Library Research Guides: AFR 380: Violence in the Black Atlantic World: Find Primary Sources

Primary Source Collections

For more primary source collections, see our Primary Sources guides for History and Literature.

The following five collections are part of AM Explorer, a large database of primary source collections from Adam Matthew Digital. You can start with a search across all of the collections in AM Explorer to identify the most relevant ones for your topic, and then search those collections separately. (A Wellesley login is required.)

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 Resistance and Revolts—focused on insurrections in Haiti, Jamaica, Demerara and the American colonies—or search across some or all of the collections.
Colonial Caribbean This link opens in a new window
Primary sources from the history of Caribbean territories under British colonial governance, including trade and shipping records, details of plantation life, colonial settlement, and more.
Dates: 1624-1870 CE
Colonial America This link opens in a new window
Records on colonial America from the British Archives from initial European settlement through the early republican period.
Dates: 1606-1822 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
Race Relations in America This link opens in a new window
A primary source archive of photographs, sound recordings, transcripts, interviews, administrative reports, and statistics on topics such as housing, employment, the labor movement, school desegregation and church integration.
Dates: 1943-1970 CE

Umbra Search
Search hundreds of thousands of digitized primary sources related to African American history from more than 1,000 U.S. archives, libraries, and museums.

America's Historical Imprints This link opens in a new window
Documents published in America up to 1819, including books, pamphlets, broadsides, and ephemera, covering topics such as daily life, politics, religion, science, and more.
Dates: 1640-1819 CE

Black Abolitionists Archive
A digital collection of over 800 speeches by antebellum Blacks and approximately 1,000 editorials from the period.
Black Liberation: Freedom Archives
Collections on people, organizations, and publications from the Black freedom struggle. Includes images and audio.
Digital Schomburg
Substantial online collections on the "global black experience," from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library.
Black Panthers: Digital Collections
Includes books, pamphlets, newsletters, and other materials. Part of the American Radicalism collection at the Michigan State Libraries
FBI Records of the Black Panther Party
SNCC Digital Gateway
A portal to SNCC-related digital primary source collections.
Digital Public Library of America
Search millions of images, texts, videos, and sounds from archives, libraries, and museums across the United States

Oxford African American Studies Center This link opens in a new window
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.

Digital Library on American Slavery
Collections include petitions, runaway advertisements, deeds, and other materials that provide personal information and data about enslaved people, slaveholders, and free people of color.
North American Slave Narratives
Autobiographies of formerly enslaved people, from the Documenting the American South collection (UNC-Chapel Hill)

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Historical Newspapers

America's Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Searchable full-text of more than 1,000 historical U.S. newspapers. The core of this database is Early American Newspapers, 1690-1922, searchable along with African American Newspapers, 1827-1998.
African American Newspapers, 1827-1998 This link opens in a new window
Full-text of 282 Black American newspapers.
Dates: 1827-1998 CE
African American Periodicals, 1825-1995 This link opens in a new window
Full text of more than 170 wide-ranging publications by and about African Americans, including academic journals, magazines, newsletters, reports, and other genres.
Dates: 1825-1997 CE
Historical Newspapers (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
Full-text historical news articles in major American and British newspapers, including the New York Times, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post and more.
Dates: 1791-2003 CE
Independent Voices This link opens in a new window
Full text of alternative press newspapers, magazines, and journals, produced by feminists, dissident GIs, campus radicals, Native Americans, anti-war activists, Black Power advocates, Hispanics, LGBT activists, the extreme right-wing press, and alternative literary magazines.
Dates: 1950-2023 CE

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Books with Primary Sources

Escaping Bondage: A Documentary History of Runaway Slaves in Eighteenth-Century New England, 1700–1789 (e-book)
Publication Date: 2012
Stono: Documenting and Interpreting a Southern Slave Revolt (e-book) by Mark M. Smith (Editor)
Publication Date: 2005
African Americans and the Haitian Revolution: Selected Essays and Historical Documents by Maurice Jackson (Editor); Jacqueline Bacon (Editor)
Call Number: Clapp Library E185.625 .A3843 2010
Publication Date: 2009
Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804: A Brief History with Documents by Laurent Dubois; John D. Garrigus; John Garrigus
Call Number: Clapp Library F2151 .D86 2006b
Publication Date: 2006
African American Voices: A Documentary Reader from Emancipation to the Present by Leslie Brown
Call Number: Clapp Library E184.6 .A346 2014
Publication Date: 2014
Let Nobody Turn Us Around: An African American Anthology by Manning Marable (Editor); Leith Mullings (Editor)
Call Number: Clapp Library E184.6 .L48 2000
Publication Date: 1999

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