J300: Black Women in America

Research Guides and Reference Books

African American women: a biographical dictionary. (1993) (Herman B Wells Library, Reference Room, E185.96 .A45 1993. Also available in the African-American Cultural Center Library.)

Black women in America. (2005) (Herman B Wells Library, Reference Room, E185.86 .B542 2005. Also available in the African-American Cultural Center Library.)

Davis, Lenwood G. The Black family in the United States: a revised, updated, selectively annotated bibliography. (1986) (Herman B Wells Library, Reference Room,
Z1361.N39 D355 1986)

Historical statistics of Black America. (1995) (Herman B Wells Library, Reference Room, E185 .H543 1995. Also available in the Undergraduate Reference Collection and the African-American Cultural Center Library.)

Redfern, Bernice. Women of color in the United States: a guide to the literature. (1989)
(Herman B Wells Library, Reference Room,  Z7964.U49 R4)

For a more extensive list, see African-American Studies: Selected Print and Electronic Resources
(Note that this is a guide for researchers at Princeton. See IUCAT for book locations; see below for IU Bloomington links to many of the electronic resources mentioned on the Princeton page.)

IUCAT Search Tips

Use Advanced Search and include african american women (or women slaves, for slavery-related materials) and history as subject terms. Then add keywords, using as many synonyms as you can think of to increase your chances for good results. (Here's how...).

Use sources as a subject term to find primary source materials.

Indexes to Journal and Magazine articles

Alt-Press Watch: provides access to newspapers, magazines and journals of the alternative and independent press, 1995-present. (For older materials, see the Alternative Press Index (Wells Library Reference Desk, AI3 .A24.)

America: History & Life: provides access to scholarly journals and books in American history.

enderWatch: provides access to journal articles and books on gender-related issues.

International Index to Black Periodicals: provides access to articles in African American publications, with full text for 20 core Black Studies journals.

Primary Source Collections

African-American Newspapers: The 19th Century: searchable full text of several important 19th-century newspapers. Other online newspaper archives include: Early American Newspapers (17th-19th century), the New York Times , the Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times.

Black Drama: full text of a large collection of plays by Black writers from many regions of the African diaspora, including African Americans.

Black Thought and Culture: more than 700 non-fiction works by African American authors.

African-American Poetry: huge full text collection of poetry by African Americans from colonial times to 1900. 

Mary McLeod Bethune Papers (Herman B Wells Library, Microforms, E185.97.B34 A4)

Papers of the NAACP (Herman B Wells Library, Microforms, E185.61)

Online guides to these and other extensive microfilm collections in African American History

Records of the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs, 1895-1992 (Herman B Wells Library, Microforms, E185.86 .R43 1993. See guide, Microforms Reference, same call number.)

Selected online collections (from U.S. libraries and archives)

African-American Women On-line Archival Collections (Duke University)

African American Resources (University of Virginia)

American Slave Narratives: An Online Anthology

African American History collections in American Memory: Historical Collections from the Library of Congress

Digitized collections from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

In the First Person: Online index to thousands of autobiographical materials (diaries, letters, interviews), including the Black Women Oral History Project and other African American materials.

Third Person, First Person: Slave Voices (Duke University)

Valley of the Shadow Archives: Slavery & Free Blacks Records