Archives Unbound:
African American Studies
African American Studies
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===Product Icon===
===Subject Collections===
• African American Studies
➡ Activism and Organizations
➡ Civil Rights
➡ Race Relations
• African Studies
• American Studies
• Asian Studies
• British and European History
• Business and Economic History
• Cultural Studies
• Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies
• Health and Environmental Studies
• Holocaust Studies
• International Relations
• Latin American & Caribbean Studies
• Law, Politics, and Radical Studies
• Middle Eastern Studies
• Native American Studies
• Religious Studies
===Subject Collections===
• African American Studies
➡ Activism and Organizations
➡ Civil Rights
➡ Race Relations
• African Studies
• American Studies
• Asian Studies
• British and European History
• Business and Economic History
• Cultural Studies
• Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies
• Health and Environmental Studies
• Holocaust Studies
• International Relations
• Latin American & Caribbean Studies
• Law, Politics, and Radical Studies
• Middle Eastern Studies
• Native American Studies
• Religious Studies
Archives Unbound: African American Studies
This is an interdisciplinary academic collection devoted to the study of the history, culture, and politics of African Americans, covering the tumultuous period from 1900 to present day. Researchers can explore a breadth of experiences ranging from U.S. nation-building in Liberia to Freedom Riders, the Rastafari movement, and FBI surveillance.
Activitism and Organizations
African America, Communists, and the National Negro Congress, 1933-1947 - The National Negro Congress was established in 1936 to "secure the right of the Negro people to be free from Jim Crowism, segregation, discrimination, lynching, and mob violence" and "to promote the spirit of unity and cooperation between Negro and white people." It was conceived as a national coalition of church, labor, and civil rights organizations that would coordinate protest action in the face of deteriorating economic conditions for blacks. The National Negro Congress (NNC) was the culmination of the Communist Party's Depression-era effort to unite black and white workers and intellectuals in the fight for racial justice and marked the apex of Communist Party prestige in African American communities. This collection comprises of the voluminous working files of John P. Davis and successive executive secretaries of the National Negro Congress. Beginning with papers from 1933 that predate the formation of the National Negro Congress, the wide-ranging collection documents Davis’s involvement in the Negro Industrial League and includes the "Report Files" of Davis’s interest and work on the "Negro problem."
Black Economic Empowerment: The National Negro Business League - Booker T. Washington, founder of the National Negro Business League, believed that solutions to the problem of racial discrimination were primarily economic and that bringing African Americans into the middle class was the key. In 1900, he established the League “to promote the commercial and financial development of the Negro,” and headed it until his death. The League included small African American business owners, doctors, farmers, craftsmen, and other professionals. Its goal was to allow businesses to put economic development at the forefront of getting African-American equality in America. Booker T. Washington felt that there was a need for African Americans to build an economic network and allow that to be a catalyst for change and social improvement.
Black Liberation Army and the Program of Armed Struggle - If one were to examine, African American history, one would be surprised to find a long history of militant armed struggle. Slave rebellions, urban "guerilla" activities in the 1960s, rural defense leagues, were all part of a tapestry of black militancy. An icon of black armed struggle, the Black Liberation Army, was a linchpin in understanding the development of the “armed rebellion” phenomenon in the late 1960s through early 1980s. Composed largely of former Black Panthers (BPP), the Black Liberation Army's program was one of “armed struggle” and its stated goal was to “take up arms for the liberation and self-determination of black people in the United States.”
Black Nationalism and the Revolutionary Action Movement: The Papers of Muhammad Ahmad (Max Stanford) - This collection of RAM records reproduces the writings and statements of the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) and its leaders. It also covers organizations that evolved from or were influenced by RAM and persons that had close ties to RAM. The most prominent organization that evolved from RAM was the African People’s Party. Organizations influenced by RAM include the Black Panther Party, League of Revolutionary Black Workers, Youth Organization for Black Unity, African Liberation Support Committee, and the Republic of New Africa. Individuals associated with RAM and documented in this collection include Robert F. Williams, Malcolm X, Amiri Baraka, General Gordon Baker Jr., Yuri Kochiyama, Donald Freeman, James and Grace Lee Boggs, Herman Ferguson, Askia Muhammad Toure (Rolland Snellings), and Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael).
