by Susan A. Vega García
African American Mosaic One of the first African American digital resources developed by the Library of Congress, this online resource guide presents long full-text and occasionally illustrated essays on topics such as abolition, migration, the WPA, and colonization, Liberia, and the American Colonization Society.
African American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship Online exhibit of full text and images from the Library of Congress collections, organized chronologically via chapters on slavery, Antebellum free Blacks, the Civil War and reconstruction, the "Booker T. Washington era," both World Wars, and the civil rights movement.
African American Web Connection Good selection of mostly popular web pages on topics such as art, authors, history, and other index sites; also includes annotated listings for online periodicals, resources for children, and a directory of churches.
African American Women: On-line Archival Collections Scanned documents, letters, and other primary sources from Duke University Library Special Collections. Women featured include Elizabeth Johnson Harris, Vilet Lester, Hannah Valentine and Lethe Jackson. Also includes relevant links to other African American women's history resources.
African American Women Writers Exemplary online resource presents text and images from the renowned Schomburg Center on the topic of African American women writers of the 19th century. Contents are searchable by title, author, and by literary genre (poetry, essays, etc.). Also includes a number of accompanying essays.
Africana.com Scholarly portal with news, articles, information, and services both free online and for subscription fees. Main channels include Worldview, Lifestyle, Fast Track, Heritage, Art Scene, and Homefront. There are numerous advertisements for products, books, cd-rom's, and network services. Includes music, book, and movie reviews. According to the site, their mission is to gather together authoritative information on the African diaspora in an entertaining way. Includes search engine.
Africans in America Companion website to the PBS 4-part documentary, covering the years 1450 through 1865. Includes individual online chapters for various sets of years, with narrative text, maps, illustrations, and other resources. Includes student and teacher guides, plus information about the documentary series.
AfroCubaWeb Very full listing of news items and current events relevant to Afro-Cuban issues of all kinds, with a focus on the arts, music, religion, literature, and folklore. Includes information on research trips to Cuba, visiting Cuban scholars, workshops, conferences, and festivals. In English; includes search engine.
American Slave Narratives: An Online Anthology Collection of full-text narratives from thirteen African American former slaves. Includes brief biographies of each narrator, plus bibliographies and other sources for further study. From the University of Virginia.
Black / African Related Resources Another pioneering web directory, from Internet and web pioneer Art McGee and now hosted at the University of Pennsylvania - home also to the authoritative African Studies Center. Partially annotated megalist of all things digital and Afrocentric, with last update of 1994. Of historical interest.
Black Studies Huge, one-page list of links organized by very specific topics. Be prepared if you want to print out the list, as it's presently 76 pages long! From City College Libraries, CUNY. Includes some annotations.
Black Voices.com Now called AOL Black Voices; attractive portal offers chat clubs, member searches, Afrocentric greeting cards, member photos, and other miscellaneous services. Content is a bit buried on this site, but covers the main topics of Black news today, careers, sports, entertainment, book reviews, cars, and an events search. One unique and entertaining feature is BVTV, or brief streaming video roving reporter interviews of Chicagoans on politics, history, and leisure topics. Includes archived stories and a search engine.
BlackQuest: Black History Quest One component of the larger, somewhat commercial BlackQuest website, this partially annotated list of links leads to a wide variety of websites, some of which touch on various aspects of African American history. Others focus on contemporary African American art, current websites on African countries and issues, "multicultural medicine," and a hodge podge of other topics. Worth a browse.
The Blue Highway Website and narrative devoted to the country blues developed way back in 1995 by web pioneer Curtis Hewston. Now includes a chat room, search engine, sound files, and more. Musicians profiled include Robert Johnson, Mississippi John Hurt, Bessie Smith, Muddy Waters, B.B.King, Buddy Guy, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Son House, Bukka White, and many others.
Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 This new online collection from the Library of Congress includes "... more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and assembled and microfilmed in 1941 as the seventeen-volume Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves." (Note: These volumes available in ISU Parks Library under call number: E441 .A58) Contents are searchable by keyword, and can be browsed by narrator, subject, by state, or by volume (corresponding to the print versions mentioned above.)
Center for Black Music Research Authoritative definitions, bibliographies, discographies, and links to online vendors for African American & African diaspora musical styles, including jazz, gospel, folk styles of all kinds, rhythm and blues, reggae, Cuban son, Dominican and Haitian merengue, Puerto Rican bomba and plena, plus pan-Caribbean salsa, and Brazilian samba. From Columbia College.
Civil Rights in Mississippi Online exhibit from the University of Southern Mississippi Library & Archives. Includes oral histories, both transcribed and (a few) presented via sound files, manuscripts, finding aids, and other resources. Includes scope notes, search engine, and annotated links to other related websites.
