LibGuides: Black History Month: Black History online collections

Black History Month - Lancaster University video playlist

The Library provides access to a number of media streaming services on which you can find playlists highlighting documentaries and films offering an insight into Black History and culture. One of these is Box of Broadcasts (BoB) and throughout Black History Month we will add your suggestions of films, interviews and documentaries to The Black History Month - Lancaster University playlist. You can share suggestions by emailing library@lancaster.ac.uk or by filling out one of the postcards next to the Black History Month book display in the Library. Here is a play list on race already collated together on Box of Broadcasts.

New Collections for 2022

During 2022 the Library purchased a number of collections relevant to Black History and celebrating the continued achievements of Black people. These include Black Drama and Black Thought & Culture, with AM Explorer including primary source collections such as Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice, Race Relations in America and American Indian Histories & Culture to name but a few.

You can access the collections below.

AM Explorer

American History 1943-1945

BFI Player which includes links to Black History Month and Black Stories

Black Drama

Black Freedom Struggle in the 20^th Century

Colonial Caribbean Module 1: Settlement, Slavery & Empire (1624-1832)

Colonial Caribbean Module 1 (1624-1832)

Colonial State Papers

East India Company Archives

Slavery, Abolition & Social Justice

Library collections relating to Black History

African Diaspora, 1860-Present This link opens in a new window
Essential for understanding Black history and culture, African Diaspora, 1860-Present allows scholars to discover the migrations, communities, and ideologies of the African Diaspora through the voices of people of African descent. With a focus on communities in the Caribbean, Brazil, India, United Kingdom, and France, the collection includes never-before digitized primary source documents, including personal papers, organizational papers, journals, newsletters, court documents, letters, and ephemera.
American Historical Periodicals from the American Antiquarian Society This link opens in a new window
American Historical Periodicals from the American Antiquarian Society provides a history of the American people and a testament to the growth of the nation from the colonial period through to the twentieth century. The periodicals focused on American concerns and were predominantly published in the United States or Canada, though some were published overseas by Americans living abroad. The collection offers multiple perspectives on the thought, culture, and society of North America through the eyes of those who lived it, showing how history affected citizens from all walks of life.
American History, 1493-1945 This link opens in a new window
This unique collection documents American History from the earliest settlers to the mid-twentieth century. It is sourced from the Gilder Lehrman Collection, one of the finest archives available for the study of American History.
Module I Settlement, Commerce, Revolution and Reform: 1493-1859
Module II Civil War, Reconstruction and the Modern Era: 1860-1945

BFI Player including Black History Month and Black Stories All staff and students will now be able to access the BFI Player the on-demand service available to universities and colleges across the UK and the leading platform for world and independent cinema. As well as having access to over 700 British, world and classic cinema titles, they can search collections including Black History Month, Queer classics, Japanese cinema & visionary directors, and access to over 12,000 archive shorts and features from the BFI national and regional archives covering all aspects of British life spanning the past 120 years.

Chicago Defender Archive (1909-2010) This link opens in a new window
Searchable full-text and page images from The Chicago Defender newspaper archive.
Colonial America This link opens in a new window
Colonial America consists of all 1,450 volumes of the 5 series of Colonial Office files held at The National Archives in London, plus all extracted documents associated with them. This unique collection of largely manuscript material from the archives of the British government is an invaluable one for students and researchers of all aspects of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century American history and the early-modern Atlantic world.
Covering the period 1606 to 1822, CO 5 constitutes the original correspondence of the colonial governments with the Board of Trade, the Secretary of State for the Southern Department and the Secretary of State for the Colonies, together holding responsibility for the British possessions in mainland North America and the Caribbean.

