African-American Studies: In-Depth Historical Engagements

African American Women in Iowa Digital Collection

Beyond the Battlefield: Double V and Black Americans’ Fight for Equality

Black Soldiers in the U.S. Military During the Civil War - National Archives

African Americans: Pioneers

African Americans in the Armed Forces Timeline

The Black American Experience inthe U.S. Armed Forces - Truman Library Institute

African-Americans Are Highly Visible in the Military, but Almost Invisible at the Top - New York Times

My Dear Wife, I Love You - National Undeground Railroad Freedom Center

Charles Lewis, a Cincinnati native, was called up to the U.S. Army in April 1943. While part of a segregated unit of the Army Air Corps, he wrote letters to his wife nearly every day they were apart. These letters give us a great insight into the African American experience in the Army Air Corps. Here Charles wears his uniform in a photograph taken while home in Cincinnati during leave from Keesler Field, Mississippi.

Missing Perspectives: Black & African Americans in the Military—From Service to Civilian Life (2022) - D'Aniello Institute for Veteran's & Military Families

Desegregation of the Armed Forces - The Truman Presidential Library

The Religious Roots of the Abolition Movement - National Humanities Center

"I will be heard!" Abolitionism in America - Cornell University Library, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections

Crossing Borders - Harvard University

“Crossing Borders: From Slavery to Abolition, 1670-1865” is an exhibition curated by the first-year writing seminar “Crossing Borders.” It presents a history of slavery and abolition through a selection of items from Haverford College’s Quaker & Special Collections. 

Documenting the American South: The Church in the Southern Black Community

"The Church in the Southern Black Community" collects autobiographies, biographies, church documents, sermons, histories, encyclopedias, and other published materials. 

An Address to the Colored Citizens of the United States by John B. Meachum (Philadelphia, 1846)

Subject: Free African American - Religous Life

Free At Last? Slavery in Pittsburgh in the 18th and 19th Centuries

African Americans and the End of Slavery in Massachusetts

Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 to 1938

Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves.

Freedom on the Move: A database of Fugitives from North American Slavery

The goal is to compile all North American slave runaway ads and make them available for statistical, geographical, textual, and other forms of analysis.

The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center 

An Ohio based national center dedicated to telling the story of the underground railroad.

This National Park Service Site 

A general overview of the underground railroad.

The Underground Railroad Conductor 

A web site by writer Tom Calarco. He has a wide variety of sites and information.

The Oneida County Freedom Trail Commission 

The commission is a county-based organization that seeks to recover and tell the story of the underground railroad in Oneida county, and the broader story as well.

The Erie Canalway And The UGRR 

An extensive interactive map that includes events, tours, cemeteries, sites, churches, and more.

Niagara Bound Tours 

Explore the rich history of Afro-Americans and Afro-Canadians who used the underground railroad to find freedom in the Niagara region. Tour guide Lezlie Wells, as a direct descendant of freedom seeker from Kentucky who settled in Ontario, Canada in 1850, provides enriching tours for guests of all ages.

Black Abolitionist Archive

From the 1820s to the Civil War, close to 300 black abolitionists who were involved in the antislavery movement. This University of Detroit Mercy collection provides access to over 800 speeches by antebellum blacks and approximately 1,000 editorials from the period

Black Abolitionist Papers This link opens in a new window

This collection searches a unique set of primary sources from African Americans actively involved in the movement to end slavery in the United States between 1830 and 1865.
Over 15,000 items are available for searching.

African Americans and Seattle's Civil Rights History - University of Washington

This page is a gateway to the Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project resources for exploring the civil rights activism of African Americans in the ...

Historic newspaper articles on Black History Month in Seattle

The Northwest Enterprise was published every Friday from 1920 to 1952. The newspaper was dedicated to honest journalism and, above all, the fight for equality for African Americans in the Northwest, across the nation, and throughout the world. Based in Seattle, the Enterprise had loyal readers all over the region, incorporating news and features from Portland, Oregon, to Helena, Montana, and served a mostly middle-class African American readership. Edited and published by John O. Lewis, the Northwest Enterprise billed itself as "A Newspaper the People Read, Love and Respect."

The Shelf Life Community Story Project records oral histories with current and former residents of Seattle's Central District neighborhood. They believe community stories and neighborhood histories can change the way we think about community - what it means to have it and what it means to lose it. They hope the stories they record can influence conversations about change and shift the way this city imagines its future. 

The stories are shared with the public through community celebrations and installations, social media, community radio, the Shelf Life podcast, pop-up projection events, and the project website. Shelf Life lives at Wa Na Wari, a Central District home for Black art, stories, and connection.

The Shelf Life Community Story Project records oral histories with current and former residents of Seattle's Central District neighborhood. They believe community stories and neighborhood histories can change the way we think about community - what it means to have it and what it means to lose it. They hope the stories they record can influence conversations about change and shift the way this city imagines its future. 

The stories are shared with the public through community celebrations and installations, social media, community radio, the Shelf Life podcast, pop-up projection events, and the project website. Shelf Life lives at Wa Na Wari, a Central District home for Black art, stories, and connection.

The Black Heritage Society of Washington State, Inc. (since 1977) preserves, collects, and shares the history of African Americans in Washington State. BHS collections are a protected resource and public asset that archives the past and present to inform future generations. The Society recognizes the importance for documenting the culture and heritage of black people statewide, and upholds the notion that Washington State history is an essential link in the broader narrative that defines the story of our nation.

African American Research & Archival Collections in the Pacific Northwest Collection: Home - LibGuide from the University of Washington Libraries

This guide highlights archival and printed materials, photographs, and moving image collections available in Special Collections that relate to Black communities, political groups, and civil rights movements in the Pacific Northwest. Selections from collections have been digitized and linked from this website or the finding aids/collection guides we name.  Use the tabs above to explore personal and family papers, organizational records, photographs, moving images, books, pamphlets and more.