Digital Schomburg: Images of African Americans from the 19th Century One of many noteworthy projects from the Schomburg Center, this digital photo album is searchable by broad category (such as "family," "education," "civil war," or by keywords. Also included are brief essays that give an introduction to the photographs, as well as the broader topic of searching the past.
Douglass: Archives of American Public Address Collection of speeches, oratory, and essays by prominent Americans in history; includes a number of important full-text African American speeches and essays, such as Frederick Douglass's "What to the Slave is the 4th of July," W.E.B. Du Bois's "The Talented Tenth," Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream," and Clarence Thomas's "I am a man, a Black man, an American." Though named for Frederick Douglass, the contents of this digital archive are not exclusively African American; African American contents tend to be filed under "Civil Rights" (often whether or not they deal with civil rights per sé) or slavery. The Douglass Project website solicits patron assistance in locating speeches to be added to the collection, so it is possible that African American content will be increased and broadened in time.
Dred Scott Digital Project Digitized documents, full text transcriptions, portraits, chronology, and other research materials on the Dred Scott case. From Washington University Libraries.
Fernando Ortiz: A Bibliography of Afro-Cuban Culture Exhaustive and authoritative online bibliography of works by and about Fernando Ortiz, renowned scholar of Afro-Cuban history and culture. Bibliography is searchable by keywords, or contents can be browsed and accessed via a frames or no frames version. Co-sponsored by the Schomburg Center and InterAmericas.
Flight to Freedom Interesting interactive "game" allows users to "experience" the escape from pre-Civil War slavery, through the online personal narratives of a number of escaped slaves and other prominent individuals. Developed by Bowdoin history professor Dr. Patrick Rael and the Bowdoin Educational Technology Center. An unusual and unique web-based teaching tool.
From Slavery to Freedom: The African American Pamphlet Collection, 1824-1909 Online bibliography, finding tool, full text, and facsimile images of almost 400 African American pamphlets in the Library of Congress collections. Topics covered include "...slavery, African colonization, Emancipation, and Reconstruction," featuring works by such authors as Frederick Douglass, Kelly Miller, Charles Sumner, Mary Church Terrell, and Booker T. Washington. Includes search engine; contents can be viewed by html text or by facsimile image. Includes title, author, and subject indices.
Malcolm X Research Site Scholarly collection of online bibliographies, a chronology, study guide, and more information on Malcolm X, hiswork, and his legacy. Includes many scholarly and authoritative links elsewhere, plus interactive discussion features.
NetNoir Black Network Typical portal offers typical services, such as channels on career, entertainment, finance, health & fitness, "lifestyle," women, chat rooms, and so on. Unique features here are a gospel channel (actually a spirituality / Christian lifestyle / prayers section) and one devoted to small businesses. Includes search engine and many, many reader polls. Very slow loading on our last visit (1/25/02), so slow loading that only the banner advertisements (for Volvo) loaded.
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture This branch of the New York Public Library system hosts one of the world's greatest collections of African diaspora and African American materials of all kinds - books, clippings, art and cultural objects, manuscripts, videos and films. Increasingly, the Schomburg Center has been mounting digital exhibits that profile some of their collections, such as Harlem: An African American Community, 1900-1940, African Presence in the Americas, and The Schomburg Legacy. The Schomburg Center was named for Puerto Rican-born Arturo "Arthur" Schomburg, who donated his own Afrocentric collections to the NYPL.
Seeing Black.com This attractive and well designed portal focuses on "Black opinion, reviews, and voice," providing current articles on film, the visual arts, politics and media, music reviews, and much more. Fascinating, well written content, and within each section, there is an excellent choice of links leading elsewhere. (Oddly, the "Links" section of the website is currently (6/18/01) not very strong.) Includes search engine, chat rooms, subscription services, and a commercial store marketing Seeing.Black merchandise. One of the very few portals we've seen that manages to balance its necessarily commercial aspects with great content. Highly recommended!
Slave Movement during the 18th and 19th Centuries This website from the University of Wisconsin makes available to registered users selected raw data on the slave trade to the Americas. Specific data includes "Records of Slave Ship Movement between African & the Americas, 1817-1843," "Angola Slave Trade in the 18th Century, 1723-1771," and various records regarding the slave trade to Cuba, Jamaica, Rio de Janeiro, and elsewhere. An invaluable resource.
Universal Black Pages One of the oldest African American megasites that had as its purpose the collection of all relevant websites on topics such as education, art and entertainment, the diaspora, history, student and professional organizations, and literature. Still online, but no longer maintained since 1999. Originally developed by Derrick Brown and Georgia Tech's Black Graduate Student Association.
