LibGuides: African American Studies Research Guide: Article Databases

Key Electronic Resources

Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History
African-American history from 1619 to the present day
*Using biographies, historical essays, and thematic pieces-many by the foremost scholars in the field-it addresses a wide array of subjects in over 2,300 articles to fully define in one source the cultural roots and current condition of the African-American community.
JSTOR
Multiple Subjects including history, literature, biology, political science, communication, business, and African-American studies
*Contains the full text of articles from scholarly journals

*Articles published from early 1900s to 2 or 3 years ago.

Austin Peay State University currently participates in the following JSTOR Collection(s):
Biological Sciences Collection
Life Sciences Collection
Arts & Sciences I Collection
Arts & Sciences II Collection
Arts & Sciences III Collection
Arts & Sciences IV Collection
Arts & Sciences V Collection
Arts & Sciences VI Collection
Arts & Sciences VII Collection
Arts & Sciences VIII Collection
Arts & Sciences IX Collection
Arts & Sciences X Collection
Arts & Sciences XI Collection
Arts & Sciences XII Collection
Arts & Sciences XIII Collection
Arts & Sciences XIV Collection
Arts & Sciences XV Collection

Austin Peay State University also subscribes to the following individual journal(s):
19th-Century Music
The American Biology Teacher
The American Mathematical Monthly
The College Mathematics Journal
Ethnomusicology
Journal for Research in Mathematics Education
Mathematics Magazine
The Mathematics Teacher
Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School
Nineteenth-Century Literature
Social Problems
Teaching Children Mathematics
Project MUSE
Social sciences, arts, humanities
*Project MUSE offers full-text current and archival articles from 500+ scholarly journals from major university presses covering literature and criticism, history, performing arts, cultural studies, education, philosophy, political science, gender studies, and more.

*Updated continually.
Black Thought and Culture
African American Studies, Political Science, History
*collection of approximately 100,000 pages of non-fiction writings by major black leaders in North America
*Works by teachers, artists, politicians, religious leaders, athletes, war veterans, entertainers, and other figures form the corpus
*collection encompasses 100,000 pages of materials, including letters, speeches, prefatory essays, political leaflets, trial transcripts, and interviews

Simultaneously search multiple library databases with the Peay Search discovery service

Browse Article Databases by Title

A-Z List of Databases
List of electronic resources sorted by title with the option to search for a specific database

General Resources for Research on All Subjects

General Resources may also contain many useful articles or other types of information on your topic.
Click the link below for a complete list of General Resources.

General Article Databases (All Subjects)
by Michael Hooper Last Updated Feb 21, 2025 164 views this year

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If you have problems accessing resources from off campus, please call the Library’s Access Services Desk at 931-221-7978 or Ask the InfoHub.

African American Studies Resources for Research

Academic Search Premier
All subjects
*contains indexing for 8,200 publications

*contains full text for more than 4,650 titles

*PDF backfiles to 1975 or further are available for over 100 journals
Academic Video Online: Premium
Streaming video for all subjects
Academic Video Online (AVON) delivers more than 66,000 video titles spanning the widest range of subject areas including anthropology, history, business, counseling, dance, ethnic studies, gay and lesbian studies, film, opera, religion, theatre, and more. AVON includes every kind of video material available with curricular relevance: documentaries, interviews, performances, news programs and newsreels, field recordings, commercials, and raw footage. Users will find thousands of award-winning films, including Academy®, Emmy®, and Peabody® winners as well as the most frequently used films for classroom instruction, plus newly released films and previously unavailable archival material. Publishers include A&E, Bullfrog Films, HISTORY®, Sony Pictures Classics, BroadwayHD™, 60 Minutes, PBS, BBC, Milestone Films and many more.

*Complete details for Academic Video Online: Premium including a full bibliography can be found at www.alexanderstreet.com/avon . A guide is available at http://proquest.libguides.com/AVON
African American Historical Serials Collection
Primary source materials concerning African American social and religious life from 1829-1922.
The African American Historical Serials Collection was developed in conjunction with the American Theological Library Association (ATLA) as an effort to preserve endangered serials related to African American religious life and culture.

