionaries in the Middle East, Africa, South America, and Asia.
Dates: 1804-1957 CE

North American Slave Narratives: Religious Content
"Slave narratives document the gamut of their religious experience and practice. The narratives reveal the duality of black religious experience: the white-controlled message and practice, and the "invisible institution" the slave community established across the South embodying its own religious ideals and aspirations. "
The Pew Forum
The Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life seeks to promote a deeper understanding of issues at the intersection of religion and public affairs. The Forum conducts surveys, demographic analyses, and other social science research on important aspects of religion and public life.
Public Religion Research Institute
"PRRI (Public Religion Research Institute) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to conducting independent research at the intersection of religion, culture, and public policy."

Website includes data downloads, summaries, and visualization of findings.

Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice, 1490-2007 This link opens in a new window
Documents and collections from libraries and archives across the Atlantic world, with close attention given to the varieties of slavery, the legacy of slavery, the social-justice perspective and the continued existence of slavery today. Browse the thematic collection on Spiritualism and Religion or search across all of the collections.

Through the Storm, Through the Night
Provides 36 pages of primary source documents on the Black church at the back of the book.

Digital Library of the Caribbean
The Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) is a cooperative digital library for resources from and about the Caribbean and circum-Caribbean.
Caribbean Newspaper Digital Library
Digitized newspapers, gazettes, and other research materials from the Caribbean and circum-Caribbean in Spanish, English, French, Dutch, and Portuguese, 1884-2016.
Digital Archive of Latin American & Caribbean Ephemera
Rare pamphlets, flyers, leaflets, brochures, posters, stickers, and postcards that document political and social issues in the region.
Radio Haiti Archive
Audio from Radio Haiti-Inter, documenting Haitian politics, society and culture from 1957 to 2003, bulk 1972-2003.
Colonial Latin America: Internet Modern History Sourcebook
Links to documents and sites on colonialism in Latin America.
19th Century Latin American Sourcebook
Primary sources from many countries focusing on imperialism and independence.
20th Century Latin American Sourcebook
Primary sources from many countries.
Colonial Latin America History Sourcebook
Links to sources on indigenous religion, Our Lady of Guadaloupe, and more.
Brazilian Government Documents
Executive branch serial documents issued by Brazil’s national government between 1821 and 1993, and by its provincial governments from the earliest available for each province to the end of the first Republic in 1930.

Church Missionary Society Periodicals This link opens in a new window
Primary sources like reports, news, letters, diaries, and more from British missionary societies serving as employer and community to Christian missionaries in the Middle East, Africa, South America, and Asia.
Dates: 1804-1957 CE

Archivo General de la Nacion
Digital documents in the Mexican national archive.

African-American Religion: A Documentary History Project
Onda Latina: The Mexican American Experience
The Onda Latina Collection consists of 226 digitally preserved audio programs including interviews, music, and informational programs related to the Mexican American community and their concerns from the radio series "The Mexican American Experience" and "A esta hora conversamos" the Longhorn Radio Network, 1976-1982.

Ethnic American Newspapers from the Balch Collection, 1799-1971 This link opens in a new window
More than 130 newspapers published by and for American ethnic groups, with German-American, Irish-American, and Japanese-American papers forming the bulk. English language news is predominant.
Dates: 1799-1971 CE
African American Communities This link opens in a new window
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
African American Newspapers, 1827-1998 This link opens in a new window
Full-text of 282 Black American newspapers.
Dates: 1827-1998 CE
Chicago Defender, 1909-1975 This link opens in a new window
The full text of one of America's biggest African-American newspapers. Browsable by article type (obituary, editorial, etc).
Dates: 1909-1975 CE
HistoryMakers Digital Archive This link opens in a new window
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.

Black Press Research Collective Resources
Links to digitized black newspapers online, predominantly 20th century.
Black Liberation: Freedom Archives
Collections on people, organizations, and publications from the Black freedom struggle. Includes materials on Islam in Black communities.
African American Mosaic
rich collection of material from the Library of Congress
Digital Schomburg
Substantial online collections on the "global black experience," from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library.
Now What a Time: Blues, Gospel, and the Fort Valley Music Festivals, 1938 to 1943
This collection from the Library of Congress contains approximately one hundred digitized sound recordings, primarily blues and gospel songs, from what may be the first folk festival organized entirely by and for African Americans.
Songs of America: Ritual & Worship
Sections on Spirituals and African American Gospel include audio recordings and images from the Library of Congress collections.
AME Church Review
17 issues of an AME quarterly publication. Includes articles on politics, religion, history, and world current events.
The Informer: Ohio
A predominantly Baptist religious and educational monthly magazine from 1902-1920.
Black Quotidian: Everyday Life in African-American Newspapers
North American Slave Narratives: Religious Content
"Slave narratives document the gamut of their religious experience and practice. The narratives reveal the duality of black religious experience: the white-controlled message and practice, and the "invisible institution" the slave community established across the South embodying its own religious ideals and aspirations. "
The Church in the Southern Black Community
""The Church in the Southern Black Community" collects autobiographies, biographies, church documents, sermons, histories, encyclopedias, and other published materials."

African Newspapers, 1800-1922 This link opens in a new window
Full text of more than 60 newspapers from across Africa, in English and other languages.
Dates: 1800-1922 CE

Center for Africana Studies
University of Pennsylvania. This is a portal to many topics.
African Studies
Another portal of useful links - Columbia University
Internet African History Sourcebook
Direct links to primary source documents, links to sites with more information, articles and discussion, as well as educational websites. Covers ancient history to present.
Church Missionary Society Periodicals
"Forming a prominent feature of British religious philanthropy from the late eighteenth century onwards, missionary societies served as employer and community to missionaries far from home." Missions went to the Middle East, Africa, South America, and Asia.
Slave Voyages
Searchable and sortable databases of the Trans-Atlantic and Intra-American slave trades as well as the names of African people taken into captivity. Users can sort data on point of departure, gender, slave ship captain, and many many more variables. Site includes image galleries that contextualize data with historical maps, ship manifests, drawings, and more.