LibGuides: Primary Sources: Civil Rights/ African American History

The Civil Rights History Project: Survey of Collections and Repositories
This list compiled by the Library of Congress & the Smithsonian details and links to over 1,500 collections & repositories covering the history of the Civil Rights Movement. On this page, you can search by title, state, subject, or keyword.
1964 MS Freedom Summer
This online collection from the Wisconsin Historical Society contains 25,000 manuscripts related to the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer project. The site has archival documents from COFO, CORE and SNCC and papers from dozens of individual activists.
The Mississippi Civil Rights Project
The site is offered by The William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation & is a centralized resource on Mississippi's rich civil rights history, county by county. You can information on significant people, organizations, events, and places to the Civil Rights Movement.
The Civil Rights Movement as Theological Drama
The Civil Rights Movement as Theological Drama is part of The Project on Lived Theology by the University of Virginia. You can find personal interviews, as well as annotated bibliographic entries of documentary evidence. This cohesive body of information demonstrates the struggles of peacemaking, community building, and lived theology during a pivotal moment in history.
Civil Rights in Mississippi Digital Archive (University of Southern Mississippi)
The Civil Rights in Mississippi Digital Archive includes a selection of digitized photographs, letters, diaries, and other documents. Oral history transcripts are also available, as well as finding aids for manuscript collections. This resource comes from the University of Southern Mississippi Digital Collection.

African American Perspectives: Pamphlets from the Daniel A. P. Murray Collection, 1818–1907 (Library of Congress)
Presents a panoramic and eclectic review of African-American history and culture, spanning almost one hundred years from the early nineteenth through the early twentieth centuries, with the bulk of the material published between 1875 and 1900. Among the authors represented are Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Benjamin W. Arnett, Alexander Crummel, and Emanuel Love.
The African American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship (Library of Congress)
Showcases the incomparable African American collections of the Library of Congress. Displaying more than 240 items, including books, government documents, manuscripts, maps, musical scores, plays, films, and recordings, this is the largest black history exhibit ever held at the Library, and the first exhibition of any kind to feature presentations in all three of the Library's buildings. Exhibit sections include: Slavery--The Peculiar Institution; Free Blacks in the Antebellum Period; Abolition; The Civil War; Reconstruction; Booker T. Washington Era; World War I and Postwar Society; Depression, New Deal, and World War II; Civil Rights.
African American Odyssey (Library of Congress)
Collections include:The African-American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship (linked above); The Frederick Douglass Papers; Jackie Robinson and Other Baseball Highlights, 1860s-1960s; Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938; From Slavery to Freedom: The African-American Pamphlet Collection, 1822-1909; Slaves and the Courts, 1740-1860
The Civil Rights History Project: Survey of Collections and Repositories
This list compiled by the Library of Congress & the Smithsonian details and links to over 1,500 collections & repositories covering the history of the Civil Rights Movement. On this page, you can search by title, state, subject, or keyword.