This collection features:
*Over 170 unique titles related to African American life and culture
*Approximately 60,000 pages of searchable primary source content
*Reports and annuals from various African American organizations and social service agencies, as well as African American periodicals
*Extensive coverage of African American religious organizations, churches and institutions
African Americans and Jim Crow: Repression and Protest, 1883-1922
Crucial documents covering the lives of African Americans during the rise of segregation and Jim Crow
In an 1883 decision known as the “The Civil Rights Cases” the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated the Civil Rights Act of 1875 and declared the federal government could not prevent discrimination on the basis of race. This ruling paved the way for the codification of Jim Crow laws which would provide a legal framework to reverse the hard-earned gains African- Americans had made during Reconstruction.

Where does the content come from?
The content in this database was curated from the Library Company of Philadelphia’s acclaimed collection Afro-Americana Imprints, 1535-1922.

What time period does it cover?
From the late 19th century to the early 20th, the end of Reconstruction through the first World War.

What’s in it?
This collection covers many topical categories such as the growing body of work by African- American writers; the portrayal of African-Americans in art and literature; religion; race; early histories of slavery; the Civil War; Reconstruction; and others. This archive contains varied perspectives on subjects including but not limited to:

African-American Civil Rights
African-American Women
Political Restoration of the South
Social Conditions in the South
Separate but Equal
The Race 'Problem'
Theorizing the Origins of Race
Minstrel Shows and Satire
Race Relations and Southern States
White Supremacy Movements and Groups
Back-to-Africa Movement
Suffrage/Right to Vote
Lynching

And on organizations such as:

African Methodist Episcopal Church
Baptist Associations
Ku Klux Klan
Presbyterian Church

This database provides important background and context for students seeking an understanding of the disparate interpretations of this extremely divisive period.

This database is a subset of Afro-Americana Imprints.
African Americans and Reconstruction: Hope and Struggle, 1865-1883
Crucial documents covering the lives of African Americans in the years following the Civil War
The content in this database was curated from the Library Company of Philadelphia’s acclaimed collection Afro-Americana Imprints, 1535-1922.

What time period does it cover?
From the mid 1860’s to the early 1880’s, the end of the Civil War to Jim Crow.

What’s in it?
This collection covers many topical categories such as Reconstruction by state; works by African- American writers on race, slavery, and civil rights; the portrayal of African Americans in the Arts; early histories of the Civil War and slavery; and others. This archive contains varied perspectives on subjects including but not limited to:

African-American Activism
Causes of the Civil War
Political Restoration of the South
Legal Status of African Americans
Congress and Radical Reconstruction
Discrimination and Segregation
Theorizing the Origins of Race
Minstrel Show Music, Scripts, etc.
Education in the South
African-Americans in Office
Back-to-Africa Movement
Suffrage/Right to Vote
Lynchings and Massacres

And on organizations such as:

Baptist Church
Freedmen's Bureau
Ku Klux Klan
Presbyterian Church
The Confederacy
Republican Party

This database provides important background and context for students seeking an appreciation of the attempted transformation of the South and diverse perspectives on the greater Reconstruction Era.

This resource is a subset of Afro-Americana Imprints
African History and Culture, 1540-1921
History of Africa and its diverse people over nearly 400 years
*More than 1,300 books, pamphlets, almanacs, broadsides and ephemera
*Compiled by the curators of the extraordinary Afro-Americana Imprints collection
Afro-Americana Imprints, 1535-1922
African American history, literature and culture
*Created from the Library Company’s acclaimed Afro-Americana Collection—an accumulation that began with Benjamin Franklin and steadily increased throughout its entire history—this unique online resource will provide researchers with more than 12,000 printed works. These essential books, pamphlets and broadsides, including many lesser-known imprints, hold an unparalleled record of African American history, literature and culture.

