Primary Sources
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.
African American Newspapers: The 19th Century - 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.
African American Song Audio database which documents African American music, including jazz, blues, gospel, ragtime, folk songs, and narratives, from the Document Records label. Browse by category of music, region, genre, instrument, artist, ensemble, and time period. A playlist option is available.
ArchiveGrid - This beta system connects you with primary source material held in archives, special collections, and manuscript collections around the world. You will find historical documents, personal papers, family histories, and more. ArchiveGrid also helps researchers contact archives to request information, arrange a visit, and order copies.
Black Abolitionist Papers Papers and articles of 300 US and European anti-slavery activists of color, 1830-1865.
Black Thought and Culture Contains 619 sources with 246 authors which includes the nonfiction published works of leading African Americans.
Black Women Writers A growing collection of literary works by about 77 African, African American, and Afro-Caribbean women.
Ethnic NewsWatch Full-text articles from the newspapers, magazines and journals of ethnic communities in the United States, 1965-present.
HATHI Trust Digital Library A gigantic collection of books and periodicals digitized by Google, Internet Archive, and member libraries. The entire corpus is searchable within the HathiTrust catalog, although only out-of-copyright books are available to read. Generally, this is books published before 1923 or by the government. UMass Amherst users can create accounts, assemble their own sets of texts for analysis, and print and download.
Historical Baltimore Afro-American - 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.
Historical Boston Globe The entire Boston Globe, searchable, in image files, 1872-1924.
Historical Chicago Defender Influential black weekly newspaper, searchable, in image files, 1905-1975.
Historical New York Amsterdam News Full text of the paper of record of the New York's African American community, 1922-1993.
Historical NY Times The entire New York Times, searchable, in image files. Time Period Covered: 1851-1999.
Historical Pittsburgh Courier The leading newspaper of the African American community in twentieth-century U.S. Covers 1911-2002.
Historical Statistics of the United States Statistics gathered by the Census Bureau, with scholarly editing and essays, from colonial times to near present.
North American Women's Letters and Diaries Primary source material for life as it was lived by 1,000 women in North America, 1675-1950.
Women Writers Project Literary works by women writers, 1600-1800.
Secondary Sources
Academic Search Premier A multidisciplinary database with many literature, linguistics and anthropology journals.
African American Biographical Database Full-text books on African American lives and culture.
America: History and Life Citations and abstracts for journal articles, dissertations, and book reviews relating to United States and Canadian history.
Arts and Humanities Citation Index In ISI Web of Science, an index to scholarly journals which can be searched by topic, author, source, address or by cited reference. Good resource for academic book reviews.
Biography Resource Center Brief biographies from a variety of reference sources.
Black Studies Center 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.
Book Review Digest Citations, abstracts and excerpts of reviews of books, as published in periodicals.
Book Review Digest Retrospective Citations, abstracts and excerpts of reviews of English-language books, as published in periodicals, 1905-1982
Dissertations and Theses Citations and abstracts of doctoral and some maters theses, mostly completed in colleges and universities of the United States and Canada. Full text access to UMass dissertations.
ERIC Articles and reports dealing with issues in education.
JSTOR Full-text articles from scholarly journals from many disciplines. From the earliest issue of each journal to between two and five years prior to the present. Therefore, does NOT contain very recent scholarship.
Web of Science Allows multidisciplinary searches combining arts, humanities, social science and science. Good for seeing who cited whom. Good for academic book reviews.
WorldCat The combined catalogs of most U.S. libraries. Material not owned by UMass Amherst can usually be borrowed through Interlibrary Loan.
button
(if the database has it) to retrieve articles or to be taken
directly to Interlibrary Loan, so you can order the article
if UMass does not have it. 
