Library Guides: Africana Studies Library Guide: Primary Sources

What are Primary Sources?

Primary sources are used as evidence to support an interpretation or argument. With that in mind, a primary source is typically an item written or created during the time period under study and created by someone with a first-hand experience. Examples may include:

Original documents like diaries, film footage, manuscripts, newspaper articles, and official records
Creative works like novels, poetry, or music
Artifacts like furniture, clothing, buildings

Contrast these with secondary sources, which interpret and analyze primary sources.

Finally, a tertiary source is one that synthesizes a body of secondary sources, usually to explain the range of arguments scholars have had on a topic (e.g. literature review), or to provide the reader with generally agreed upon facts and understanding (e.g. encyclopedias, textbooks).

But wait! Scholars working on the history of education might use textbooks as evidence for how subjects were taught in a particular time period. In this case, the textbooks become evidence of educational practice, and would be considered primary sources for this project.

Africana & Black History (NYPL)
Several thousand items ranging from historical documents and rare visual materials to contemporary photo-journalism, relating to the entirety of African American history from the 16th century to the present; selected in the course of developing the NYPL website "African American Migration Experience."

Struggles for Freedom: Southern Africa This link opens in a new window
The liberation of Southern Africa and the dismantling of the Apartheid regime was one of the major political developments of the 20th century, with far-reaching consequences for people throughout Africa and around the globe. This collection focuses on the complex and varied liberation struggles in the region, with an emphasis on Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. It brings together materials from various archives and libraries throughout the world documenting colonial rule, dispersion of exiles, international intervention, and the worldwide networks that supported successive generations of resistance within the region. Formerly known as Aluka: Struggles for Freedom.
World Heritage Sites: Africa This link opens in a new window
Explore the archaeology, history and culture of Africa through its heritage sites and landscapes. Includes digitized maps, photographs, manuscripts, and printed texts. Formerly known as Aluka: African Cultural Heritage Sites & Landscapes.
Liberation Movement in Africa and African America (Archives Unbound) This link opens in a new window
Composed of FBI surveillance files on the activities of the African Liberation Support Committee and All African People’s Revolutionary Party; this collection provides two unique views on African American support for liberation struggles in Africa, the issue of Pan-Africanism, and the role of African independence movements as political leverage for domestic Black struggles.
Archives of Sexuality & Gender This link opens in a new window
Archives of Sexuality & Gender provides a collection of primary sources for the historical study of sex, sexuality, and gender. Module IV, "International Perspectives on LGBTQ Activism and Culture" includes digitized manuscripts, articles, and ephemera from Gay and Lesbian Memory in Action (GALA) a Johannesburg, South Africa archive, from 1997 on.

Africana & Black History (NYPL)
Several thousand items ranging from historical documents and rare visual materials to contemporary photo-journalism, relating to the entirety of African American history from the 16th century to the present; selected in the course of developing the NYPL website "African American Migration Experience."
Black Film Research Online
A resource guide for the study of Black film culture, to include works from across the African Diaspora; the production, distribution, and exhibition of films by, for and about Blacks; issues of Black spectatorship and reception; and images of Black people in film from the invention of the medium in the late 19th century to the present.
Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project 1936-1938
Contains first-person accounts of slavery and black-and-white photographs of former slaves.

Civil Rights and the Black Freedom Struggle This link opens in a new window
ProQuest History Vault's Civil Rights and the Black Freedom Struggle collection offers the opportunity to study the most well-known and also unheralded events of the Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century from the perspective of the men, women, and sometimes even children who waged one of the most inspiring social movements in American history.
The resource comprises the following modules: Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century: Federal Government Records and Supplement ; Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century: Organizational Records and Personal Papers, Parts 1 and 2: NAACP Papers: Board of Directors, Annual Conferences, Major Speeches, and National Staff Files; NAACP Papers: Branch Department, Branch Files, and Youth Department Files; NAACP Papers: Special Subjects; NAACP Papers: The NAACP's Major Campaigns--Education, Voting, Housing, Employment, Armed Forces; NAACP Papers: The NAACP's Major Campaigns--Legal Department Files; NAACP Papers: The NAACP's Major Campaigns--Scottsboro, Anti-Lynching, Criminal Justice, Peonage, Labor, and Segregation and Discrimination Complaints and Responses; and African American Police League Records (1961-1988).

Library of Congress: Voices from the Days of Slavery
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.
Say It Plain-Say It Loud: A Century of Great African American Speeches
Public speech making has played a powerful role in the long struggle by African Americans for equal rights. This collection, for the ear and the eye, highlights speeches by an eclectic mix of black leaders. Their impassioned, eloquent words continue to affect the ideas of a nation and the direction of history.

Below are key news and magazine resources for Africana Studies.

For more extensive lists, see these library guides:

African American Newspapers, 1827-1998 This link opens in a new window
A subset of the America's Historical Newspapers Collection from Readex, which includes African American newspapers from around the United States, including the New Orleans Daily Creole, New Orleans Tribune, Weekly Louisianian and the Weekly Pelican.
African American Periodicals 1825-1995 This link opens in a new window
African American Periodicals, 1825-1995, features more than 170 wide-ranging periodicals by and about African Americans. Published in 26 states, the publications include academic and political journals, commercial magazines, institutional newsletters, organizations bulletins, annual reports and other genres.
African Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Contains full-text 19th and 20th-century African newspapers, especially featuring titles from Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
Black Studies Center This link opens in a new window
Includes the Black Literature Index, which offers over 70,000 bibliographic citations for fiction, poetry and literary reviews published in 110 black periodicals and newspapers between 1827-1940.

Black Press USA
Excellent online news service provides current national and local news articles on this website sponsored by the National Newspaper Publishers Association and the Black Press. Billed as “your independent source of news for the African American community,” the website includes links to Black Press online newspapers organized by state, a history section, press releases, and a search engine.

East African Newspapers This link opens in a new window
East African Newspapers, part of the Global Press Archive, includes over 800,000 pages from three titles: Daily Nation (Kenya), The Ethiopian Herald, and The Monitor (Uganda). Coverage spans 1940s to the early 2000s.
Ebony Magazine Archive This link opens in a new window
EBSCO's Ebony Magazine Archive covers civil rights, education, entrepreneurship and other social topics with an African-American focus. It includes more than 800 issues providing a broad view of African-American culture from its first issue in 1945 through 2014.

Essence Magazine Archive
First published in 1970, Essence is an American monthly lifestyle magazine covering fashion, beauty, entertainment, and culture, geared at a Black female audience. This archive provides full-page digital reproductions from 1970 to 2005.

JET Magazine Archives This link opens in a new window
Jet was originally a weekly published as a sister publication to Ebony Magazine by John H. Johnson beginning in 1951. It was published weekly and covered art, fashion, entertainment, culture and news related to the African-American community. EBSCO's full-text archive is searchable from cover to cover and offers essential historical content, much of which is not available on any other EBSCO full-text product. Articles and cover pages are fully indexed and advertisements are individually identified, ensuring researchers and readers can quickly and accurately locate information.