Genealogy

Includes reports and annuals from African American religious organizations and social service agencies, as well as African American periodicals. Provides extensive coverage of African American religious organizations, churches and institutions.

Some titles lasted a short time, or few extant issues have been found, so that the database may contain as little as a single issue from a source. Other newspapers had longer lives, and long runs of issues are available.

African American Newspapers, Series 1, 1827-1998:
Beginning with Freedom’s Journal (NY)—the first African American newspaper published in the United States—the titles in this resource include The Colored Citizen (KS), Arkansas State Press, Rights of All (NY), Wisconsin Afro-American, New York
Age, L’Union (LA), Northern Star and Freeman’s Advocate (NY), Richmond Planet, Cleveland Gazette, and The Appeal (MN).

African American Newspapers, Series 2, 1835-1956:
Key titles include Frederick Douglass’s New National Era (Washington, DC), Washington Tribune (Washington, DC), Chicago Bee (Chicago, IL), The Louisianian (New Orleans, LA), The Pine and Palm (Boston, MA), National Anti-Slavery Standard (New York, NY), New York Age (New York, NY), Harlem Liberator (New York, NY), North Carolina Republican and Civil Rights Advocate (Weldon, NC), and Southern News (Richmond, VA).

Focuses predominantly on Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis, New York, and towns and cities in North Carolina. 

The database includes more than 9,000 articles, biographies, primary documents, and media. In addition to historical accounts ranging from the travails of slavery to key events of 21st-century Black history, The African American Experience offers scholarly commentary addressing African American contributions in the fields of politics, business, social and applied sciences, the military, the arts, and entertainment, keeping pace with the ongoing evolution of the African American narrative and its vital place in U.S. history.

Includes access to Parts 1 through 4. Also includes documents related to the correspondence from overseers; documents on slave sales, runaway slaves, discipline, diet, health, and the work loads of adults and children; plantation management, and westward migration to Arkansas and Louisiana prior to the Civil War. The commodities produced by plantation owners--rice, cotton, sugar, tobacco, hemp, and others--accounted for more than half of the nation's exports. Another of the major collections included is the Papers of the Hairston and Wilson families, related families of tobacco planters and merchants from Southside Virginia and Piedmont North Carolina.

This database provides full page and article images with searchable full text from the Chicago Daily Defender (1966-1973 : Big Weekend Ed.), Chicago Daily Defender (1960-1973 : Daily Ed.), Chicago Defender (1909-1966 : Big Weekend Ed.), Chicago Defender (1973-1975 : Big Weekend Ed.), Chicago Defender (1973-1975 : Daily Ed.), Chicago Defender (1921-1967 : National ed) ; Weekend Chicago Defender (1980-2008) ; Chicago Daily Defender (1973-2010 : Daily Ed.)