African American Genealogy Resource Guide: Library of Congress & National Archives

"Search America's historic newspapers pages from 1836-1922 or use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present. Chronicling America is sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress."

On April 2, 2012, the National Archives released the 1940 Census Records online. In order to locate a person in this census, users must know the person's place of residence at the time, since the Census is organized by enumeration district number.

NARA holds the nation's records: unique items such as the Declaration of Independence and the Emancipation Proclamation, but also more 'ordinary' records such as military records, naturalization records, and the census. NARA's holdings include "9 billion pages of textual records" as well as maps, photographs, data sets, and film. The African American Research page provides an introduction to using Pre-Civil War Records, Military Records, and Post-Civil War Records.

"African American Reference Reports describe research strategies for some of the most frequently used records relating to African American genealogy..." The actual records are not presented here; rather these are descriptions of the records that exist, and how they may be used to research family histories.

An annotated list of websites for the study of the genealogy of various ethnic groups.

Links to articles from the National Archives and Records Administration's publication, Prologue Magazine.