LibGuides: LIT 499: Tracing the Trope of Epiphanal Blackness In African American Literature: Home

Guide Table of Contents

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reference materials (bibliographies, companions, encyclopedias);
secondary works (scholarly books and journal articles); and
primary sources (drama, poetry, novels, authors' memoirs and other personal narratives).

If you would like to schedule a research consultation with me, please refer to the information in the Guide Author box.

Black History Month

"Each February, Black History Month subverts conventional narratives of American history by centering the grandeur and travails of the black freedom struggle" (Peniel E. Joseph, UT Austin, taken from a recently-published CNN op-ed titled Why This Year's Black History Month is Pivotal).

See the Primary Sources Online page of this guide for links to dozens more library e-books, databases, and open access websites that chronicle the African American experience.

All-American News
Library of Congress
open access
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"All-American news were the first newsreels produced for a black audience. Made in the 1940s and 1950s, they were originally intended to encourage black Americans to participate in, and support the war effort, and to reflect an African-American perspective on world and national events."
Black Abolitionist Archive
University of Detroit Mercy Libraries
open access
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"From the 1820s to the Civil War, African Americans assumed prominent roles in the transatlantic struggle to abolish slavery. The Black Abolitionist Digital Archive is a collection of over 800 speeches by antebellum blacks and approximately 1,000 editorials from the period."
Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century: Federal Government Records
Gitenstein Library database
Do not miss Black Freedom Struggle in the United States, ProQuest's complementary open access website that includes a selection of documents from other modules in the "Black Freedom" series. These cover the colonial, antebellum, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow eras.
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Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century: Federal Government Records consists of digitized primary documents drawn from several archives and licensed by Gitenstein Library from ProQuest. It is but one module residing within the larger ProQuest History Vault collection. (Our library does not license the other modules, but see Black Freedom Struggle in the United States, ProQuest's complementary open access website that contains a selection of about 1,600 documents from all modules in the "Black Freedom" series.) The twentieth century federal government records—the module to which our library has access—spans the period from 1901 to 1991. Sub-collections are titled African Americans in the Military; Black Workers in the Era of the Great Migration, 1916-1929; Centers of the Southern Struggle: FBI Files on Montgomery, Albany, St. Augustine, Selma, and Memphis; Civil Rights During the Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, and Bush Administrations; Civil Rights and the Federal Government (various topics); East St. Louis Riot of 1917; FBI Files on Black Extremist Organizations; Federal Surveillance of Afro-Americans (1917-1925); Martin Luther King, Jr. FBI File; New Deal Agencies and Black America; Peonage Files of the U.S. Department of Justice, 1901-1945; President Truman's Committee on Civil Rights; Records of the Committee on Fair Employment Practices: Racial Tension File, 1943-1945; and Records of the Tuskegee Airmen.