Full-text searchable content of every significant English-language and foreign-language title printed in the United Kingdom during the 18th century, along with thousands of important works from the Americas—more than 32 million pages of text. Bearing witness to what many scholars consider the three most significant events in world history: the American Revolution, the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, this resource features works by both well-known and lesser-known authors and includes a variety of research materials, from books and directories, bibles and sheet music, to sermons and pamphlets.
The National Negro Congress was established in 1936 to “secure the right of the Negro people to be free from Jim Crowism, segregation, discrimination, lynching, and mob violence” and “to promote the spirit of unity and cooperation between Negro and white people. This collection comprises of the voluminous working files of John P. Davis and successive executive secretaries of the National Negro Congress. Beginning with papers from 1933 that predate the formation of the National Negro Congress, the wide-ranging collection documents Davis’s involvement in the Negro Industrial League.
America: History and Life is the leading index of literature covering the history, culture and current affairs of the United States and Canada, from prehistory to the present. Begun in 1964, this database features indexing for 1,700 journals, as well as citations and links to book and media reviews. Strong English-language journal coverage is balanced by an international perspective on topics and events, including abstracts in English of articles published in more than 40 languages. (For world history subjects, use the Historical Abstracts database.)
American Historical Periodicals from the American Antiquarian Society I-V provides a history of the American people and a testament to the growth of the nation from the colonial period through to the twentieth century. The periodicals focused on American concerns and were predominantly published in the United States or Canada, though some were published overseas by Americans living abroad. The collection offers multiple perspectives on the thought, culture, and society of North America through the eyes of those who lived it, showing how history affected citizens from all walks of life.
Full-text searchable collection of digital historical documents. The resource provides topically-focused collections of specialized primary sources that support the research and study needs of scholars and students.
More than 72,000 biographies and obituaries and more than 20,000 photographs of the subjects. Many of the biographies are enhanced with full text, abstracts, and citations. The biographies are searchable by name, profession, title, place of origin, gender, race/ethnicity, titles of works, date of birth, date of death, keyword, and presence of images.
The National Negro Business League was a business organization founded in Boston, Massachusetts in 1900 by Booker T. Washington, with the support of Andrew Carnegie. The mission and main goal of the National Negro Business League was “to promote the commercial and financial development of the Negro.” This resource includes the National Negro Business League’s correspondence and memoranda, itineraries, lists, form letters, reports, press releases, speeches, programs and enrollment forms.
Sourced from the Federal Bureau of Investigation Library, Black Liberation Army and the Program of Armed Struggle consists of a wide range of materials, including FBI surveillance and informant reports and correspondence from a variety of offices including, New York City, Baltimore, New Haven, San Francisco, Detroit, Miami, Atlanta, Newark, Kansas City, and Cleveland; intercepted correspondence; Justice Department memoranda, correspondence and more.
In Black Nationalism and the Revolutionary Action Movement, a wealth of material from Ahmad’s personal archive – letters, speeches, financial records and more – are augmented with FBI files and other primary sources. The collection sheds light on 1960s radicalism, politics and culture, and provides an ideal foundation for coursework in African-American studies, radical studies, post-Colonial studies and social history.
Full-text searching of all issues of the Cleveland Call and Post published between 1934 and 1991. (An index to issues from 1992 to 2004 and full text for issues from 2005 to present is available in the Ethnic Newswatch database.) Cleveland’s longtime African American newspaper, the Call & Post was formed in 1927 by the merger of the Call and the Post. The paper’s rise to prominence began in 1932 with the arrival of William O. Walker (1896-1981), who became its publisher within a few years. A strong local voice for racial equality, the paper has long urged participation in politics and encouraged black solidarity and self-reliance.
The Cleveland Necrology File contains local cemetery records and newspaper death notices for the following years: 1833, 1847-1848, 1850-1975. A more complete description of the file’s contents can be found in the about section of the database. For necrology information after 1975, please use the Cleveland News Index.
The Cleveland News Index lists citation information for local news stories, feature articles and reviews from The Plain Dealer (1983-June 1999), Cleveland Magazine (1983-2014), Northern Ohio Live (Sept. 1990-June 2009), and Ohio Magazine (Oct.1990-2014). Obituaries from the Plain Dealer and the Cleveland Press are included from 1976 to the present. Please note that this index does not provide full text access to these sources.
Evangelism in Africa: Correspondence of the Board of Foreign Missions, 1835-1910 supports research in religious studies, African studies, women’s studies, international affairs and anthropology. Letters that served as reports from the field describe the indigenous peoples and cultures, tribal factionalism, cultural differences and mores, and the many problems and achievements of the work.
A collection of FBI reports comprising the Bureau’s investigative and surveillance efforts primarily between 1961 and 1976. The collected materials include Forman’s involvement with the “Black Manifesto” and the Bureau’s “COINTELPRO” investigations into “Black Nationalist – Hate Groups / Internal Security,” which includes information on the activities of SNCC. Date range: 1961-1976.
Federal Surveillance of African Americans, 1920-1984
Between the early 1920s and early 1980s, the Justice Department and its Federal Bureau of Investigation engaged in widespread investigation of those deemed politically suspect. Prominent among the targets of this sometimes coordinated, sometimes independent surveillance were aliens, members of various protest groups, Socialists, Communists, pacifists, militant labor unionists, ethnic or racial nationalists and outspoken opponents of the policies of the incumbent presidents. This resource includes the FBI files of two dozen prominent individuals and organizations, including the NAACP, Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, Thurgood Marshall, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Black Panther Party of North Carolina, and many others.
