Resources for Black History Month

Check out the following resources for Black History Month:

Library Resources:

• Library Catalog: Browse through our library catalog to find print & online books as well as popular DVDs on a wide variety of African-American and African heritage history topics and events.
• Oxford African American Studies Center: Database provides access to the three-volume Encyclopedia of African American History 1619-1895, the three-volume Black Women in America, and the highly acclaimed Africana, a five-volume history of the African and African American experience. The Center is also in the process of including contents from the African American National Biography and the Encyclopedia of African American Art and Architecture. In addition, AASC offers other key resources from Oxford’s reference program, including the Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature and selected articles from other reference works. (Oxford)
• African American Poetry, 1760-1900: Database provides access to the full text of the works of over 2,500 poems by 54 African­American poets of the 18^th and 19^th centuries, including Phillis Wheatley and Paul Laurence Dunbar. The poetry covers a wide range of topics, and a variety of poetic styles and types including elegies, odes, ditties, hymns, and sonnets. (Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia)
• Issues & Controversies in American History: Database includes biographies, timelines, background articles, photographs, and maps that augment the curriculum-based coverage of historical events. Includes black history issues such as the Civil War and Slavery and the Civil Rights Movement. Provides the points of view on all sides of the debates as they were promulgated at the time (Facts on File Services)
• History Resource Center – U.S. : One-stop source of a variety of historical data including African American history. Provides integrated access to over 1,000 primary documents, nearly 100 full text journals, and 2000 images and maps. Reference sources include American Decades, American Eras, DISCovering U.S. History, and Worldmark Encyclopedia of Nations. (Gale)
• Biography Resource Center: Database provides biographies for over 340,000 people from throughout history, around the world, and across all disciplines and subject areas including notable African Americans and people of African heritage. It contains more than 435,000 biographies from over 1,000 volumes of more than 135 Gale sources such as Contemporary Authors, Encyclopedia of World Biography, etc. and more than 538,000 full-text articles from nearly 300 magazines including American History and U.S. News & World Report. (Gale)
• MasterFILE Premier: This multidisciplinary database provides full text for more than 1,750 journal, magazine, and newspaper titles. Covers virtually every subject area of general interest including African-American and African heritage history. Includes nearly 500 full text reference books, full text from 86,019 biographies, 105,787 full text primary source documents, and an image collection.

Free Resources on the Web:

• Black History – History.com: Includes: biographies, facts, maps, timelines & events, and videocasts. 
• Celebrate Black History – Biography.com: Includes biographies, an interactive timeline, events, the Apollo Theater, and videocasts.
• Infoplease Black History Month:  Includes: history and timelines, contemporary issues, biographies, holidays, education, awards, and statistics, and quizzes. 
• African American History Month: The Library of Congress online archive  provides free and open access to African American digital collections including primary documents, images, audio and video.