Celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and Black History Month (February)

Black Studies Center

Black Studies Center is a fully cross-searchable gateway to Black Studies including scholarly essays, recent periodicals, historical newspaper articles, and much more.  It combines several resources for research and teaching in Black Studies: Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience, International Index to Black Periodicals (IIBP), historical black newspapers, and the Black Literature Index.

ProQuest Historical Black Newspapers

Seven historical Black newspapers are available both here and through the Black Studies Center:

• New York Amsterdam News (1922-1993)

   

• Pittsburgh Courier (1911-2002)

   

• Los Angeles Sentinel (1934-2005)

   

• Atlanta Daily World (1932-2003)

   

• Philadelphia Tribune (1912-2001, incomplete)

   

• Norfolk New Journal and Guide (1921-2003, incomplete)

   

• Afro-American (1893-1988, incomplete)

African American Newspapers: The Nineteenth Century

Full text of 6 newspapers (some years incomplete):

·         Freedom's Journal (1827-30)

·         Colored American (1837-1841)

·         North Star (1847-51)

·         National Era (1847-50)

·         Provincial Freeman (1854-55)

·         Frederick Douglass Paper (1851-52)

Black Drama

 This edition of Black Drama contains approximately 1200 plays by 200 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. 

African American Song                        

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.

This release features some 16,000 tracks of great historical recordings from Document Records. This great collection features recordings from the first half of the 20th century and includes iconic artists such as The Fisk Jubilee Singers, Memphis Minnie, Blind Willie McTell and Huddie Ledbetter.  It provides a rich source of Blues and early Jazz recordings as well as a lot of sacred music.

Naxos Jazz

Over 23,000 tracks that span the history of jazz and include blues, R&B, and more.  Many of the tracks are from albums released by the Fantasy label based on the West coast. Among the many jazz legends represented are Ella Fitzgerald, Charles Mingus, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Thelonious Monk, Gene Ammons, and  Wes Montgomery.

The Library provides access to a variety of other resources on African Americans (via Sage)