Liberation Movement in Africa and African America - This archive is based on the film title, Administrative Histories of the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidency, Science and Technology.
Rastafari Ephemeral Publications from the Written Rastafari Archives Project - The Written Rastafari Archives Project (WRAP) involves an exclusive collection of the most well-known Rastafari ephemerals, newsletters, magazines, newspapers, booklets, statements, letters, articles, and assorted literature - written and published by several Rastafari Mansions, organizations, groups, and individuals over the past four decades. The provocative literary materials in this WRAP Collection provide a historical time stamp and current affairs commentary on the transitional period in the Rastafari Movement's development, a period extending from the early 1970s through to the present. It is a forty-year period during which the Rastafari Movement has been spreading across the Afro-Atlantic world in one form or another and becoming progressively globalized.
Republic of New Afrika - The FBI believed the Republic of New Afrika to be a seditious group and conducted raids on its meetings, which led to violent confrontations, and the arrest and repeated imprisonment of RNA leaders. The group was a target of the COINTELPRO operation by the federal authorities but was also subject to diverse Red Squad activities of Michigan State Police and the Detroit Police Department, among other cities. This collection provides documentation collected by the FBI through intelligence activities, informants, surveillance, and cooperation with local police departments. These documents chronicle the activities of the Republic of New Afrika national and local leaders, power struggles within the organization, its growing militancy, and its affiliations with other Black militant organizations.
Southern Negro Youth Congress and the Communist Party - The Ralph J. Bunche Oral History Collection from the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center is a unique resource for the study of the era of the American civil rights movement. Included here are transcriptions of close to 700 interviews with those who made history in the struggles for voting rights, against discrimination in housing, for the desegregation of the schools, to expose racism in hiring, in defiance of police brutality, and to address poverty in the African American communities.
Papers of Amiri Baraka, Poet Laureate of the Black Power Movement - Amiri Baraka is the author of over 40 books of essays, poems, drama, and music history and criticism, a poet icon and revolutionary political activist. As a young man in the 1960s, Baraka (then known as LeRoi Jones) galvanized a second Black Renaissance, the Black Arts movement. The ideological and political transformations of Amiri Baraka from a Beat poet in Greenwich Village into a militant political activist in Harlem and Newark were paradigmatic for the Black Revolt of the 1960s.
This is an interdisciplinary academic collection devoted to the study of the history, culture, and politics of African Americans, covering the tumultuous period from 1900 to present day. Researchers can explore a breadth of experiences ranging from U.S. nation-building in Liberia to Freedom Riders, the Rastafari movement, and FBI surveillance.
Activitism and Organizations
African America, Communists, and the National Negro Congress, 1933-1947 - The National Negro Congress was established in 1936 to "secure the right of the Negro people to be free from Jim Crowism, segregation, discrimination, lynching, and mob violence" and "to promote the spirit of unity and cooperation between Negro and white people." It was conceived as a national coalition of church, labor, and civil rights organizations that would coordinate protest action in the face of deteriorating economic conditions for blacks. The National Negro Congress (NNC) was the culmination of the Communist Party's Depression-era effort to unite black and white workers and intellectuals in the fight for racial justice and marked the apex of Communist Party prestige in African American communities. This collection comprises of the voluminous working files of John P. Davis and successive executive secretaries of the National Negro Congress. Beginning with papers from 1933 that predate the formation of the National Negro Congress, the wide-ranging collection documents Davis’s involvement in the Negro Industrial League and includes the "Report Files" of Davis’s interest and work on the "Negro problem."
