Research Guides: Slavery & Freedom: Free Black Americans in the Antebellum US

Black History in Two Minutes: Free Black Americans Before Civil War

Guide Author

Leah Richardson

she/her/hers

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Contact:

Special Collections Research Center
Gelman Library, Suite 704

202-994-3263

Subjects: American Studies, Gender Studies, Primary Source Collections, Women's Studies

Digital Archives

Documenting the American South
Full text versions of most 19th century African American works of literature about slavery, the black church, and Reconstruction. Includes North American slave narratives.
African American Women Writers of the 19th Century
Hosted by the Schomburg Center for Research and in Black Culture, the site includes many full-text versions of texts by black women writers such as Frances E. W. Harper and Phillis Wheatley.
American Visionaries: Frederick Douglass
“An introduction to Douglass’s life and work, illustrated with photographs of Douglass, his home, and various possessions.” From the National Park Service.
Afro-British Writers
Scholar Brycchan Carey’s website has good information pertaining to the Afro-British freedmen and antislavery writers Olaudah Equiano and and Ottobah Cugoano, and the composer, actor and businessman Ignatius Sancho. Includes British anti-slavery poetry.
Black Europeans
Covers literary figures that include Alexander Pushkin and Alexandre Dumas.
Caribbean History Revealed
"The history of the British Caribbean is explored in this exhibition through government documents, photographs, and maps dating from the 17th century to the 1920s and discovered during a cataloguing project at The National Archives of the United Kingdom.” Material related to all colonies ever under British rule.
Alexandria Freedmen's Cemetery
"The Friends of Freedmen’s Cemetery was founded in 1997 for the purposes of preserving, commemorating and researching a little known, Civil War-era, African American burying ground in Old Town Alexandria."
African American History Collections at Library of Congress
Part of the LC's American Memory Project, this collection includes digitized materials as well as many on-site materials available to researchers.

Newspaper & Magazine Archives

African American Newspapers, 1827-1998 (Readex)
Provides access to approximately 270 U.S. newspapers chronicling a century and a half of the African American experience. The collection features papers from more than 35 states and was in part created from the most extensive African American newspaper archives in the U.S.
American Periodicals Series (1741-1940)
Page-images from more than 1,100 historic American magazines, journals, and newspapers illuminating the development of American culture, politics, and society across 150 years. Articles can be searched by author, source, or words in the complete text.
African American Newspapers: The 19th Century (Accessible Archives)
This database provides full-text access to articles from a number of historic African American newspapers, beginning in 1827 with Freedom's Journal. The collection contains a wealth of information about cultural life and history during the 1800s and offers first-hand reports of the major events and issues of the day.
Baltimore Afro-American (1893-1988)
The Baltimore Afro-American (Historical), a prominent, historic African American newspaper, offers full page and article images with searchable full text back to the first issue.
19th Century U.S. Newspapers
Provides access to approximately 1.7 million pages of primary source newspaper content from the 19th century, featuring full-text content and images from numerous newspapers from a range of urban and rural regions throughout the U.S. The collection encompasses the entire 19th century, with an emphasis on such topics as the American Civil War, African-American culture and history, Western migration and Antebellum-era life among other subjects.

African American Periodicals, 1825-1995 This link opens in a new window
This collection 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.
National Anti-Slavery Standard This link opens in a new window
This publication was the official weekly newspaper of the American Anti-Slavery Society, an abolitionist society founded by William Lloyd Garrison and Arthur Tappan. The newspaper contained essays, debates, speeches, events, reports and anything else deemed newsworthy in relation to the question of slavery in the United States and other parts of the world. Covers years 1840-1870.
Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Search all historical newspapers from ProQuest: The Atlanta Constitution (1869-1875; 1881-1984), Baltimore Afro-American (1893-1988), Baltimore Sun (1837-1991), Chicago Defender (1909-1975), Chicago Tribune (1849-1998), Korea Times (1950-2016), Los Angeles Times (1881-1999), The New York Times (1857-2019), The New York Tribune / Herald Tribune (1841-1962), Norfolk Journal and Guide (1916-2003), Pittsburgh Courier (1911-1950; 1955-1966), The Wall Street Journal (1889-2012), and The Washington Post (1877-2007).