Trans-Atlantic and U.S. Slavery - History - United States - Research Subject Guides at Northeastern University

History - United States : Trans-Atlantic and U.S. Slavery

Databases

Afro-Americana Imprints (Readex/Newsbank) 1535-1922
Created 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)
Books, 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.

Based on the renowned American Bibliography by Charles Evans and enhanced by Roger Bristol's Supplement to Evans' American Bibliography, the collection was first published by Readex in cooperation with the American Antiquarian Society (AAS).

For decades, the collection has served as a foundation set for research involving early American history, literature, philosophy, religion, and more. Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans, 1639-1800 is the definitive resource for information about every aspect of life in 17th- and 18th-century America, from agriculture and auctions through foreign affairs, diplomacy, literature, music, religion, the Revolutionary War, temperance, witchcraft, and just about any other topic imaginable.
Early Caribbean Digital Archive (Northeastern University)
A 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)
Includes 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 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.

Direct access available to current NU Community. All others, register for free access.

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.

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You must have a Boston Public Library card to access this resource.

Online Resources

Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Archive
(University of Virginia)
Digital Library on American Slavery
The 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.
Enslaved.org
An 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)
Freedom on the Move
Freedom on the Move is a database of fugitives from North American slavery.
The Lantern Project
The 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 Slavery
Last 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.
Laws of Enslavement and Freedom in the Anglo-Atlantic World
An ongoing project from the University of New Brunswick that seeks to provide digital access to the laws governing slavery and freedom in the Anglo-Atlantic World, from the founding laws of the seventeenth century to the laws that governed emancipation in the nineteenth century
Slavery in America (Library of Congress)
Provides access to Library of Congress digitized primary sources, links to related websites, and a print bibliography.
Slave Voyages
The SlaveVoyages website is a collaborative digital initiative that compiles and makes publicly accessible records of the largest slave trades in history.

Slave Narratives

Background

Autobiography: Slave Narratives, Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature

Slave Narratives Online

Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 to 1938
Contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves.
North American Slave Narratives
The 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 Narratives
Freedom 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 Histories
Recovered Histories captures the narratives of the enslaved, enslavers, slave ship surgeons, abolitionists, parliamentarians, clergy, planters and rebels.
Monticello Memoirs and Oral Histories
Collection of narratives from the enslaved community at Monticello.
Slave Narratives a Folk History of Slavery in the United States
Digitized book series through Project Gutenberg with Slave Narratives from across America.
Voices Remembering Slavery
The 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.

Abstract

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