*The Afro-Americana Imprints collection spans nearly 400 years, from the early 16th to the early 20th century. Critically important subjects covered include the West’s discovery and exploitation of Africa; the rise of slavery in the New World along with the growth and success of abolitionist movements; the development of racial thought and racism; descriptions of African American life—slave and free—throughout the Americas; and slavery and race in fiction and drama. Also featured are printed works of African American individuals and organizations.
America: History & Life with Full Text
U.S. history
*lists citations and full text for journal articles and books

*covers United States and Canadian historical events from prehistory to the present

*covers items published from 1910 to present
American Antiquarian Society Historical Periodicals Collection (1691-1877)
Collection of American periodicals published between 1691 and 1877
*EBSCO partners with American Antiquarian Society (AAS), the premier library documenting the life of America's people from the Colonial Era through the Civil War and Reconstruction, to provide digital access to the American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals Collection, the most comprehensive collection of American periodicals published between 1691 and 1877.

Series 1 (1691-1820)

AAS Historical Periodicals Collection: Series 1 presents more than 500 titles dating from 1691 through 1820. Almost every 17th- and 18th-century American title is represented in addition to the majority of works published before 1821. Subject strengths in this series include Afro-Americana, Agriculture, Children's literature, Education, Eighteenth-century imprints, Leisure and hobbies, Masonic works, Medicine, Religion, Science, Technology, The Trades, Women's literature

Series 2 (1821-1837)

AAS Historical Periodicals Collection: Series 2 presents over 1,000 titles dating from 1821 through 1837. Series 2 represents the Jacksonian Democracy era in history and is broad in scope including agriculture, entertainment, history, literary criticism, and politics.

Series 3 (1838-1852)

AAS Historical Periodicals Collection: Series 3 presents over 1,800 titles dating from 1838 through 1852. Series 3 reveals a rapidly growing young nation, where industrialization, the railroads, regional political differences, and life on the western frontier were daily realities.

Series 4 (1853-1865)

AAS Historical Periodicals Collection: Series 4 presents over 1,200 titles dating from 1853 through 1865. While the Civil War is a key focal point of Series 4, it also features a diverse record of the continuance of daily life for many Americans—both leading up to and during the war. News from the battlefront is found, in addition to the usual breadth of subject matter found in Series 1-3 (e.g., science, literature, medicine, agriculture, women’s fashion, family life, and religion).

Series 5 (1866-1877)

AAS Historical Periodicals Collection: Series 5 contains over 2,500 titles dating from 1866 through 1877. Themes presented reflect a nation that persevered through a most difficult set of circumstances—the aftermath of a bloody civil war that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, the incorporation of the recently-freed African Americans into American life, a population that rapidly expanded into the Western territories, and much more. Series 5 coverage of broad subject areas reach into every facet of American life, including science, literature, medicine, agriculture, fashion, family life, politics, education and religion.
American Civil War Collection, 1860-1922
Digital archive of the Civil War and its aftermath
Based on the comprehensive holdings of the American Antiquarian Society, this collection contains more than 13,500 works published between 1860 and 1922.

It includes printed items addressing all facets of the Civil War and its aftermath. These diverse materials, all filmed in full-resolution color, include broadsides, lithographs, maps, books, pamphlets, photographs, political cartoons, stereographs, and Union and Confederate envelopes.

Coverage extends throughout the Civil War and well beyond into the postwar period, a time in which modern interpretations of the conflict began to take shape. Key subject areas include regimental histories, troop rosters, military trials and confiscation of property; medical care, finance, taxation and aid to soldiers and their families; sermons, speeches and treatises covering many of the contemporary intellectual and ideological positions of the time; poetry and music; personal narratives that discuss battles, military life, and experiences in prisoner-of-war camps.
Black Authors, 1556-1922
Works by authors of African or African-American descent over three centuries
* Works by authors of African or African-American descent
* A fascinating look at the creative efforts of black authors over three centuries
* Compiled by the curators of the acclaimed Afro-Americana Imprints collection
Black Drama
1,700 plays written from the mid-1800s to the present by more than 200 playwrights from North America, English-speaking Africa, the Caribbean, and other African diaspora countries
Black Drama, now in its expanded third edition, contains the full text of more than 1,700 plays written from the mid-1800s to the present by more than 200 playwrights from North America, English-speaking Africa, the Caribbean, and other African diaspora countries. Many of the works are rare, hard to find, or out of print. More than 40 percent of the collection consists of previously unpublished plays by writers such as Langston Hughes, Ed Bullins, Willis Richardson, Amiri Baraka, Randolph Edmonds, Zora Neale Hurston, and many others.