This collection comprises the Legal Case and Communist Party files of the Civil Rights Congress, documenting the many issues and litigation in which the CRC was involved during its 10-year existence. These papers provide valuable insight on the activities of the Civil Rights Congress, most notably in cases involving civil rights and civil liberties issues, such as those of Willie McGee (Mississippi), Rosa Lee Ingram (Georgia), Paul Washington (Louisiana), Robert Wesley Wells (California), the Trenton Six (New Jersey), the Martinsville Seven (Virginia), and many others.
Historical Abstracts is the leading index of literature covering world history (excluding the U.S. and Canada) for the period 1450 to the present. Begun in 1955, Historical Abstracts features more than 700,000 concise abstracts and citations to journal articles (many with links to full-text), books and dissertations on a diverse range of world history subjects. Each year the compilers of this database add more than 20,000 new abstracts and citations after screening more than 1,700 journal titles published worldwide for articles, books and dissertations of interest to historians. (For U.S. and Canadian history, use the America: History and Life database.)
Gale Reference Ebooks (formerly Gale Virtual Reference Library) is a database of eReference titles that includes encyclopedias, almanacs, and specialized reference sources. This collection spans topics within the subject of history.
When James Meredith sought to legally become the first African American to attend the University of Mississippi, the duty of upholding the federal law allowing him to do so fell upon the Justice Department and the FBI. Meredith launched a legal revolt against white supremacy in the most segregated state in America and the iconic institution, Ole Miss. This resource contains extensive FBI documentation on Meredith’s battle to enroll at the University of Mississippi in 1962 and white political and social backlash.
Militant Black nationalism and pan-Africanism influenced and paralleled African America’s interest in Africa. Africa’s entrance into the international arena and American Cold War politics helped fuel the Civil Rights and the Black Power movements of the 1960s and 1970s. The Black Liberation Movement supported and extended the influence of the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (A-APRP) within the African-American community. This resource consists of a wide range of primary source materials, such as FBI surveillance and informant reports and correspondence from a variety of offices including, Cleveland, NYC, Baltimore, New Haven, and Detroit and many others.
Gale Reference Ebooks (formerly Gale Virtual Reference Library) is a database of eReference titles that includes encyclopedias, almanacs, and specialized reference sources. This collection spans topics within the subjects of nation and world.
The collection consists of materials from the years 1913 through 1998 that document African American author and activist Amiri Baraka. The extensive documentation includes poetry, organizational records, print publications, articles, plays, speeches, personal correspondence, oral histories, as well as some personal records. The materials cover Baraka’s involvement in the politics in Newark, N.J. and in Black Power movement organizations such as the Congress of African People, the National Black Conference movement, the Black Women’s United Front. Later materials document Baraka’s increasing involvement in Marxism.
Historical Plain Dealer offers full page and article images with searchable full text back to the first issue. The collection includes digital reproductions providing access to every page from every available issue. Issues run from April 7, 1845 to May 31, 1991. Search by keyword, name, date, date ranges, article type and issue.
The Republic of New Afrika (RNA) was a social movement organization that proposed three objectives. First of these objectives was the creation of an independent Black-majority country composed of the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina and the Black-majority counties adjacent to this area in Arkansas, Tennessee and Florida. Second, they demanded $400 billion in reparations for the injustices suffered by African Americans during the slavery and segregation periods. Third, they demanded a referendum of all African Americans in order to decide what should be done with their citizenry. This collection consists of a range of primary source documents, including newspapers, leaflets, books, pamphlets and more.
A treasure trove of information, detailed maps at building level for more than 400 Ohio communities from 1868 to the 1960s. Negotiating the site may require some practice. Try the 1024 x 768 pixel size.Use a city and street name or city and building’s name where possible to search in keyword or limit your search by date.
A unique achievement in the field of historic archives, this resource consists of millions of cross-searchable pages sourced from books, pamphlets, newspapers, periodicals, legal documents, court records, monographs, manuscripts and maps from many different countries documenting the African slave trade. Content is divided into these broad categories: Debates over Slavery and Abolition, Slave Trade in the Atlantic World, and the Age of Emancipation.
This collection contains the correspondence of both Esther Cooper and James E. Jackson, James Jackson’s lectures, research notebooks, speeches, and writings (published and unpublished), subject files, correspondence, internal documents and printed ephemera pertaining to the Southern Negro Youth Congress and the periodical Freedomways. James E. Jackson and Esther Cooper Jackson, African American communists and civil rights activists, are best known for their role in founding and leading the Southern Negro Youth Congress (1937-48).
As the “world’s newspaper of record,” The Times of London has covered all major international events from the French Revolution to the War in Iraq. The Times Digital Archive, 1785–2010 provides 225 years on both the research database and newspaper database. Every complete page of every issue is full-text searchable — every headline, article, editorial, announcement, image and advertisement.
To test President John F. Kennedy’s commitment to civil rights, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) proposed a Journey of Reconciliation. The “Freedom Ride” had an interracial group boarding buses destined for the South. At rest stops, whites would go into blacks-only areas and vice versa. “I think all of us were prepared for as much violence as could be thrown at us,” said CORE director James Farmer. “We were prepared for the possibility of death.” This resource includes surveillance reports, chronologies, witness statements and more.