Module 1: Early Settlement, Expansion and Rivalries
Module 2: Towards Revolution
Module 3: The American Revolution
Module 4: Legislation and Politics in the Colonies
Module 5: Growth, Trade and Developement
Global Commodities This link opens in a new window
This resource brings together manuscript, printed and visual primary source materials for the study of global commodities in world history. The commodities featured in this resource have been transported, exchanged and consumed around the world for hundreds of years. They helped transform societies, global trading operations, habits of consumption and social practices.
This is a truly global resource documenting the trade in 15 commodities around the world from c1500 to the present day.
The 15 major commodities are: chocolate, coffee, cotton, fur, opium, oil, porcelain, silver and gold, spices, tea, sugar, tea, timber, tobacco, wheat, and wine and spitirts.
Migration to New Worlds This link opens in a new window
Showcases unique primary source material recounting the many and varied personal experiences of 350 years of migration. Explore Colonial Office files on emigration, diaries and travel journals, ship logs and plans, printed literature, objects, watercolours, and oral histories supplemented by carefully selected secondary research aids.
Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice This link opens in a new window
Designed for both teaching and research, this resource brings together documents and collections from libraries and archives across the Atlantic world covering an extensive time period from 1490. Close attention has been given to the varieties of slavery, the legacy of slavery, the social justice perspective and the continued existence of slavery today.
In addition to the primary source documents there is a wealth of useful secondary sources for research and teaching; including an interactive map, scholarly essays, tutorials, a visual sources gallery, chronology and bibliography.
Slavery and Anti-Slavery This link opens in a new window
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. It contains cross-searchable pages sourced from books, pamphlets, newspapers, periodicals, legal documents, court records, monographs, manuscripts, and maps from many different countries covering the history of the slave trade.
Part I: Debates over Slavery and Abolition sheds light on the abolitionist movement, the conflicts within it, the anti- and pro-slavery arguments of the period, and the debates on the subject of colonization. It explores all facets of the controversial topic, with a focus on economic, gender, legal, religious, and government issues.

Part II: Slave Trade in the Atlantic World charts the inception of slavery in Africa and its rise as perpetuated on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, placing particular emphasis on the Caribbean, Latin America, and United States. More international in scope than Part I, this collection was developed by an international editorial board with scholars specializing in North American, European, African, and Latin American/Caribbean aspects of the slave trade.

Part III: The Institution of Slavery expands the depth of coverage of the topic. Part III explores, in vivid detail, the inner workings of slavery from 1492 to 1888. Through legal documents, plantation records, first-person accounts, newspapers, government records, and other primary sources, this collection reveals how enslaved people struggled against the institution. These rare works explore slavery as a legal and labor system, the relationship between slavery and religion, freed slaves, the Shong Masacre, the Dememara insurrection, and many other aspects and events.

Part IV: Age of Emancipation includes numerous rare documents related to emancipation in the United States, as well as Latin America and the Caribbean. This collection supports the study of many areas, including activities of the federal government in dealing with former slaves and the Freedmen's Bureau, views of political parties and postwar problems with the South, documents of the British and French government on the slave trade, reports from the West Indies and Africa, and other topics.
Washington Post Archive (1877-2004) This link opens in a new window
This historical newspaper provides researchers and scholars with online, easily-searchable first-hand accounts and unparalleled coverage of the politics, society and events of the time.
Wilson Anti-Slavery Collection This link opens in a new window
A collection of 19th-century anti-slavery pamphlets from the private collection of Henry Joseph Wilson (1833-1914), the distinguished Liberal Member of Parliament for Sheffield.
The collection is of particular importance for the study of the activities of the provincial philanthropic societies, such as the Birmingham and Midland Freedmen's Aid Association, the Birmingham and West Bromwich Ladies' Negro's Friend Society, the Glasgow Emancipation Society, the Manchester Union and Emancipation Society, and the Sheffield Ladies Female Anti Slavery Society. Of interest is the prominent role of women in the movement, who formed themselves into societies which lobbied MPs and printed pamphlets on the conditions of slaves. Here we have details of what was sold at their bazaars to raise funds and lists of names of subscribers, the minutiae which bring alive the history of the movement.
Coverage: 1761-1900

Black Lives Matter collection from Exact Editions

Black Lives Matter collection from Exact Editions
Exact Editions has partnered with a number of publishers to assemble an extensive list of articles from archived digital issues in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, spanning a wide range of topics from literature and music to politics and activism.
All of these articles have been made freely available to view via the Exact Editions site.

Black Freedom Struggle in the United States Collection

ProQuest have launched a new collection of primary sources called Black Freedom Struggle in the United States and made it freely available for students and researchers to access.

The collection includes more than 2,000 documents curated around six crucial phases of the U.S. Black freedom struggle including:

Resistance to slavery by enslaved persons and the abolitionist movement of the 19th century
The end of slavery during the Civil War and the Reconstruction Era
The fight against Jim Crow segregation
The New Deal and World War II
The Civil Rights Movement and Black Power Movement from 1946-1975
…and the contemporary Black experience since 1976.

ProQuest quote that "by centering on the experiences and perspectives of African Americans, we hope this collection imbues the study of Black history with a deeper understanding of the humanity of people who have pursued the quest for freedom, and the significance of movements like Black Lives Matter".

Access at: https://blackfreedom.proquest.com/