Afro American Studies

A general guide to library research in Afro American Studies.

About databases

These online databases and periodical indexes can help you search for full-text articles or allow you to locate citation information for articles in Afro American Studies. If you are not sure which database to choose, please contact a reference librarian. For library databases in all subjects, go to the database locator.

Please note: Many of our electronic resources have restricted access from off-campus and are only available to UMass-Amherst students, faculty or staff with a UMass account.

Tips:

Use RefWorks to save and organize your references. Most databases have a way to export citations into RefWorks directly.

Use the Database Searching Log to keep track of your search strategies in different databases.

Spotlight on Historical Pittsburgh Courier

Video about use of Historical Pittsburgh Courier:

Databases for Afro American Studies

Academic Search Premier This link opens in a new window
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Scholarly journals from all academic disciplines - an excellent starting point for multidisciplinary research projects. 3,200 full-text journals. Coverage from 1975 to present.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
African American Music Reference This link opens in a new window
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Brings together text reference, biographies, chronologies, sheet music, images, lyrics, liner notes, and discographies which chronicle the diverse history and culture of the African American experience through music. The database is constantly expanding to include comprehensive coverage of blues, jazz, spirituals, civil rights songs, slave songs, minstrelsy, rhythm and blues, gospel, and other forms of black American musical expression.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
African American Newspapers This link opens in a new window
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Starting with the Freedom’s Journal in 1827 and continuing in chronological order with the monthly addition of new text, this database plans to ultimately contain the complete text of the major African American newspapers published in the United States during the 19th century. Currently contains the following newspapers: Freedom's Journal, The Coloured American, The North Star, The National Era, Provincial Freeman, Frederick Douglass Paper, and The Christian Recorder. This material was written by African Americans for African Americans.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.

African American Poetry
The early history of African American poetry, from the first recorded poem by an African American (Lucy Terry Prince's 'Bars Fight', c.1746) to the major poets of the nineteenth century, including Paul Laurence Dunbar and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper.

America: History & Life This link opens in a new window
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Journal articles, dissertations, and book reviews, many in full text, relating to United States and Canadian history and prehistory, 1954-present.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
Arts and Humanities Citation Index This link opens in a new window
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Citations and some abstracts covering the journal literature of the arts and humanities. It indexes 1,144 of the world's leading arts and humanities journals, as well as covering individually selected, relevant items from over 6,800 major science and social science journals. Unique features include cited references (lists of records cited by the documents found); citing articles (lists of records that cite the documents found), and related records (lists of records that share common references with the documents found).
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
Black Studies Center This link opens in a new window
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Combines several resources for research and teaching in Black Studies: Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience, International Index to Black Periodicals (IIBP), The Chicago Defender, and the Black Literature Index. IIBP provided indexing and abstracting of 150 African, American and Caribbean periodicals, with full text of forty core journals. The Chicago Defender was at one point the most widely-read black newspaper in the country, with more than two thirds of its readership based outside Chicago.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
Black Thought and Culture This link opens in a new window
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Collection of monographs, essays, articles, speeches, and interviews written by leaders within the African American community from 1700s to 1975.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
Black Women Writers This link opens in a new window
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A growing collection of literary works by about 77 African, African American, and Afro-Caribbean women.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
Contemporary Black Biography This link opens in a new window
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Biographies of thousands of African Americans.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
Dissertations and Theses This link opens in a new window
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US and Canadian dissertations and theses from 1861 to present. Mostly full-text 1997 to present.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
ERIC This link opens in a new window
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Education journal articles (EJ references) and ERIC documents (ED references), 1967-present. EDs before 1997 are requestable using the Microforms Request page and usable in the Microforms Vewing Room in the LC.
A free version of ERIC is available for all to use at this link: https://eric.ed.gov/.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
Expanded Academic ASAP This link opens in a new window
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Articles from scholarly and general-interest periodicals relating to the humanities, social sciences, and non-technical general sciences, 1980-present.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
Use to access many UMass online journal subscriptions.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.

