Selected African American Studies Internet Resources
George Mason University Resources
Arts and Humanities
Directories
Local Resources
Primary Sources
Research Centers, Associations, and Projects
Science
George Mason University Resources
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African American Media Collection Guide: GMU Libraries
This is a selected collection guide to video, audio and multimedia resources available at the University Libraries.
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African American Studies Department
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African American Studies Research Guide
This is a selected research guide designed to help researchers devise an effective strategy and identify important resources. While it is not meant to be a comprehensive bibliography, these sources serve to identify the types of resources likely to solve research problems. Additional sources can be identified by examining the subject headings listed in these sources, using research guides in other related disciplines, and searching the library catalog.
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GMU Libraries MyLibrary
This is an electronic gateway used to customize GMU Library Resources. Set up an account and select "African-American Studies"
as your discipline. This provides access to electronic journals and databases specific to African American Studies. Please note
that most of these resources are only available for remote access by the faculty, students, and staff of George Mason University.
Arts and Humanities
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African American Art on the Internet-B. Davis Schwartz Memorial Library
This site is a brief index to online art collections, galleries, museums, and individual artist websites. While its primary focus is African American art
it also includes sites devoted to African art.
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Archives of African American Music and Culture-Indiana University
This site covers African American music in all its forms including acid jazz, art music, black radio, blues, classical, gospel, jazz, hip-hop and rap,
motown, rhythm and blues, and rock.
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Black Film Center/Archive
Directories
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Academic Info-African American History & Studies
Comprehensive annotated directory of links to scholarly resources. Emphasis is on “digital collections from libraries, museums, and academic organizations and sites offering unique online content.”
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Africana.com
Encyclopedia and gateway to resources on national and international African history and culture.
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African American Studies: University of Pennsylvania Library
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Race Relations-The Mining Company
Collection of links and articles on race relations. Good for current information on popular topics such as slavery reparations and
racial profiling.
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Center for Multilingual Multicultural Research-African American Resources
This site contains a variety of full text articles on the ebonics debate, audio files, and links to web sites.
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Guide to African American Documentary Resources
"Many information centers are beginning to reveal and promote materials relating to African American history that are housed in their respective facilities.
In hopes of enhancing access, dozens of institutions are digitizing such materials. This website reviews several existing websites and digitization projects
and lists noteworthy digitization projects that are forthcoming." Includes ability to browse by collection title, affiliation / publisher, and a basic search engine.
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Index of African American History: World-Wide Web Virtual Library
This site is a large collection of links on the African American historical experience organized by time period.
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Internet Public Library Guide to African / African American Resources
Collection of librarian selected scholarly and popular web sites. Listings include hypertext subject headings and a search engine
facilitates finding related sites.
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Javanoir--A Selected Guide to African American Resources on the Internet
Gateway to popular web sites of interest to African Americans. Subjects covered include arts and entertainment, jobs and employment,
family and living, and health.
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Resources in Black Studies
This site is an annotated listing of sites on the international African community. It has a broader collection of links
than most of the sites listed above.
Local Resources
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African-American Mosaic
Resource guide to the Library of Congress's African-American Collection. "Covering the nearly 500 years of the black experience in the Western hemisphere, the Mosaic surveys the full range size, and variety of the Library's collections, including books, periodicals, prints, photographs, music, film, and recorded sound."
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Afro-American Sources in Virginia: A Guide to Manuscripts
This site provides access to an updated electronic version of Michael Plunkett's book describing the holdings of 26 institutional
collections in Virginia. These sources can be searched by keyword, subject, name, historical period, or geographic location.
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Smithsonian: African and African American Resources
Guide to resources available at the various Smithsonian Institution archives, galleries, museums, and research centers.
Primary Sources
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African American Perspectives: Pamphlets from the
Daniel A. P. Murray Collection 1818-1907
This collection presented by the Library of Congress "presents a panoramic and eclectic review of African-American history and culture,
spanning almost one hundred years from the early nineteenth through the early twentieth centuries, with the bulk of the material published between 1875 and 1900.