Black Economic Empowerment: The National Negro Business League - Booker T. Washington, founder of the National Negro Business League, believed that solutions to the problem of racial discrimination were primarily economic and that bringing African Americans into the middle class was the key. In 1900, he established the League “to promote the commercial and financial development of the Negro,” and headed it until his death. The League included small African American business owners, doctors, farmers, craftsmen, and other professionals. Its goal was to allow businesses to put economic development at the forefront of getting African-American equality in America. Booker T. Washington felt that there was a need for African Americans to build an economic network and allow that to be a catalyst for change and social improvement.
Black Liberation Army and the Program of Armed Struggle - If one were to examine, African American history, one would be surprised to find a long history of militant armed struggle. Slave rebellions, urban "guerilla" activities in the 1960s, rural defense leagues, were all part of a tapestry of black militancy. An icon of black armed struggle, the Black Liberation Army, was a linchpin in understanding the development of the “armed rebellion” phenomenon in the late 1960s through early 1980s. Composed largely of former Black Panthers (BPP), the Black Liberation Army's program was one of “armed struggle” and its stated goal was to “take up arms for the liberation and self-determination of black people in the United States.”
Black Nationalism and the Revolutionary Action Movement: The Papers of Muhammad Ahmad (Max Stanford) - This collection of RAM records reproduces the writings and statements of the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) and its leaders. It also covers organizations that evolved from or were influenced by RAM and persons that had close ties to RAM. The most prominent organization that evolved from RAM was the African People’s Party. Organizations influenced by RAM include the Black Panther Party, League of Revolutionary Black Workers, Youth Organization for Black Unity, African Liberation Support Committee, and the Republic of New Africa. Individuals associated with RAM and documented in this collection include Robert F. Williams, Malcolm X, Amiri Baraka, General Gordon Baker Jr., Yuri Kochiyama, Donald Freeman, James and Grace Lee Boggs, Herman Ferguson, Askia Muhammad Toure (Rolland Snellings), and Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael).
Liberation Movement in Africa and African America - This archive is based on the film title, Administrative Histories of the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidency, Science and Technology.
Rastafari Ephemeral Publications from the Written Rastafari Archives Project - The Written Rastafari Archives Project (WRAP) involves an exclusive collection of the most well-known Rastafari ephemerals, newsletters, magazines, newspapers, booklets, statements, letters, articles, and assorted literature - written and published by several Rastafari Mansions, organizations, groups, and individuals over the past four decades. The provocative literary materials in this WRAP Collection provide a historical time stamp and current affairs commentary on the transitional period in the Rastafari Movement's development, a period extending from the early 1970s through to the present. It is a forty-year period during which the Rastafari Movement has been spreading across the Afro-Atlantic world in one form or another and becoming progressively globalized.
Republic of New Afrika - The FBI believed the Republic of New Afrika to be a seditious group and conducted raids on its meetings, which led to violent confrontations, and the arrest and repeated imprisonment of RNA leaders. The group was a target of the COINTELPRO operation by the federal authorities but was also subject to diverse Red Squad activities of Michigan State Police and the Detroit Police Department, among other cities. This collection provides documentation collected by the FBI through intelligence activities, informants, surveillance, and cooperation with local police departments. These documents chronicle the activities of the Republic of New Afrika national and local leaders, power struggles within the organization, its growing militancy, and its affiliations with other Black militant organizations.
Southern Negro Youth Congress and the Communist Party - The Ralph J. Bunche Oral History Collection from the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center is a unique resource for the study of the era of the American civil rights movement. Included here are transcriptions of close to 700 interviews with those who made history in the struggles for voting rights, against discrimination in housing, for the desegregation of the schools, to expose racism in hiring, in defiance of police brutality, and to address poverty in the African American communities.
Papers of Amiri Baraka, Poet Laureate of the Black Power Movement - Amiri Baraka is the author of over 40 books of essays, poems, drama, and music history and criticism, a poet icon and revolutionary political activist. As a young man in the 1960s, Baraka (then known as LeRoi Jones) galvanized a second Black Renaissance, the Black Arts movement. The ideological and political transformations of Amiri Baraka from a Beat poet in Greenwich Village into a militant political activist in Harlem and Newark were paradigmatic for the Black Revolt of the 1960s.
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Primary Sources
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Archives Unbound