African American Studies Resource Guide: Reference Sources (Online & Print)

This two volume set highlights the role and influence of African-American cultural leaders, from all walks of life, from the 17th century to the present.

Covers wide ranging topics such as documents in African American history, employment and income, sacred music traditions, and science and technology.

Recounts African American history "from the coming of the Civil War to the rise of Jim Crow as reported and illustrated in selected newspapers of the time."

Includes data collected on demographics, vital statistics, health, education, elections, public opinion, law enforcement, labor force, and special topics such as Black owned firms and housing affordability.

Following a year-by-year day-by-day format, this volume covers all the events of African American history from 1492 through December 1996. The lengthy appendix includes reprints of historic documents.

This five volume set devoted to the African-American experience. Two-thirds of the essays are biographical articles on African-Americans, the remaining essays are on significant events, historical eras, legal cases, cultural achievement, the professions, sports and places.

The revised second edition of the print set below.

Online access via via ABC-Clio. Covers the African American business experience from 1600s - 1990s. Entries include biographical articles, essays on Black business history, and surveys of Black participation in selected industries.

Organized in alphabetical order, the entries discuss the "origins, goals, founders, membership, staff, activities, achievements, and failures" of African American associations.

A five volume set which covers topics such as Africa and the western hemisphere, Black entrepreneurship, science and medicine, and African-American firsts.

The maps in this volume are derived from the data and records contained in the slavevoyages.org database.

Sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities and Emory University Libraries, Voyages is a publicly available database of information on 34,941 trans-Atlantic slaving voyages between the years 1514 and 1866. The information has been derived from documents held in archives and libraries on both sides of the Atlantic, and includes vessel names, slave traders and owners, the enslaved peoples, trading routes, ports, and individual names, as recorded at the time.

Available at Sawyer Library as microtext, and online at the Open Library.

Volume II: 1800-1880. Available online at the Open Library.