Primary Sources

Artstor This link opens in a new window
Digital images in the arts, architecture, humanities, and sciences with an accessible suite of software tools for teaching and research. Collections from museums, photographers, libraries, scholars, photo archives, and artists and artists' estates. Access Note: To download images or use other advanced features, individuals must register for an individual user account.
Proquest Black Studies This link opens in a new window
Scholarly essays, recent periodicals, historical newspaper articles, reference books. Includes The Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience, Index to Black Periodicals Full Text, Black Literature Index, and the Chicago Defender historical newspaper.
Black Thought and Culture This link opens in a new window
Collection of non-fiction writings of leading African-Americans. Includes interviews, journal articles, speeches, essays, pamplets, letters and other fugitive material.
Gale Primary Sources This link opens in a new window
Newspapers, books, manuscripts, maps, and photographs. Simultaneously search: 17th-18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers, 19th Century U.S. Newspapers, Sunday Times (London), Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO), Making of the Modern World, Times Literary Supplement, and Times Digital Archive, Financial Times (London).
HistoryMakers Digital Archive This link opens in a new window
Oral history interviews with both well-known and unsung African American artists, business leaders, scientists, athletes, and intellectuals.
History Vault This link opens in a new window
Digitized letters, papers, photographs, scrapbooks, financial records, diaries, and other primary source materials.

• American Indians and the American West
• American Politics and Society
• Civil Rights and the Black Freedom Struggle
• International Relations and Military Conflicts
• Southern Life, Slavery, and the Civil War
• Women's Studies
• Workers and Labor Unions
African American Communities This link opens in a new window
Pamphlets, newspapers and periodicals, correspondence, official records, reports, and in-depth oral histories reveal the prevalent challenges of racism, discrimination and integration, and a unique African American culture and identity. Focuses predominantly on Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis, New York, and towns and cities in North Carolina.
American Memory This link opens in a new window
Written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience.
HathiTrust This link opens in a new window
Digitized collections of some of the nation’s great research libraries, established in this repository to archive and share their digital content.
Access Note: VU is a partner institution. Login is required for downloading. Tutorial: https://researchguides.library.vanderbilt.edu/HathiTrustAccess
African American Experience This link opens in a new window
Articles, audio clips, images, primary source documents, maps, monographs, and government documents covering all aspects of the African American experience from Greenwood Press, Negro University Press, etc.