Among the authors represented are Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Benjamin W. Arnett, Alexander Crummel, and Emanuel Love." The collection
can be searched by keyword, or browsed by subject / author. Documents are available full text.
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Afro-American Almanac
Small digital collection of biographies, folktales, books, documents, speeches, poetry, and commentary. "A historical perspective of a nation, its people, and its cultural evolution. From the beginning of the
slave trade through the Civil Rights movement, to the present."
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African American Newspapers and Other Printed Media
This site lists over 200 publications by state. While it does not offer direct access to articles, it is useful to identify
resources for database and print resource searches.
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African American Women: Online Archival Collections at Duke University
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Africans In America
Africans in America is a “major collection of images, documents, stories, biographies, and commentaries” based on the PBS series. The site offers perspectives on slavery through four major eras, ranging from 1470 to 1865.
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American Slave Narratives: An Online Anthology
"From 1936 to 1938, over 2,300 former slaves from across the American South were interviewed by writers and journalists under the aegis of the Works Progress Administration. These former slaves, most born in the last years of the slave regime or during the Civil War, provided first-hand accounts of their experiences on plantations, in cities, and on small farms. This web site provides an opportunity to read a sample of these narratives, and to see some of the photographs taken at the time of the interviews."
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Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the from the Federal Writers Project, 1936-1938
"Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and assembled and microfilmed in 1941 as the seventeen-volume Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves. This online collection is a joint presentation of the Manuscript and Prints and Photographs Divisions of the Library of Congress and includes more than 200 photographs from the Prints and Photographs Division that are now made available to the public for the first time."
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Civil Rights in Mississippi Digital Archive
The Civil Rights in Mississippi Digital Archive project is a database of digitized versions of "rare and unique library and archival resources on race relations in Mississippi."
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Documenting the American South: University of North Carolina
Digital collection of sources on southern history and culture, including more than 1000 books and manuscripts. Subject, author, and title
indexing makes this source easy to search and use.
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Freedoms Journal, the first African-American owned and operated newspaper published in the United States--Wisconsin Historical Society Library
Digital collection of all 103 issues of Freedom's Journal, 1827-1829. "Freedom's Journal provided international, national, and regional information on current events and contained editorials declaiming slavery, lynching, and other injustices. The Journal also published biographies of prominent
African-Americans and listings of births, deaths, and marriages in the African-American New York community. Freedom's Journal circulated in 11 states, the District of Columbia, Haiti, Europe, and Canada."
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From Slavery to Freedom: The African-American Pamphlet Collection, 1824-1909
This collection presented by the Library of Congress "presents 397 pamphlets from the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, published from 1824 through 1909,
by African-American authors and others who wrote about slavery, African colonization, Emancipation, Reconstruction, and related topics. The materials range from
personal accounts and public orations to organizational reports and legislative speeches. Among the authors represented are Frederick Douglass, Kelly Miller, Charles Sumner, Mary Church Terrell,
and Booker T. Washington." The collection can be searched by keyword, or browsed by subject / author. Documents are available full text.
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Historical Text Archive: African American
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Virginia Runaways Project
"The Virginia Runaways Project is a digital database of runaway and captured slave and servant advertisements from 18th-century Virginia newspapers.
When a slave or servant ran away, masters often placed remarkably detailed advertisements for their return. Sheriffs and other county officials also often advertised the capture of
runaways or suspected runaways. This project offers full transcripts and images of all runaway and captured ads for slaves, servants, and deserters placed in Virginia newspapers from
1736 to 1790."
Research Centers, Associations, and Projects
Science
Developed and maintained by Thomas Herndon, Multimedia and Interdisciplinary Programs Librarian and African American Studies Library Liaison at the
George Mason University Libraries.Please e-mail comments and suggestions to jyoung8@gmu.edu.