Research Guides: Primary Sources: Slavery

Slavery - Databases

ABC-CLIO American History This link opens in a new window
Background information, primary sources, and perspectives essays exploring American history from 1350 to the present, organized chronologically and thematically, linking reference, curriculum, and analysis of current events. Browse by type of content, topic, and era.
Accessible Archives This link opens in a new window
Accessible Archives contains primary source material from 18th & 19th century publications. The databases contain comprehensive material found in leading historic periodicals and books including eyewitness accounts of historical events, descriptions of everyday life, editorial observations, advertisements, and genealogical records. Includes newspaper collections such as African American Newspapers, World War I American Military Camp Newspapers, Civil War Newspapers, Women's Suffrage Newspapers, Frank Leslie's Weekly, Godey's Lady's Book, Anti-Slavery Newspapers, South Carolina Newspapers, Virginia Gazette, Pennsylvania Gazette and county histories from across the country.
African American Experience This link opens in a new window
The African American Experience: The American Mosaic provides a comprehensive survey of African American history as its heartbreaking struggles, major movements—political, social, artistic, and literary—and most notable events and legislative reform. Featuring articles and essays from African American authors and contributors, it gives voice to the experience of African Americans from their arrival in the Americas through to the present day, including the influence of the black community on popular culture and the aspirations of African Americans as expressed, for example, through the campaign of hope on which Barack Obama ran in 2008.
Infobase African-American History This link opens in a new window
Covering more than 500 years of the African-American experience, African-American History Online offers a fresh way to explore the full spectrum of African-American history and culture. Read about key figures and events, examine famous speeches and other primary sources, and get context from the in-depth timelines.
Gale U.S. History In Context This link opens in a new window
A complete overview of U.S. history that covers the most-studied events, issues, and current information. It includes viewpoint essays, primary documents, articles from reference books, newspaper and magazine articles, and journal content, as well as streaming video and audio.
New York Times (1851-2018) This link opens in a new window
The New York Times - Historical provides page images of the newspaper beginning with the first issue in 1851 up until 4 years before present.
- 1980 - current can be found on ProQuest National Newspapers.
Sources in U.S. History: Slavery in America This link opens in a new window
A digital archive of primary sources documenting key aspects of the history of slavery in the United States, from its origins in Africa to its abolition, including materials on the slave trade, plantation life, emancipation, pro-slavery and anti-slavery arguments, religious views on slavery, and other related topics.

Slavery - Internet Sources

Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 to 1938
Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project (FWP) of the Works Progress Administration, later renamed Work Projects Administration (WPA).
Digital History
This site includes: a U.S. history e-textbook; over 400 annotated documents, primary sources on slavery, Mexican American and Native American history, and U.S. political, social, and legal history; short essays on the history of film, ethnicity, private life, and technology; multimedia exhibitions, an audio archive including speeches and book talks by historians, and a visual archive with hundreds of historical maps and images
Digital Library on American Slavery
Images, runaway slave advertisements, maps, slave deeds and more from the University of North Carolina Greensboro Digital Library on American Slavery.
Documenting the American South
collection of sources on Southern history, literature and culture from the colonial period through the first decades of the 20th century. Provides access to digitized primary materials that offer Southern perspectives on American history and culture.
Freedom Narratives
Freedom Narratives focuses on the enforced migration of enslaved Africans in the Atlantic world during the era of the slave trade from the 16th to the 19th century. The biographical accounts included here include the testimonies and stories of individuals born in West Africa whose voices have long been silenced. This digital repository of autobiographical testimonies and biographical data establishes where people came from, why they were enslaved, whether or not they freed themselves, and what happened to them.
From Slavery to Freedom: The African-American Pamphlet Collection, 1822-1909
The 800 + titles in the collection include sermons on racial pride and political activism; annual reports of charitable, educational, and political organizations; and college catalogs and graduation orations from the Hampton Institute, Morgan College, and Wilberforce University. Also included are biographies, slave narratives, speeches by members of Congress, legal documents, poetry, playbills, dramas, and librettos. Other materials focus on segregation, voting rights, violence against African Americans, the colonization of Africa by freed slaves, anti-slavery organizations and investigative reports.

Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History Collection This link opens in a new window
The Gilder Lehrman Collection is an archive of primary sources in American history. The Collection includes more than 70,000 letters, diaries, maps, pamphlets, printed books, newspapers, photographs, and ephemera that document the political, social, and economic history of the United States. [Students will need to register for a free account to fully use this site.]

Voyages: the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
Comprises nearly 35,000 individual slaving expeditions between 1514 and 1866. Records of the voyages have been found in archives and libraries throughout the Atlantic world. They provide information about vessels, enslaved peoples, slave traders and owners, and trading routes. A variable (Source) cites the records for each voyage in the database. Other variables enable users to search for information about a particular voyage or group of voyages. The website provides full interactive capability to analyze the data and report results in the form of statistical tables, graphs, maps, or on a timeline.