African American Studies Databases

The African American Experience is the definitive electronic research tool for African American history and culture from one of the most respected publishers in the field. The two primary goals: to provide rock-solid information from authorities in the field, and to allow African Americans to speak for themselves through a wealth of primary sources. Drawing on over 300 titles, and designed under the guidance of leading librarians, this database gives voice to the black experience from its African origins to the present day.

African American History Month:  This site includes primary sources in the form of images, audio, and video; guide pages on specific topics such as the Harlem Renaissance and Brown vs. Board of Education; and a Teachers’ Guide.

African American Song is the first online resource to document the history of African American music in an online music listening service. The collection contains a diverse range of genres such as jazz, blues, gospel, ragtime, folk songs, and narratives, among others.

• Major federal legislation concerning slave trade, colonization, reconstruction, civil rights, affirmative action, and issues related to race relations, 1792–1994.
• U.S. Supreme Court decisions on constitutional issues raised by slavery, reconstruction programs, Jim Crow laws, school segregation, job and housing discrimination, and affirmative action programs, 1806–1999.
• Autobiographies of prominent African Americans, including Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. DuBois, Walter F. White, and James Forman.
• Manuscript materials on the crusade to ban the movie Birth of a Nation, NAACP legal campaigns against segregated education and "white primaries," work of the "Black Cabinet" during the New Deal, and the surge of civil rights activities in the 1960s as seen from inside the Kennedy and Johnson White House.
• Reference articles on major African American figures and key events and court decisions in the civil rights movement.
• Scholarly articles from academic journals and anthologies on the African American experience.
• Photographs depicting famous persons, events, and institutions in African American history, including Carl Van Vechten portrait images of famous writers, scholars, and artists; Hampton University photos of the early experience in industrial education; and images from the Mary McLeod Bethune Foundation. The Bethune Foundation images include depictions of student life at Bethune-Cookman College and its predecessor institutions as well as photos documenting the
  political career of Mary McLeod Bethune.

Black Drama contains approximately 1200 plays by 201 playwrights, together with detailed, fielded information on related productions, theaters, production companies, and more. The database also includes selected playbills, production photographs and other ephemera related to the plays.

Black History: This site includes short video clips, written biographies of 200 notable African-Americans, 101 Fast Facts, and a Classroom Guide.

Black Studies Center is a leading tool that supports research, teaching, and learning in Black Studies and other disciplines that benefit from a more detailed coverage of the black experience such as history, literature, political science, sociology, philosophy, and religion.

Black Thought and Culture contains 1297 sources with 1100 authors, covering the non-fiction published works of leading African Americans. Particular care has been taken to index this material so that it can be searched more thoroughly than ever before. Where possible the complete published non-fiction works are included, as well as interviews, journal articles, speeches, essays, pamplets, letters and other fugitive material.

Ethnic NewsWatch (ENW) is an interdisciplinary, bilingual (English and Spanish) and comprehensive full text database of newspapers, magazines and journals from ethnic, minority and native presses. This current database begins its coverage in 1990.

International Index to Black Periodicals: International Index to Black Periodicals Full Text brings together 150 of the most respected scholarly and popular periodicals in Black Studies.

Lexis Nexis Primary Sources in US History (formerly African American Studies) (Help Menu) include:

• Major federal legislation concerning slave trade, colonization, reconstruction, civil rights, affirmative action, and issues related to race relations, 1792–1994.
• U.S. Supreme Court decisions on constitutional issues raised by slavery, reconstruction programs, Jim Crow laws, school segregation, job and housing discrimination, and affirmative action programs, 1806–1999.
• Autobiographies of prominent African Americans, including Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. DuBois, Walter F. White, and James Forman.
• Manuscript materials on the crusade to ban the movie Birth of a Nation, NAACP legal campaigns against segregated education and "white primaries," work of the "Black Cabinet" during the New Deal, and the surge of civil rights activities in the 1960s as seen from inside the Kennedy and Johnson White House.
• Reference articles on major African American figures and key events and court decisions in the civil rights movement.
• Scholarly articles from academic journals and anthologies on the African American experience.
• Photographs depicting famous persons, events, and institutions in African American history, including Carl Van Vechten portrait images of famous writers, scholars, and artists; Hampton University photos of the early experience in industrial education; and images from the Mary McLeod Bethune Foundation. The Bethune Foundation images include depictions of student life at Bethune-Cookman College and its predecessor institutions as well as photos documenting the
  political career of Mary McLeod Bethune.

Oxford African American Studies Center combines the authority of carefully edited reference works with sophisticated technology to create the most comprehensive collection of scholarship available online to focus on the lives and events which have shaped African American and African history and culture.