LibGuides: Race and Social Justice Research: Find Sources

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Archival Research

SNCC Digital Gateway
The SNCC Digital Gateway: Learn from the Past, Organize for the Future, Make Democracy Work is a collaborative project of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC—pronounced “Snick”) Legacy Project, Duke’s Center for Documentary Studies, and Duke University Libraries. This documentary website tells the story of how young activists in SNCC united with local people in the Deep South to build a grassroots movement for change that empowered the Black community and transformed the nation.

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The SNCC Digital Gateway portrays how SNCC, alongside thousands of local Black residents, worked for Black people to take control of their political and economic lives. It also unveils the inner workings of SNCC as an organization, examining how it coordinated sit-ins and freedom schools, voter registration and economic cooperatives, anti-draft protests and international solidarity struggles. SNCC organizers themselves shaped the vision and framework of the SNCC Digital Gateway website. They worked collaboratively with historians of the Movement, archivists, and students to weave together grassroots stories, digitized primary source materials held at repositories across the country, and new multi-media productions to bring this history to life for a new generation.
Lowcountry Africana Genealogy in SC, GA and FL
Lowcountry Africana is entirely dedicated to records that document the family and cultural heritage of African Americans in the historic rice-growing areas of South Carolina, Georgia and extreme northeastern Florida, an area that scholars and preservationists have identified as a distinct culture area.
Lowcountry Digital Library
The Lowcountry Digital Library produces digital collections and projects that support research about the Lowcountry region of South Carolina and historically interconnected sites in the Atlantic World.
College of Charleston Special Collections
The primary mission of Special Collections is to evaluate, acquire, organize, preserve, and make available regionally significant and/or rare printed and archival materials to support the college curriculum and student, faculty, and patron research. Special Collections faculty and staff are committed to utilizing a collaborative, multi-faceted approach in support of that mission and are dedicated to employing established best practices to enhance access to our collections.

Databases

African American Experience This link opens in a new window
An American Mosaic Online Resource. Developed with the guidance of African American librarians and subject specialists, The African American Experience is both a broad and deep online database collection on African American history and culture. Providing thesis-driven, peer-reviewed scholarly essays, as well as primary source documents and classroom resources, it is a collection that taps a tremendous variety of sources essential to understanding African American history and its relation to greater U.S. history.
Federal Surveillance Of African Americans, 1920-1984 This link opens in a new window
Provides largely untapped source materials for the major social movements and key figures in early twentieth century black history as well as a window into the development of America's first systematic domestic surveillance apparatus.
From Slavery to Freedom: The African-American Pamphlet Collection 1822-1909 This link opens in a new window
From the Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress. Presents 396 pamphlets published from 1822-1909 by African-American authors and others who wrote about slavery, African colonization, Emancipation, Reconstruction, and related topics.
Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century: Federal Government Records This link opens in a new window
The political side of the freedom movement, the role of civil rights organizations in pushing for civil rights legislation, and the interaction between African Americans and the federal government in the 20th century
Fannie Lou Hamer: Papers Of A Civil Rights Activist, Political Activist, and Woman This link opens in a new window
Contains more than three thousand pieces of correspondence plus financial records, programs, photographs, newspaper articles, invitations, and other printed items.
FBI Surveillance Of James Forman And SNCC This link opens in a new window
A collection of FBI reports which includes the investigative and surveillance efforts primarily during the 1961-1976 period, when James Forman was perceived as a threat to the internal security of the United States.
Federal Surveillance Of African Americans, 1920-1984 This link opens in a new window
Provides largely untapped source materials for the major social movements and key figures in early twentieth century black history as well as a window into the development of America's first systematic domestic surveillance apparatus.
Fight For Racial Justice And The Civil Rights Congress This link opens in a new window
Consists of correspondence, transcripts, legal briefs, and printed materials, including several hundred case files and publications produced and received by the Civil Rights Congress, which was established in 1946.
Franklin D. Roosevelt and Race Relations, 1933-1945 This link opens in a new window
Includes essential materials for the study of early development of the Civil Rights Movement and provides insight into FDR's political style and presents an instructive example of how he balanced moral preferences with political realities.
From Slavery to Freedom: The African-American Pamphlet Collection 1822-1909 This link opens in a new window
From the Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress. Presents 396 pamphlets published from 1822-1909 by African-American authors and others who wrote about slavery, African colonization, Emancipation, Reconstruction, and related topics.
James Meredith, J. Edgar Hoover, and The Integration Of The University Of Mississippi This link opens in a new window
Contains extensive FBI documentation on Meredith's battle to enroll at the University of Mississippi in 1962 and white political and social backlash, including his correspondence with the NAACP and positive and negative letters he received from around the world during his ordeal.
NAACP Papers - Collection 2 This link opens in a new window
The NAACPs Major Campaigns Education, Voting, Housing, Employment, Armed Forces
NAACP Papers - Collection 3 This link opens in a new window
The NAACPs Major CampaignsScottsboro, Anti-Lynching, Criminal Justice, Peonage, Labor, and Segregation and Discrimination Complaints and Responses
Papers Of Amiri Baraka, Poet Laureate Of The Black Power Movement This link opens in a new window
Consists of materials from the years 1913 through 1998 that document African American author and activist Amiri Baraka and were gathered by Dr. Komozi Woodard in the course of his research. Includes poetry, organizational records, print publications, articles, plays, speeches, personal correspondence, oral histories, as well as some personal records.
Ralph J. Bunche Oral Histories Collection on the Civil Rights Movement This link opens in a new window
Includes transcriptions of close to 700 interviews with those who made history in the struggles for voting rights, against discrimination in housing,for the desegregation of the schools, to expose racism in hiring, in defiance of police brutality, and to address poverty in the African American communities.
Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the Enforcement of Federal Law in the South, 1871-1884 This link opens in a new window
Documents the efforts of district attorneys from southern states to uphold federal laws in the states that fought in the Confederacy or were Border States.
We Were Prepared for the Possibility of Death, Freedom Riders in the South, 1961 This link opens in a new window
Details the Freedom Rides, which began the May 5, 1961, to challenge the status quo by riding various forms of public transportation in the South to challenge local laws or customs that enforced segregation.

Online

Black Women Radicals
Black Women Radicals (BWR) is a Black feminist advocacy organization dedicated to uplifting and cultivating Black women’s and gender non-conforming and non-binary people’s radical political activism. Rooted in intersectional and transnational feminisms and Womanisms, we are committed to empowering Black radical women and gender non-conforming and non-binary activists and centering their political and intellectual contributions to the field of Black Politics across time, space, and place in Africa and in the African Diaspora.
Combahee River Collective
The Combahee River Collective statement was created and written by Afrocentric black feminists who parted ways from the National Black Feminist Organization (NBFO) in order to create, define, and clarify their own politics. These women are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression. It is their particular task to further the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking.

Government

Freedom of Information Act Requests
Since 1967, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) has provided the public the right to request access to records from any federal agency. It is often described as the law that keeps citizens in the know about their government. Federal agencies are required to disclose any information requested under the FOIA unless it falls under one of nine exemptions which protect interests such as personal privacy, national security, and law enforcement. The FOIA also requires agencies to proactively post online certain categories of information, including frequently requested records.

Race and Social Justice Research: Find Sources

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