Special Collections, Archives, and Newspapers
Mills College Special Collections is comprised of about 20,000 volumes, 10,000 manuscripts, archives, and photographs housed in the Elinor Raas Heller Rare Book Room. The collection includes printed books from the 15th century to the present, as well as the Mills College Collection. It is also the home to the Mills College Center for the Book, a forum for cultural, literary, and aesthetic heritage of the book.
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Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century This link opens in a new windowBrings perspective to the Black Freedom Struggle via the primary source records of major civil rights organizations and personal papers of leaders and observers of the 20th century Black freedom struggle.
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Early Caribbean Digital Archive (Northeastern University) This link opens in a new windowA digital archive of early colonial Caribbean texts, to uncover and make accessible a literary history of the Caribbean written or related by black, enslaved, Creole, indigenous, and/or colonized people.
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The Flatlands NewspaperThis "tell it like it is and do what is needed" Oakland newspaper ran from 1966-1968 with content mostly related to poverty, education, housing, police brutality, and East and West Oakland politics, with a particular focus on the perspective of the city's Black residents.
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Historical Black Newspapers (ProQuest) This link opens in a new windowA rich collection important to a full understanding of Unites States history. Includes the Atlanta Daily World (1931-2003), Baltimore Afro-American (1893-1988), Chicago Defender (1910-1975),Los Angeles Sentinel (1934-2005), New York Amsterdam News (1922-1993), and the Pittsburgh Courier (1911-2002).
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Latin American Newspapers 1805-1922 (World Newspaper Archive) This link opens in a new windowOver 50 online and full text historic newspapers from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Guyana, Peru, and Venezuela.
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Rafu Shimpo Digital Archive This link opens in a new windowRafu Shimpo is the longest running Japanese American newspaper in the United States. Full text. In Japanese and English, 1914-2021.
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South Asia Newspapers (World Newspaper Archive) (Readex/Newsbank) This link opens in a new windowSearchable 19th and 20th century newspapers from South Asia, especially India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
The Black Panther Party (BPP) was founded in October 1966 by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale as an organization dedicated to protecting and uplifting the Black population of Oakland. As the organization grew this focus spread to the rest of the United States and even abroad. Linked below are archives about the BPP and the BPP newspaper.
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The Black Panther NewspaperThe Black Panther was the official newspaper of the Black Panther Party. It was the main publication of the party and was soon sold in several large cities across the United States, as well as having an international readership. The newspaper distributed information about the party's activities, and expressed through articles the ideology of the Black Panther Party.
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The Black Panther Party National ArchivesThe Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP) was founded in October 1966 in Oakland, California by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, who met at Merritt College in Oakland. It was a revolutionary organization with an ideology of Black nationalism, socialism, and armed self-defense, particularly against police brutality. It was part of the Black Power movement, which broke from the integrationist goals and nonviolent protest tactics of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The BPP name was inspired by the use of the black panther as a symbol that had recently been used by the Lowndes County Freedom Organization, an independent Black political party in Alabama.
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Black Panther Party Community News ServiceThe Black Panther Intercommunal News Service was a weekly periodical with national and international distribution. It was published for 13 years, starting in 1967, and was sometimes called the Black Panther Black Community News Service. In its heyday, the Party sold several hundred thousand copies of the newspaper per week.