Today, Readex distributed this news release:

Readex to Deepen Its Acclaimed Digital Edition of African American Newspapers

African American Newspapers, Series 2, will dramatically expand Series 1 with newly available titles

September 30, 2015 (NAPLES, FL) — The world’s most comprehensive collection of African American newspapers will be dramatically expanded by Readex in January 2016. African American Newspapers, Series 2, 1835-1956, will offer more than 60 newly available newspapers written for or by African Americans, enabling students and scholars to make new discoveries regarding the lives of African Americans as individuals, an ethnic group and Americans. Spanning more than a century of the African American experience, these rare titles form the single essential complement to African American Newspapers, 1827-1998.

“The expansion of African American Newspapers comes at a time when scholars are rediscovering the richness of this rare primary source material,” says Britt Rusert, Assistant Professor, W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. “The historical span of the collection, its broad geographic scope, and the inclusion of non-English language papers will prove immensely helpful for scholarship and teaching in African American history, culture, literature, and related fields.”

With coverage from every region of the United States, African American Newspapers, Series 2, features newspapers from 17 states plus the District of Columbia. Key titles include Frederick Douglass’s New National Era (Washington, DC), Washington Tribune (Washington, DC), Chicago Bee (Chicago, IL), The Louisianian (New Orleans, LA), The Pine and Palm (Boston, MA), National Anti-Slavery Standard (New York, NY), New York Age (New York, NY), Harlem Liberator (New York, NY), North Carolina Republican and Civil Rights Advocate (Weldon, NC), Southern News (Richmond, VA) and dozens of others.

“African American Newspapers, Series 2, will significantly increase the number of available primary sources for researchers across African and African American studies; political science; ethnic studies; diaspora studies; women’s studies; and cultural, literary and social history,” says Jim Draper, Executive Vice President, Readex. “Users can compare and contrast African American viewpoints on practically every major theme in American history from life in the Antebellum South to the Harlem Renaissance to the early civil rights movement.”

While African American Newspapers, Series 1, was created from the extensive newspaper archives of the Wisconsin Historical Society, Kansas State Historical Society, and the Library of Congress, Series 2 was created from the remarkable holdings of the American Antiquarian Society, Center for Research Libraries, the Library of Congress, and New York Public Library. Selections were guided by James Danky, editor of the monumental African-American Newspapers and Periodicals: A National Bibliography.

Part of the America’s Historical Newspapers family of collections, African American Newspapers can be seamlessly cross-searched with Early American Newspapers, Hispanic American Newspapers, and Ethnic American Newspapers from the Balch Collection. Also available from Readex is African American Periodicals, 1825-1995.

About Readex, a division of NewsBank
For more than 60 years, the Readex name has been synonymous with research in historical materials and government documents. Recognized by librarians, students, and scholars for its efforts to transform academic scholarship, Readex offers a wealth of Web-based collections in the humanities and social sciences, including the Archive of Americana, a family of historical collections featuring searchable books, pamphlets, newspapers, and government documents printed in America over three centuries, and the World Newspaper Archive, created in partnership with the Center for Research Libraries. Also available are the Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Reports and the Joint Publications Research Service Reports, two of the U.S. government’s fundamental sources of foreign intelligence gathered from publicly available media during the second half of the 20th century.