*Many of the works are rare, hard to find, or out of print and each play is extensively indexed
Black Freedom Struggle in the United States
Primary documents focusing on Black Freedom movements from 1790 to 2020
This website from ProQuest contains approximately 1,600 documents focused on six different phases of Black Freedom:

Slavery and the Abolitionist Movement (1790-1860)
The Civil War and the Reconstruction Era (1861-1877)
Jim Crow Era from 1878 to the Great Depression (1878-1932)
The New Deal and World War II (1933-1945)
The Civil Rights and Black Power Movements (1946-1975)
The Contemporary Era (1976-2000s)

The documents presented here represent a selection of primary sources available in several ProQuest databases. The databases represented in this website include American Periodicals, Black Abolitionist Papers, ProQuest History Vault, ProQuest Congressional, Supreme Court Insight and Alexander Street’s Black Thought and Culture.

The goal of this website is to provide a selection of primary source documents that may be used by a wide range of students, from middle and high school students to college students and independent scholars. Examples of assignments may include National History Day projects or research papers about Black Freedom.
Black Short Fiction and Folklore
Literature, African American Studies
*brings together 80,000 pages and an estimated 6,200 works of short fiction produced by writers from Africa and the African Diaspora from the earliest times to the present
*materials have been compiled from early literary magazines, archives, and the personal collections of the authors
*Some 30 percent of the collection is fugitive or ephemeral, or has never been published before
Black Thought and Culture
African American Studies, Political Science, History
*collection of approximately 100,000 pages of non-fiction writings by major black leaders in North America
*Works by teachers, artists, politicians, religious leaders, athletes, war veterans, entertainers, and other figures form the corpus
*collection encompasses 100,000 pages of materials, including letters, speeches, prefatory essays, political leaflets, trial transcripts, and interviews
Caribbean History and Culture, 1535-1920
History of Caribbean islands over nearly 400 years
*Includes books, pamphlets, almanacs, broadsides and ephemera
*Compiled by the curators of the Afro-Americana Imprints collection
*subset of the archival collection Afro-Americana Imprints, 1535-1922
Civil Rights and Social Justice
Civil rights in the United States as their legal protections and definitions are expanded
At this crucial moment in history, Hein is proud to offer Civil Rights and Social Justice, a new research database created to help users understand the roots of the fight for civil rights, how far our nation has come, and how much we have yet to improve.

Hearings and committee prints, legislative histories on landmark legislation, CRS and GAO reports, briefs from major Supreme Court cases, and publications from the Commission on Civil Rights illuminate the storied (and still-unfinished) struggle for equality in the United States. A varied collection of books on related civil rights topics and a list of prominent civil rights organizations supplement these primary source documents and help take the research beyond HeinOnline.
Dissertations and Theses: Global
Doctoral dissertations and master’s theses in full-text from universities in 88 countries
ProQuest Dissertations and Theses: Global (PQDTGlobal) is the world's most comprehensive collection of full-text dissertations and theses. As the official digital dissertations archive for the Library of Congress and as the database of record for graduate research, PQDTGlobal includes millions of searchable citations to dissertations and theses from 1861 to the present day together with over a million full-text dissertations that are available for download in PDF format. Over 2.1 million titles are available for purchase as printed copies. The database offers full text for most of the dissertations added since 1997 and strong retrospective full-text coverage for older graduate works. It also includes PQDT UK & Ireland content.

More than 70,000 new full-text dissertations and theses are added to the database each year through dissertations publishing partnerships with 700 leading academic institutions worldwide, and collaborative retrospective digitization of dissertations. Full-text dissertations are archived as submitted by the degree-granting institution. Some will be native PDF, some PDF image.

Each dissertation published since July, 1980 includes a 350-word abstract written by the author. Master's theses published since 1988 include 150-word abstracts. Simple bibliographic citations are available for dissertations dating from 1637. Where available, PQDTGlobal provides 24-page previews of dissertations and theses.

