- Rosa Parks
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Dean of Libraries and Media Centers
Introduction
This Research Guide provides suggested library resources for African American Studies such as Books, E-books, and Databases with articles. There are also websites and other resources that will assist with finding information.
Databases
Databases are for students, faculty, and staff of Tennessee State University to use to find journal articles, images, and other information relative to their research interest. To access databases and eJournals off campus you must use your name and T Number. For assistance with problem logins, contact Colette Bradley (cbradley@tnstate.edu) or at 615-963-5489.
- African American Biographical DatabaseAABD brings together in one resource the biographies of thousands of African Americans, many not to be found in any other reference source. These biographical sketches have been carefully assembled from biographical dictionaries and other sources.
- African American CommunitiesFocusing predominantly on Atlanta, Chicago, New York, and towns and cities in North Carolina this resource presents multiple aspects of the African American community through pamphlets, newspapers and periodicals, correspondence, official records, reports and in-depth oral histories, revealing the prevalent challenges of racism, discrimination and integration, and a unique African American culture and identity.
- African American ExperienceThe African American Experience developed with the guidance of African American librarians and subject specialists and is designed to be a user friendly online database collection on African American history and culture.
- African American Newspapers, 1827-1998Includes print and online-only newspapers, blogs, newswires, journals, broadcast transcripts and videos. Use it to explore a specific event or to compare a wide variety of viewpoints on topics such as politics, business, health, sports, cultural activities and people.
- African American Newspapers in the South, 1870-1926Documents the African American press in the South from Reconstruction through the Jim Crow period. Includes newspapers written by African Americans for African Americans, covering current domestic and international events, racial discrimination and violence, civic and religious events, politics, foreign affairs, and local gossip.
- African American Periodicals 1825-1995Covers more than 170 periodicals by and about African Americans. The publications, which come from 26 states, include academic and political journals, commercial magazines, institutional newsletters, organizations bulletins, annual reports and other genres.
- Black DramaThis third edition contains approximately 1,700 plays by over 200 playwrights. It also has selected playbills, production photographs and other ephemera related to the plays. Nearly 600 of the plays are published here for the first time, including a number by major authors. The library also has the catalog records and the plays can be searched by title in the online catalog.
- Black Freedom Struggle in the United States: A Selection of Primary ResourcesProQuest's Black Freedom Struggle website is intended to support a wide range of students, from middle and high school to college, as well anyone interested in learning more about the on-going Black Freedom Struggle.
- Black Sacred MusicPublished from 1987 to 1995, Black Sacred Music sought to establish theomusicology—a theologically informed musicology—as a distinct discipline, incorporating methods from anthropology, sociology, psychology, and philosophy to examine the full range of black sacred music. Topics included black secular music, the early days of rap, soul, jazz, civil rights songs, the religious music of Africa and the African diaspora, spirituals, gospel music, and the music of the black church.
The journal consisted of scholarly articles, essays, hymns and folk songs, sermons, historical reprints, and reviews of books, hymn books, and recordings. It also published volumes of archival writings by R. Nathaniel Dett, William Grant Still, and Willis Laurence James. - Black Thought and CultureProvides primary source materials published by the leading African American thinkers and intellectuals of their day.
- Ebony Magazine ArchiveThe complete digital archives of Ebony Magazine.
- Exploring Race in SocietyDesigned for undergraduate students, Exploring Race in Society contains scholarly journals and proprietary essays that provide researchers with a deeper understanding of how current issues stem from actions and policies of the past.
Each proprietary topic includes an overview article and three essays suggesting potential solutions. Solutions essays are written by a diverse group of writers representing the fields of academia, journalism, medicine and other disciplines working to address issues related to race. - Gale Primary Sources Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive
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. Archival collections were sourced from more than 60 libraries at institutions such as the Amistad Research Center, Bibliothèque nationale de France, the National Archives, Oberlin College, Oxford University, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and Yale University; these collections allow for unparalleled depth and breadth of content.
- H-Afro-AmThe main mission of H-Afro-Am is to provide an exchange of information for professionals, faculty, students and others interested in teaching and discussing the African American expereince as well as issues of race in America and the Diaspora.
- HistoryMakers Digital ArchiveThe HistoryMakers Digital Archive is an easy-to-use online database of thousands of African Americans from a broad range of backgrounds and experiences. Unlike other primary source resources, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive provides high-quality video content, fully searchable transcripts, and unique content from individuals whose life stories would have been lost were it not for The HistoryMakers.
- JSTOR
Is a highly selective digital library of academic content in many formats and disciplines. The collections include top peer-reviewed scholarly journals as well as respected literary journals, academic monographs, research reports from trusted institutes, and primary sources. The library has the entire Arts & Sciences Collection, the Life Sciences Collection and Business Journal IV. We have both archival and current subscriptions.
- NAACP PapersProQuest and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) have teamed up to digitize the association’s archives, bringing one of the most famous records of the civil rights movement to the online world via ProQuest History Vault. The collection is nearly two million pages of internal memos, legal briefings, and direct action summaries from national, legal, and branch offices throughout the country. It charts the NAACP’s work and delivers a first-hand view into crucial issues: lynching, school desegregation, and discrimination in the military, the criminal justice system, employment, and housing, among others.
- Oxford African American Studies CenterThe Oxford African American Studies Center combines the authority of carefully edited reference works. It contains: Africana, Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895, Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896 to the Present,Black Women in America, 2nd Edition, African American National Biography, Dictionary of African Biography, The Oxford Encyclopedia of African Thought, and the Dictionary of Caribbean and Afro-Latin American Biography.
- Pittsburgh Courier: 1911-2002This 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.
- Reveal DigitalBrings together documentary material from underrepresented 20th-century voices of dissent as curated Open Access collections on the JSTOR platform, contributed and funded by libraries, museums, historical societies, and individual collectors worldwide.
- Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture and LawThis an open access archive on the history of world slavery, but concentrates mostly on African American slavery.
- Twentieth-Century African American PoetryA handy source for modern and contemporary African American poetry, with nearly 9,000 poems by sixty two prominent African American poets of the last century, including Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Imamu Amiri Baraka, Audre Lorde and Rita Dove.
BrowZine
EDS and Classic Catalog
Search Books, Articles, and More
Classic Catalog
Smartphone (Mobile) Access
Examples to search in the online catalog:
Harlem Renaissance
Reference Books
- African American AlmanacProvides general information of many subjects.
- African American WritersLocated on the Gale Virtual Reference Library (GVRL), contains information on contemporary authors
- Black Literature Criticism: Classic and Emerging Authors Since 1950An indispensable reference work that covers the works of major African American authors.
- Contemporary Black BiographyA multi-volume set. Records are in the online catalog.
- Notable African American Men, IIContains biographies of contemporary African American personalities
Research Tips
Research Strategies
African American Studies
How to Do Effective Library Research
Choose or Identify a Topic An idea for a topic should always be discussed with your instructor.A topic can be viewed much like the scientific method in which a new perspective is developed or knowledge is added. This is generally considered to include 1) definition of a problem to be investigated, 2) collection of initial data, 3) use of data to form a theory or hypothesis explaining the problem 4) further collection of data to verify or modify the hypothesis through observation or experiment, 5) testing the data, and 6) interpreting the results to determine how it relates to the initial problem.
Citing Sources of InformationThe library owns several style manuals to help you properly cite sources of information. The instructor should recommend a format for your research paper which will include any of the following:
- Modern Language Association (MLA)
- American Psychological Association Publication Manual (APA)
- Kate Turabian: Manual for Writers of Term Papers