Social Sciences Databases

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.


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.


Gale Reference Ebooks (formerly Gale Virtual Reference Library) – Written by experts for a general audience, articles cover topics such as biology, medicine, economics, law, psychology, sociology, and history as they relate to aging. Illustrated with photos, graphs, and line drawings.


Ethnic NewsWatch (CPL Cardholders)

Ethnic NewsWatch is a full-text database of minority, Native American and ethnic U.S. newspapers, magazines and journals. Includes more than 470,000 full-text articles from over 200 publications dating from 1985 to the present. It is searchable in both English and Spanish, with titles in both languages. Includes abstract/index (covering 1992-2004) and full text (covering 2005 to present) of Cleveland Call and Post and full text of the Cleveland Jewish News from 1995 to the present.


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.


Fight for Racial Justice and the Civil Rights Congress (CPL Cardholders)

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.


This resource provides the most comprehensive and accurate information on U.S. grantmakers and their funding activities. Professional provides four comprehensive databases: grantmakers, companies, grants, and 990s. Professional’s interactive maps and chart show a foundation’s grants geographically — right down to the ZIP code — and by recipient type or primary subject with three levels of detail.


This is an online database of close to 8,300 foundation and public charity programs that fund students, artists, researchers, and other individual grantseekers. Foundation Grants to Individuals Online provides online access to accurate, up-to-date information on foundations that fund: edducational support – scholarships, fellowships, loans, and internships; students and graduates of specific schools; arts and cultural support; awards, prizes, and grants by nomination; international applicants; employees/families of employees at specific companies; research and professional support; and, general welfare and special needs.


Gale Reference Ebooks (formerly Gale Virtual Reference Library) – Contains 8,000 to 12,000 word essays on specific culture groups in the United States, emphasizing religions, holidays, customs, and languages in addition to providing information on historical background and settlement patterns. Also covers ethnoreligious groups such as Jews, Chaldeans, and Amish. Each essay lists organizations and research centers; name, address, and contact information for periodicals, radio, and television stations; and a further readings section.


This is your “one-site stop” for comprehensive Ohio legislative and governmental information. Features include status of bills, updated daily, text of amendments, legislative analyses, and fiscal impact statements, text of opinions as well including useful links to government information throughout Ohio and the United States which is updated regularly.


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 subject of multicultural studies.


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.


Project Muse (CPL Cardholders)

Provides full-text access to more than 100 scholarly journals in the arts and humanities, social sciences and mathematics.


This database provides nearly 575 full text publications, including nearly 550 peer-reviewed titles.Psychology & Behavioral Sciences Collection covers topics such as emotional and behavioral characteristics, psychiatry & psychology, mental processes, anthropology, and observational and experimental methods. Nearly every full text title included in this database is indexed in PsycINFO.


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 religion.


This database provides extensive coverage of such topics as world religions, major denominations, biblical studies, religious history, epistemology, political philosophy, philosophy of language, moral philosophy and the history of philosophy. Religion & Philosophy Collection offers more than 300 full text journals, including more than 250 peer-reviewed titles, making it an essential tool for researchers and students of theology and philosophical studies. This database is updated daily via EBSCOhost.


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 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.


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 social science.


This database provides coverage of more than 500 full text journals, including nearly 500 peer-reviewed titles. Sociological Collection offers information in all areas of sociology, including social behavior, human tendencies, interaction, relationships, community development, culture and social structure. This database is updated daily via EBSCOhost.


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).


This current events database allows researchers to explore social, political & economic issues, scientific discoveries and other popular topics discussed in today’s classrooms. TOPICsearch contains full text for over 102,800 articles from more than 2,500 diverse sources, including more than 1,550 full text periodicals.


UN-iLibrary (CPL Cardholders)

The United Nations iLibrary is the comprehensive global search, discovery, and viewing source for digital content created by the United Nations.


Need help and unsure where to turn? Call 211: United Way’s 211 service refers callers to community resources like food, utility assistance, employment services, health care, and more. 211 is available 24/7 at no cost to you and you can remain anonymous. Visit 211 on your telephone.


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.