You can access Google Scholar with UMLinks buttons from outside the UMass Amherst IP range ("off campus") by two methods:

1. Access Google Scholar through the Library web site by using this link.
2. Go to generic Google Scholar.
a. Click on "Settings."
b. Click on Library links.
c. Type in "University of Massachusetts" or "UMass Amherst" (or a few other variations).
d. Check "University of Massachusetts Amherst - UMass Check for Full Text" and Save.
e. You will be asked to authenticate somewhere along the way to full text.
Hispanic American Periodicals Index (HAPI) This link opens in a new window
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Citations to articles from social science and humanities journals in English, Spanish, and other languages, relating to Central and South America, Mexico, the Caribbean basin, the United States-Mexico border region, and Hispanics in the United States.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
Historical Abstracts Full Text This link opens in a new window
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Citations and abstracts for articles and book reviews from over 2,000 journals published since 1954, on all aspects of world history from 1450 to present (excluding the Untied States and Canada). Publications are in over 50 languages; article titles and abstracts are included in English translation.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
Historical Newspaper: Baltimore Afro-American This link opens in a new window
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Influential black newspaper, searchable, in image files, in full text. First-hand accounts and coverage of the politics, society and events of the time, covering 1893-1988.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
Historical Newspaper: Chicago Defender This link opens in a new window
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Influential black weekly newspaper, searchable, in image files, in full text. First-hand accounts and coverage of the politics, society and events of the time, covering 1905-1975.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
Historical Newspaper: Pittsburgh Courier This link opens in a new window
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One of the leading newspapers of the African American community in the U.S., with coverage from 1911-2010.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
International Index to Music Periodicals Full Text This link opens in a new window
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Citations, abstracts and full text of journal articles in dance, film, theater, and puppetry, 1864-present.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
International Political Science Abstracts This link opens in a new window
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Citations to articles from international political science periodicals, 1951-present.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
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Full-text collection of about 160 core scholarly journals in various academic disciplines, including African American Studies, from their first issues to between two and five years to the present.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
MLA International Bibliography This link opens in a new window
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An index to journal articles and other scholarly literature on literature, literary theory and criticism, linguistics, folklore, and (since 1996) film, 1920s -
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
Social Sciences Citation Index This link opens in a new window
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Provides indexing and citation tracking for journals in all the social sciences, 1900-present. Unique features include cited references (lists of records cited by the documents found); citing articles (lists of records that cite the documents found), and related records (lists of records that share common references with the documents found).
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
Sociological Abstracts This link opens in a new window
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Citation information and abstract to journal articles and books in sociology and related disciplines (anthropology, economics, education, medicine, philosophy, social psychology, etc.) from 2,500 journals in 30 languages. The database also includes abstracts of sociological conference papers, relevant dissertation listings, and citations to book reviews.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.

Twentieth-Century African American Poetry
A database of modern and contemporary African American poetry, featuring almost 9,000 poems by 62 of the most important African American poets of the last century, including Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Imamu Amiri Baraka, Audre Lorde and Rita Dove.

Coverage: 1901 - 1999

Tip

After you've run a search, use the button to retrieve articles.

It will find the full text of your article online if it's available through the libraries. Or, it will search the library catalog for you to see if we have your article in print--or let you request it via Interlibrary Loan.

Some primary sources

Mary Church Terrell, "What Role Is the Educated Negro Woman to Play in the Uplifting of Her Race?" in Twentieth Century Negro Literature, Or a Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating to the American Negro, ed. and arranged by D. W. Culp (Naperville, Ill.: J. L. Nichols, 1902), pp. 172-77.

From the database:

Women and Social Movements in Modern Empires since 1820 This link opens in a new window
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Explores prominent themes in world history since 1820: conquest, colonization, settlement, resistance, and post-coloniality, as told through women's voices.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.

The Colored American/Weekly Advocate

On January 7, 1837 Phillip A. Bell began to publish a weekly newspaper called Weekly Advocate. From the beginning, one of the major goals of this newspaper was to educate its subscribers, and much information appeared in a list format including: principal railroads, lengths of rivers, heights of principal mountains, principal colleges in the United States and the principal features of various countries of the nations of the earth.

On March 4, 1837, issue number 9 of the newspaper was published under the new name of The Colored American, with Samuel E. Cornish as editor. The new motto was “RIGHTEOUSNESS EXALTETH A NATION,” and the paper was “…designed to be the organ of Colored Americans—to be looked on as their own, and devoted to their interests—through which they can make known their views to the public—can communicate with each other and their friends, and their friends with them; and to maintain their well-known sentiments on the subjects of Abolition and Colonization, viz.—emancipation without expatriation—the extirpation of prejudice—the enactment of equal laws, and a full and free investiture of their rights as men and citizens…”

From the database:

African American Newspapers This link opens in a new window
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Seven nineteenth-century African American newspapers in full text, including advertising, 1827-1902.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.