Subject coverage
• Business and Economics
• Medical Sciences
• Science
• Technology
• Agriculture
• Social Sciences
• Arts
• Humanities
Diversity Studies (Gale OneFile)
Infotrac Journals on Diversity
Gale InfoTrac Power Packs are subsets of periodicals found in the Academic OneFile and General OneFile Databases. Each subject specific PowerPack Collection has the content needed by a unique category of researcher.
Elementary (Gale in Context)
Kindergarten through Grade Five research
*Gale in Context: Elementary targets the research needs of students in Kindergarten through Grade 5. It features a developmentally appropriate and visual graphic interface, a subject-based topic tree search and full-text, age-appropriate, curriculum-related magazine and reference content. The previous name for this resource was Kids InfoBits.

*Gale Elementary features:
-A drilldown subject topic tree for users who need helping identifying a particular topic
-A simple and visually appealing graphic interface on the GaleNet platform
-Full-text proprietary reference content from Blackbirch Press that supports the K-5 curriculum
-Approximately 75 full-text, age appropriate magazines
-Over 3,000 searchable, indexed images
-A 5-year backfile that offers relevant and manageable results lists
Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History
African-American history from 1619 to the present day
*Using biographies, historical essays, and thematic pieces-many by the foremost scholars in the field-it addresses a wide array of subjects in over 2,300 articles to fully define in one source the cultural roots and current condition of the African-American community.
Exploring Race in Society
Essential content covering important issues related to race in society today
In addition to proprietary essays, photographs, graphs and charts, Exploring Race in Society includes:
* Thousands of full-text articles from academic journals
* Government agency reports curated and provided by HeinOnline
* Full-text articles, primary source documents and speeches from BlackPast, a leading source on African American history and experience
*Journal content covering issues related to race, including those of Indigenous communities

Designed for high school and undergraduate students, Exploring Race in Society provides context and solutions-oriented points of view within a scholarly collection of proprietary and licensed content on topics related to race, ethnicity, diversity and inclusiveness.

Proprietary essays are written by a diverse group of writers representing the fields of academia, journalism, medicine, and other disciplines working to address issues related to race. These essays, which are reviewed by third-party subject-matter experts, provide today’s students with a deeper understanding of how current issues stem from actions and policies of the past.

Researchers will also find valuable related content from scholarly academic journals, government agencies and nonprofit organizations that are conducting research, creating educational materials, and/or providing programs related to solving issues.

Topics Include:

Affirmative Action
Black Lives Matter Movement
COVID-19 and Communities of Color
Digital Divide
Environmental Racism and Environmental Justice
Food Insecurity
Neighborhood Gentrification
Police Use of Force
School-to-Prison Pipeline
Sports Team Branding Changes
Voting Rights and Voter Suppression
Wealth Gap
JSTOR
Multiple Subjects including history, literature, biology, political science, communication, business, and African-American studies
*Contains the full text of articles from scholarly journals

*Articles published from early 1900s to 2 or 3 years ago.

Austin Peay State University currently participates in the following JSTOR Collection(s):
Biological Sciences Collection
Life Sciences Collection
Arts & Sciences I Collection
Arts & Sciences II Collection
Arts & Sciences III Collection
Arts & Sciences IV Collection
Arts & Sciences V Collection
Arts & Sciences VI Collection
Arts & Sciences VII Collection
Arts & Sciences VIII Collection
Arts & Sciences IX Collection
Arts & Sciences X Collection
Arts & Sciences XI Collection
Arts & Sciences XII Collection
Arts & Sciences XIII Collection
Arts & Sciences XIV Collection
Arts & Sciences XV Collection

Austin Peay State University also subscribes to the following individual journal(s):
19th-Century Music
The American Biology Teacher
The American Mathematical Monthly
The College Mathematics Journal
Ethnomusicology
Journal for Research in Mathematics Education
Mathematics Magazine
The Mathematics Teacher
Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School
Nineteenth-Century Literature
Social Problems
Teaching Children Mathematics
Nineteenth Century Collections Online (Gale Primary Sources)
Primary source collections for the 19th Century (All 12 archives available)
APSU Library has acquired the twelve Archives in this collection published as of 2015. They are:

1. Asia and the West: Diplomacy & Cultural Exchange (including US State Department Consular & Diplomatic Records, British Foreign Office Political Correspondence regarding Japan, missionary journals and correspondence).