Women of Color Web Selections from major critical essays of prominent women authors and intellectuals on the topic of race and gender. Authors profiled include bell hooks, Patricia Hill Collins, Barbara Smith, Angela Y. Davis, and many others including Latina and Asian American authors. Writings are organized into the broad categories of feminisms, reproductive rights, and sexualities. Also includes links to online teaching tools (mainly web index sites and web bibliographies), a listing of relevant organizations and their websites, and online discussion lists for women of color. From the Harvard School of Public Health.
e-Journals, e-Zines, e-News
African Affairs (ISU Only) From the ISU Library's subscription to Ingenta online journals.
African American Newspapers: The 19th Century Includes searchable full-text of the following newspapers: Freedom's Journal, The Coloured American, The North Star, The National Era, Provincial Freeman, The Frederick Douglass Paper, and the Christian Recorder.
African American Review (ISU Only) Full-text and complete back issues to this important literary criticism journal, including articles, reviews, editorials, individual poems, etc. Coverage includes 1967-96 (some under previous titles, Negro American Literature Forum and Black American Literature Forum). From J-Stor; includes powerful search engine. Current print issues of this journal are available in Parks Library. Also see the AAR website for current information from this journal.
Black Collegian Online Vibrant and well-designed online version of this well-known publication that focuses on education and career information for African American students. Includes full-text articles, plus a job bank, résumé services, African American issues, and many helpful features. Includes article archives dating back to February 1997. Highly recommended. See also my published review from C&RL News, back in June 2000.
Black Press USA Excellent online news service provides current national and local news articles on this website sponsored by the National Newspaper Publishers Association and the Black Press. Billed as "your independent source of news for the African American community," the website includes links to Black Press online newspapers organized by state, a history section, press releases, and a search engine. A bit slow loading (as of 6/18/01), but highly recommended.
Callaloo (ISU Only) Online full-text articles of this important literary and arts research journal, with current articles (1995-present) available via Project MUSE and back years (1976-89, and 1990-2004) available via J-Stor. Both include search engines.
Ebony Online Abstracts (not full text) of selected articles and features from current issue only. Abstracts function as a sort of expanded table of contents meant to lead the online reader to subscribe or otherwise seek out the physical magazine to continue reading the article of interest. No archived issues or articles, no search engine, no full table of contents or index.
Ethnic & Racial Studies (ISU only) Available online via ISU Parks Library's subscription to Routledge Press Journals. Ethnic & Racial Studies is one of the leading journals to focus on worldwide racial and ethnic studies issues. Full text coverage of this important journal begins with volume 21, January 1998, to the present. Back years of print version are available in Parks Library under the following call number: HT1501 E8
Ethnic NewsWatch Unique and versatile database provides full-text articles, editorials, and features from scores of current African American newspapers, news magazines, and some journals. Also includes publications from many other US ethnic and minority groups. Also includes a publishers' directory, circulation figures, advertising rates, and histories of individual publications. Coverage is 1994-present, with some retrospective coverage dating back to 1985.
Freedom's Journal Full text digitized copies of the nation's first African American owned and operated newspaper, 1827-1829. The first 20 issues are currently (6/00) available free online, with the remaining 80 some issues scheduled to follow. Adobe Acrobat reader necessary, and available online for downloading if needed. From the State Historical Society of Wisconsin Library, a leader in the collection, preservation, and promotion of African American periodicals.
Jet Online Selected stories available online for current issue only - typically, the issue cover story and a few other selected features. No archived issues, no search engine, table of contents, or index.
Journal of Black Studies (ISU Only) Complete full-text facsimiles of this important core journal in African American and African studies. Coverage is 1970-2001; includes powerful search engine. From J-Stor.
Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (ISU Only) Complete online full-text, 1993-2002. Includes powerful search engine; from J-Stor.
Journal of Negro Education (ISU Only) Complete online full-text, 1932-1999 - an incredible span of years available for online full-text coverage of a journal. From J-Stor; includes powerful search engine.
Journal of Negro History (ISU Only) Complete online full-text, 1916-2001 - another incredible span of years for this important African American research journal. From J-Stor; includes powerful search engine.
Transition (ISU Only) Complete online full-text from 1961-2001 of this important and unique contribution to radical African American and cultural studies worldwide. From J-Stor; includes powerful search engine. For current issues, see the Parks Library's issues in the General Collection: AP9 T7
Vibe Online Online version of this well-known youth-oriented music and culture magazine. Loaded with graphics, advertisements, illustrations, and articles.
Western Journal of Black Studies Website of this well-known literary research journal. Copies of this journal, 1997-present, are also available in Parks Library: Gen COLL E185.5 W54.
