Research Guides: History: Civil Rights in US History

Civil Rights in US History

This guide contains links and resources for the historical study of Civil Rights in the United States.

Scholarly Companions

The Cambridge Companion to American Civil Rights Literature by Julie Armstrong (Editor)
Publication Date: 2015-03-02

The Cambridge Companion to American Civil Rights Literature brings together leading scholars to examine the significant traditions, genres, and themes of civil rights literature. While civil rights scholarship has typically focused on documentary rather than creative writing, and political rather than cultural history, this Companion addresses the gap and provides university students with a vast introduction to an impressive range of authors, including Richard Wright, Lorraine Hansberry, Gwendolyn Brooks, James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, and Toni Morrison. Accessible to undergraduates and academics alike, this Companion surveys the critical landscape of a rapidly growing field and lays the foundation for future studies.

Online Repositories

Behind the Veil (Duke University)
The Behind the Veil Oral History Project was undertaken by Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies from 1993 to 1995. Over the span of three summers, teams of researchers conducted oral history interviews with more than one thousand elderly black southerners who remembered that period of legal segregation. The tapes and selected transcripts of the 1,260 interviews in this collection capture the vivid personalities, poignant personal stories, and behind-the-scenes decision-making that bring to life the African American experience in the South during the late-19th to mid-20th century. It is the largest single collection of Jim Crow oral histories in the world.
Civil Rights Digital Library
The Civil Rights Digital Library promotes an enhanced understanding of the Movement by helping users discover primary sources and other educational materials from libraries, archives, museums, public broadcasters, and others on a national scale. The CRDL features a collection of unedited news film from the WSB (Atlanta) and WALB (Albany, Ga.) television archives held by the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia Libraries.
Documenting the American South
"Oral Histories of the American South" is a three-year project to select, digitize and make available 500 oral history interviews gathered by the Southern Oral History Program (SOHP). These 500 are being selected from a collection of over 4,000 interviews, housed at the Southern Historical Collection, that cover a range of fascinating topics. This project is made possible by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
Freedom Summer Collection (Wisconsin Historical Society)
The Wisconsin Historical Society has one of the richest collections of Civil Rights movement records in the nation, which includes more than 100 manuscript collections documenting the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project of 1964.
Slave Narratives
"North American Slave Narratives" collects books and articles that document the individual and collective story of African Americans struggling for freedom and human rights in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries.

Relevant Databases and Indexes

Black Thought and Culture
Non-fiction works by African-American leaders and others who have dealt substantially with issues of race in America. Includes books, essays, articles, speeches, letters, interviews, and other materials, some of which have not previously been published.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Chicago Tribune
Full-text of the newspaper from 1894-1994. Articles can be displayed individually or in a page map, which displays the article in its original context as printed on the page. This historical newspaper provides genealogists, researchers and scholars with online, easily-searchable first-hand accounts and unparalleled coverage of the politics, society and events of the time.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers: New York Times
Coverage: 1851 - 2013
Women and Social Movements in the United States,1600-2000
A resource for students and scholars of U.S. history and U.S. women's history. Organized around the history of women in social movements in the U.S. between 1600 and 2000, this collection seeks to advance scholarly debates and understanding about U.S. history.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Chicago Defender
Full text of the historically Black newspaper, which was distributed nationwide, from 1909-1975. Articles can be displayed individually or in a page map, which displays the article in its original context as printed on the page. This historical newspaper provides genealogists, researchers and scholars with online, easily-searchable first-hand accounts and unparalleled coverage of the politics, society and events of the time.