HIS 141: African-American History I

The Antislavery Collection contains several hundred printed pamphlets and books pertaining to slavery and antislavery in New England, 1725-1911. The holdings include speeches, sermons, proceedings and other publications of organizations such as the American Anti-Slavery Society and the American Colonization Society, and a small number of pro-slavery tracts.

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).

The SlaveVoyages website is a collaborative digital initiative that compiles and makes publicly accessible records of the largest slave trades in history. Search these records to learn about the broad origins and forced relocations of more than 12 million African people who were sent across the Atlantic in slave ships, and hundreds of thousands more who were trafficked within the Americas. Explore where they were taken, the numerous rebellions that occurred, the horrific loss of life during the voyages, the identities and nationalities of the perpetrators, and much more.

This site is designed to help researchers and students find primary sources related to slavery, abolition, and resistance within Yale University’s many libraries and galleries.

Lincoln/Net is the product of the Abraham Lincoln Historical Digitization Project. Based at Northern Illinois University, the Lincoln Project has digitized historical materials, including books, manuscripts, images, maps and other resources related to the Lincoln Project.

This is a digital version of the four-volume Proceedings of the Virginia Convention of 1861 published by the Library of Virginia in 1965. On February 13, 1861, delegates representing all counties in Virginia met to decide how the state would respond to recent events, especially Abraham Lincoln's election and South Carolina's secession. They voted to remain in the Union and hoped that a compromise could be reached to defuse the situation. Two months later, the same men voted to secede from the United States, sparking a radically different war than might otherwise have taken place.

The Civil War Graphics and Ephemera Collection is primarily comprised of the John A. McAllister Collection. The collection includes tens of thousands of examples of printed ephemera, most from the Civil War years, including circa 600 recruiting posters, as well as newspapers, political broadside and leaflets, tickets, trade cards, cartoons, and a complement of ribbons, buttons and other ephemeral items constituting the largest such collection documenting the Philadelphia home front. The collection of graphic items includes lithographs, engravings, cartoons, maps, textiles, drawings, photographs, and about 7,000 patriotic pictorial envelopes. Additionally, mixed media holdings within the collection document sanitary fairs, voluntary saloons and hospitals, generals and leaders, playing cards, verse, and Confederate States ephemera

The Civil Rights Digital Library Initiative represents one of the most ambitious and comprehensive efforts to date to deliver educational content on the Civil Rights Movement via the Web.

Oral interviews and collections of people who participated in the Civil Rights movement.

The King Institute provides access to thousands of documents, photographs, and publications about the modern African American Freedom Struggle. Use this page to navigate to resources about King’s life and work.

On the eve of the Civil War, Richmond, Virginia's capital since 1780, bustled with the commerce, politics, and enterprise of an active southern city. The Dispatch, one of the city's assorted newspapers, reported on local and world events, creating snapshots of daily life. Both the city and newspaper would experience major changes by early 1865, and both would be left in ruins by April of that year. Using the transcriptions of Richmond's non-partisan newspaper, discover how dramatically the city, and thus the people and fortunes of the South, changed during the course of the war.

An online collection of sources documenting life in two American communities, one in Pennsylvania and one in Virginia, from John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry through Reconstruction.

Collections of primary sources that VCU Libraries has digitized and put online, ranging from oral histories to historical postcards. The majority are Richmond- or Virginia-related.