Databases
- Afro-Americana Imprints (Readex/Newsbank) 1535-1922 This link opens in a new windowCreated from the Library Companys Afro-Americana Collectionwhich began with Benjamin Franklinthis online resource provides more than 12,000 printed books, pamphlets and broadsides, about the African American experience, Africa and the Caribbean, and including works by African American authors.
- Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans, 1639-1800 (Readex/NewsBank) This link opens in a new windowBooks, pamphlets and broadsides published in America over a 160-year period. Providing complete digital editions of nearly 38,000 printed works, Series I covers subjects ranging from history, literature and culture to politics, government and society.
- 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.
- Global Commodities: Trade, Exploration, and Cultural Exchange (Adam Matthew Digital) This link opens in a new windowIncludes manuscript, printed and visual primary source materials for the study of global commodities in world history. The commodities featured in this resource have been transported, exchanged and consumed for hundreds of years; they helped transform societies, global trading operations, habits of consumption and social practices.
- Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture, Law This link opens in a new windowThis collection brings together all known 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, every federal statute dealing with slavery, and all reported state and federal cases on slavery.
- Slavery and AntiSlavery (BPL)Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive is devoted to the study and understanding of the history of slavery in America and the rest of the world from the 17th century to the late 19th century.
Online Resources
- Slave VoyagesThe SlaveVoyages website is a collaborative digital initiative that compiles and makes publicly accessible records of the largest slave trades in history.
- Slavery in America (Library of Congress)Provides access to Library of Congress digitized primary sources, links to related websites, and a print bibliography.
- Enslaved.orgAn effort to develop a digital library whose primary focus is people—individuals who were enslaved, owned slaves, or participated in slave trading, bringing together archival resources from all over the world using linked open data. (University of Michigan and others)
- Digital Library on American SlaveryThe Digital Library on American Slavery (DLAS) is an expanding resource compiling independent collections focused upon race and slavery in the American South, made searchable through a single, simple interface.
- Freedom on the MoveFreedom on the Move is a database of fugitives from North American slavery.
- The Lantern ProjectThe Lantern Project provides, for the first time, centralized and institutionally supported access to information in legal records documenting enslaved persons, including probate records, court records (orphans court, civil court, criminal court, and others), deeds, receipts, bills of sale, and other documents which were or could have been used as evidence in a trial, from across Mississippi and the Deep South.
- Last Seen: Finding Family After SlaveryLast Seen is recovering stories of families separated in the domestic slave trade. Formerly enslaved people placed these ads hoping to reconnect with family and loved ones for decades following emancipation.
- Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Archive(University of Virginia)
Slave Narratives
Background
Slave Narratives Online
- Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 to 1938Contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves.
- North American Slave NarrativesThe full text of known slave narratives published as broadsides, pamphlets, or books in English prior to 1920. Available for reading or to download for text mining and similar analysis projects.
- Freedom NarrativesFreedom Narratives focuses on the enforced migration of enslaved Africans in the Atlantic world during the era of the slave trade from the 16th to the 19th century. The biographical accounts included here include the testimonies and stories of individuals born in West Africa whose voices have long been silenced.
- Recovered HistoriesRecovered Histories captures the narratives of the enslaved, enslavers, slave ship surgeons, abolitionists, parliamentarians, clergy, planters and rebels.
- Monticello Memoirs and Oral HistoriesCollection of narratives from the enslaved community at Monticello.
- Slave Narratives a Folk History of Slavery in the United StatesDigitized book series through Project Gutenberg with Slave Narratives from across America.
- Voices Remembering SlaveryThe recordings of former slaves in Voices Remembering Slavery: Freed People Tell Their Stories took place between 1932 and 1975 in nine states. Twenty-two interviewees discuss how they felt about slavery, slaveholders, coercion of slaves, their families, and freedom.