2. British Politics & Society (including coverage of major political figures, working class radicalism, the Oxford Movement, etc.)

3. British Theatre, Music & Literature: High and Popular Culture (including British Playbills, 1754-1882; Drury Lane Theatre Archive)

4. Children's Literature and Childhood (provides a wide range of primary sources related to the experience of childhood in the long nineteenth century)

5. Europe and Africa: Commerce, Christianity, Civilization, & Conquest (including Colonial, Foreign, and War Offices Papers on Africa; personal narratives of African exploration)

6. European Literature, 1790-184: The Corvey Collection (includes 18,000 volumes with a particular focus on the British Romantic Era, plus thousands of works in French and German)

7. Mapping the World: Maps and Travel Literature

8. Photography: The World through the Lens (including The Photographic News from 1858 to 1908 and selections from the Photographic Collection of the British Colonial Office)

9. Religion, Society, Spirituality, and Reform

10. Science, Technology, and Medicine, 1780-1925 (including a collection of American Medical Periodicals from 1797-1900 and a collection of 600 monographs on “Evolution and the Origin of Species”)

11. Science, Technology, and Medicine: 1780-1925, Part II

12. Women: Transnational Networks (includes manuscripts from the Mary Braddon Archive, manuscript Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and a collection of Quaker Women’s Diaries from the 18th and 19th Centuries)
Project MUSE
Social sciences, arts, humanities
*Project MUSE offers full-text current and archival articles from 500+ scholarly journals from major university presses covering literature and criticism, history, performing arts, cultural studies, education, philosophy, political science, gender studies, and more.

*Updated continually.
Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture & Law
A collection of essential legal materials on slavery in the United States and the English-speaking world. This includes every statute passed by every colony and state on slavery.
This resource includes every statute passed by every colony and state on slavery, every federal statute dealing with slavery, and all reported state and federal cases on slavery. HeinOnline cases go into the 20th century, because long after slavery was ended, there were still court cases based on issues emanating from it.

The library has hundreds of pamphlets and books written about slavery—defending it, attacking it or simply analyzing it, including an expansive slavery collection of mostly pre-Civil War materials from the Buffalo Erie County Public Library. The cooperation of this institution was central to developing this collection. We have also gathered every English-language legal commentary on slavery published before 1920, which includes many essays and articles in obscure, hard-to-find journals in the United States and elsewhere. We have
provided more than 1,450 books and pamphlets on slavery from the 18th and 19th centuries. We have also included many modern histories of slavery. Within this library is a section containing all modern law review articles on the subject. This library will continue to grow, not only from new scholarship but also from historical material that we will continue to locate and add to the collection.
U.S. History (Gale In Context)
U.S. History since 900
*Formerly titled History Resource Center: U.S

*Approximately 100,000 pages of more than 1000 primary documents

*Nearly 100 scholarly full-text journals, as well as citations from 180 titles

*Contains more than 2,000 images and maps
Voyages Database
Trans-Atlantic slave trade
*Information on almost 35,000 slaving voyages that forcibly embarked over 10 million Africans for transport to the Americas between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries

*The African names database identifies over 67,000 Africans aboard slave ships using name, age, gender, origin, and place of embarkation.

*Look for particular voyages in this database of documented slaving expeditions. Create listings, tables, charts, and maps using information from the database.
WestlawNext (Campus Research)
Legal subjects, including laws and cases
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*Includes federal and state laws and court cases

*Covers laws, cases, and other legal materials

*Includes federal cases 1789 to present; Tenn cases 1945 to present

Subject Librarian

Jenny Harris

she/her/hers

Email Me

Contact:

Office: Library 221 (main floor)

Phone: 931-221-7914

Subjects: African American Studies, Education, Women's and Gender Studies

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