Research Portal: Africana Studies: Find Primary Texts

Primary Texts

In Historical research, accessing the primary texts is of paramount importance. So what's a primary text? Here's a list of some examples:

Try searching in OneSearch using a Keyword term related to your topic and one of the format terms discussed above. For example:

Voices from the Days of Slavery: Former Slaves Tell Their Stories
The almost seven hours of recorded interviews presented here took place between 1932 and 1975 in nine Southern states. Twenty-three interviewees, born between 1823 and the early 1860s, discuss how they felt about slavery, slaveholders, coercion of slaves, their families, and freedom. Several individuals sing songs, many of which were learned during the time of their enslavement.
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A part of Library of Congress's American Memory Project.
American Memory Project
American Memory provides free and open access through the Internet to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience. It is a digital record of American history and creativity. These materials, from the collections of the Library of Congress and other institutions, chronicle historical events, people, places, and ideas that continue to shape America.
The Civil Rights Documentation Project
A timeline of the civil rights movement with primary documents included in digital form from the Dirksen Congressional Center.
"What Does American Democracy Mean to Me?": A Speech by Mary McCloud Bethune from 1939
Mary McLeod Bethune founded The National Council of Negro Women in 1935. Later FDR named her the director of the Office of Minority Affairs. She gave this speech, “What Does American Democracy Mean to Me?” in 1939 in New York City.

Slavery and Anti-Slavery (SAS): A Transnational Archive, Parts I, II, III and IV
The largest and most ambitious project of its kind, this collection is devoted to the scholarly study and understanding of slavery from a multinational perspective. This primary source collection includes thousands of documents related to the transatlantic slave trade, the global movement for the abolition of slavery, the legal, personal, and economic aspects of the slavery system, and the dynamics of emancipation in the U.S. as well as in Latin America, the Caribbean, and other regions.