Primary Sources

The Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century: Federal Government Records is a comprehensive online database that provides access to primary source materials documenting the African American civil rights movement. This collection, part of ProQuest's History Vault, offers digitized archival documents including correspondence, government records, organization papers, and speeches. It covers a wide range of topics such as the military service of African Americans, civil rights during various presidential administrations, FBI files on civil rights leaders and organizations, and records from federal agencies like the Department of Justice and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. The database spans from 1901 to 1991, offering researchers, students, and scholars valuable insights into the struggle for racial equality in America. With its extensive coverage of federal records, this resource provides a unique perspective on how the U.S. government addressed and responded to civil rights issues throughout the 20th century. Major collections in this module include the FBI Files on Martin Luther King Jr.; Centers of the Southern Struggle, an exceptional collection of FBI Files covering five of the most pivotal arenas of the civil rights struggle of the 1960s: Montgomery, Albany, St. Augustine, Selma, and Memphis; and records from the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations, detailing the interaction between civil rights leaders and organizations and the highest levels of the federal government.

This is a landmark electronic collection of approximately 100,000 pages of non-fiction writings by major American Black leaders—teachers, artists, politicians, religious leaders, athletes, war veterans, entertainers, and other figures—covering 250 years of history. In addition to the most familiar works, Black Thought and Culture presents a great deal of previously inaccessible material, including letters, speeches, prefatory essays, political leaflets, interviews, periodicals, and trial transcripts. The ideas of over 1,000 authors present an evolving and complex view of what it is to be Black in America. Browse primary sources from the Vietnam War, the US Civil Rights Movement, the US Civil War, the Watergate Scandal, Reconstruction, World Wars I & II, and many landmark and historical events. This collection contains the work of Frederick Douglass, Malcolm X, W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida Wells, A. Philip Randolph, Martin Luther King, Jr., Jesse Jackson, as well as the complete run of the Black Panther newspaper (1966-1980), and a wide selection of abolitionists' writings from the nineteenth century.

This collection comprises FBI surveillance and informant reports and correspondence from a variety of offices including, Charlotte, Columbia, Birmingham, Jacksonville, New York City, Baltimore, Atlanta, Louisville, and Knoxville; Justice Department memoranda, correspondence, and analyses; Newsclippings and articles; Domestic Intelligence Section reports; Transcriptions of wiretaps, typewriter tapes, and coded messages; Memoranda of conversations; Local police reports and assessments. Access provided to more than 13,000 images from the FBI Headquarters Library.

This collection of reference works focuses on the lives and events which have shaped African American and African history and culture. The core content includes African American National Biography; Dictionary of African Biography; Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience; Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895; Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896 to the Present; Black Women in America, Second Edition; The Oxford Encyclopedia of African Thought; and The Dictionary of Caribbean and Afro-Latin American Biography.

This archive includes 4,285 pages in 22 manuscripts, sourced from the Federal Bureau of Investigation Library. Holdings range from May 1961 to November 1976.  Included are surveillance reports, chronologies, witness statements, and more. These materials provide unique (and in some cases recently declassified) insight into the Freedom Rides, the Kennedy administration, and the segregated South.