African American Studies

Black and white photograph of a group of suffragettes and supporters gathered at Union Square, New York, dated February 16, 1908. The central women are smiling and dressed in winter coats and elaborate hats, holding flowers and pamphlets, surrounded by a crowd of men in bowler hats. The image has a handwritten caption at the bottom: "Suffragettes at Union Sq. 2/16/08."

"Moving Forward Together!": Amplifying Women's History and Experiences

Moving Forward Together! Women Educating & Inspiring Generations -National Women’s History Alliance 2025 Women’s History Month theme Researchers will uncover diverse voices to build historical...

Map of Hispaniola 1534. From: U.S. Serial Set Maps I, S.Exec.Doc. 38

"White Hell in Black Haiti": An Excursion to Haiti Wherein the Question is Asked, "What Happened?"

Ah, the Caribbean! Turquoise water, miles of sandy beaches, tropical climate. Island paradises mostly, large and small. The Bahamas. Jamaica. Also, Cuba, but that's another story. Vibrant, ancient...

BBC Monitoring, Readex Text Explorer, word cloud analysis of the search terms space exploration and USSR

From Reading to Exploring: The Future of Textual Analysis with Readex Text Explorer

This article, originally published May 13, 2020, has been updated. For many years, faculty and students have been asking Readex to “bring history to life” in new ways. “You have tremendous products,”...

Zoot Suit Riots: Opportunities for Discovery using Suggested Searches in Hispanic Life in America

In many of its primary source collections, Readex provides a significant enhancement for the user by including Suggested Searches to jumpstart research. Created and curated by the Readex editorial and...

Celebrating Women's History Month: Perspectives from Historical Primary Sources

Celebrate Women’s History Month with a look back through the Readex blog archive featuring articles from Readex digitized primary source collections. Read on to discover and celebrate the...

Sepia-toned photograph of four young women posing on outdoor stone steps. They wear long skirts, high-collared blouses with puffed sleeves, and decorative hats. Each leans on one arm with a composed expression, creating a staged, fashion-focused portrait from the late 19th or early 20th century.

Black History is American History: Perspectives from Historical Primary Sources

Explore Black history and American history with these resources and articles for research, teaching and learning. Discover more in the Readex blog archives. Celebrating the Remarkable Life and Work of...

Side-by-side black-and-white portraits of W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington. Du Bois (left) wears a suit and tie and has a mustache and goatee, looking slightly toward the camera. Washington (right) wears a suit and bow tie, facing forward with a serious expression against a plain studio background.

The Early Histories of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Part IV: W. E. B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, and the Great Debate

W. E. B. Du Bois was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts in 1868. He died ninety-five years later in Accra, Ghana in 1963. During his long life he rose rapidly to become and remain a powerful...

“Choose your goal, and success is yours…Follow it, even though you may never reach it.”: Lloyd Gaines and the Case Against the University of Missouri

On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education and declared state laws establishing “separate but equal” public schooling to be unconstitutional...

“All those individuals who, until this day, looked upon themselves as slaves, are free”: The Lost History of the Mexican Underground Railroad

When we are first taught about the Underground Railroad, we learn about following the drinking gourd and how “conductors,” such as Harriet Tubman, helped free enslaved people in the south, ushering...

Booker T. Washington, half-length portrait, seated at desk. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

The Early Histories of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Part III: Booker T. Washington and the Tuskegee Institute

Booker Taliaferro Washington was born April 5, 1856 in Virginia the son of an enslaved woman named Jane who later, after emancipation, was able to reunite with her husband, Washington Ferguson, in...

Aerial view of a large red-brick historic building, Jubilee Hall at Fisk University, with a steep slate roof, ornate dormer windows, and a tall central spire rising above a white belfry. The building is surrounded by trees, with a distant landscape and clear blue sky in the background.

The Early Histories of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Part II: Fisk University and the Jubilee Singers

Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee opened on January 9, 1866 more than year before Howard University. While Howard was beset by controversy from its beginning, Fisk seems to have had a...

Wide daytime photograph of a Howard University building, a large red-brick institutional building with white trim and a central clock tower topped by a dome. The building sits on a landscaped lawn with trees and shrubs under a clear blue sky, suggesting a historic school or government campus.

The Early Histories of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Part 1: Howard University

“This institution bids fair to do great good.” — New York Evening Post (1867) Historically Black Colleges and Universities, commonly referred to as HBCUs, have graduated tens of thousands of men and...

“Black Representative of a White Idea”: John Willis Menard, 1868 Representative-Elect from Louisiana

A person’s social standing has much to do with where they sit, or whether they’re even allowed to do so. During U.S. civil rights protests in the 1960s, Rosa Parks and other Black citizens went to...

In the new Readex Report: Vintage slang, African American uplift, and the equality equation

In this issue: The 19th-century flash press as an underrated repository of

“R and R from Racism” at Idlewild—Michigan’s African American Resort

The evocative quotation in the title comes from Dr. Benjamin Wilson, professor of history at Western Michigan University, who in 2002 wrote Black Eden: The Idlewild Community. “R and R from racism”...

“We Stand on a Level:” Black Freemasons Fight for Parity with White Lodges

Intrepid souls who ventured out into the blizzard in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio, on March 7, 1875 might have encountered a singular apparition: a procession of formally-dressed African-American men...

Unreconstructed: The Rise of Rifle Clubs—White and Black—during Racial Violence in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

The word “club” has divergent associations: on the one hand it relates to a weapon, on the other to a group of like-minded individuals who gather regularly for a specific purpose. Following the...

Black-and-white 19th-century illustration of four well-dressed men surrounding a wooden crate. A Black man sits inside the open crate while two men behind him hold a large sheet or sign. One man gestures theatrically, and another carries a basket, suggesting a staged performance or prank.

'Forwarded as Merchandise': News Coverage of Henry Box Brown’s Remarkable Quest for Freedom

As an enslaved man, Henry Brown’s experience was not atypical; he was allowed to marry and have children, but as human property he and his family could be permanently separated from each other on a...

"Priceless": An Interview with Brandon A. Owens, Sr., Ph.D., Director of Library Services, Fisk University

Founded in 1866, Fisk University is a private university in Nashville, Tennessee, with a long-standing reputation for academic excellence. Fisk is currently ranked #6 among historically black...

In the New Readex Report: Surveilling Du Bois; a Famous Football Club; and Black Woman Journalists

In this issue: Big Brother's surveillance of an African-American activist; a ballyhooed British soccer club drops the proverbial ball; and formidable Black female voices in 19th-century media...

Color painting of a rural village scene with a white church topped by a green dome, several large white buildings, and many people running across a grassy field. A herd of horses gallops through the foreground while children and adults scatter, suggesting a sudden commotion or chase in a 19th-century setting.

Noyes Complaints: A White Mob (and 90 Yoke of Oxen) Drag a Racially Integrated School from Its Foundations in 1835 New Hampshire

Blame it on a literal reading of the Declaration of Independence. On July 4, 1834, the New Hampshire state legislature granted a charter to found Noyes Academy in the rural Town of Canaan. Because the...

Engraving of the president's house in Philadelphia in the 18th century

“They were not terrified enough”: The Yellow Fever Epidemic in Philadelphia, 1793

Between early August and early November of 1793 almost ten percent of the population of Philadelphia died after contracting Yellow Fever. At that time Philadelphia was the capital of the young nation...

A Name to Conjure With: Mardi Gras Indians Keep the Faith through the Spirit of Sauk War Leader Black Hawk

The spirit of Black Hawk is alive and well and living in New Orleans. How does the influence of this Sauk war leader inform Creole identity over 250 years after his birth? The answer involves a rich...

“The highlight of my ALA conference”: Librarians laud Readex-sponsored program by Civil War historian Amy Murrell Taylor

[ Go directly to Prof. Taylor’s highly praised presentation.] In the days following the start of the American Civil War, enslaved people immediately began fleeing plantations to seek refuge. In a...

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