English, Literature & Writing (UNH Durham)

Visiting an archives has something in common with using any public service. In each interaction with a service or a staff person, you’re seeing the small tip of a very large iceberg. Behind-the-scenes people, tasks, and systems that you may never see all unite to affect the experience you’ll have. On this blog we’ve tried to give you a sense of what archival work is like, and how this might be reflected in your experience of using the rare or unpublished documents in archives.

From 1830 until the 1890s, already free and once captive Black people came together in state and national political meetings called "Colored Conventions." Before the War, they strategized about how to achieve educational, labor and legal justice at a moment when Black rights were constricting nationally and locally. After the War, their numbers swelled as they continued to mobilize to ensure that Black citizenship rights and safety, Black labor rights and land, Black education and institutions would be protected under the law.

"Resources for Colored Conventions Research: A Guide for National Affiliates and Public Use" is a guide designed to provide assistance to users of and instructors teaching units connected to Colored Conventions: Bringing Nineteenth-Century Black Organizing to Digital Life, a digital humanities project of the University of Delaware.

Includes The Civil War: A Newspaper Perspective, and African American Newspapers: The 19th Century.

Provided by Accessible Archives.

Comprehensive digital archive that includes titles from all 50 states. Our subscription currently includes Series 1, 1690-1876, Series 2, 1758-1900, and Series 3, 1829-1922.

Chronicling America is a Website providing access to information about historic newspapers and select digitized newspaper pages, 1836-1922, (not just African American papers).

The American Antiquarian Society is both a learned society and a major independent research library. The AAS library today houses the largest and most accessible collection of books, pamphlets, broadsides, newspapers, periodicals, music, and graphic arts material printed through 1876 in what is now the United States, as well as manuscripts and a substantial collection of secondary texts, bibliographies, and digital resources and reference works related to all aspects of American history and culture before the twentieth century.

BPL has a Anti-Slavery Manuscripts Project: https://www.antislaverymanuscripts.org/

Historic New England is the oldest and largest regional heritage organization in the nation. The organization saves and shares New England’s past to engage and inform present and future generations.

Collections include topics on African Americans and Antislavery.

Includes Black History Resources (scroll down).

NEHGS is the nation’s leading comprehensive resource for family history research and the largest Society of its kind in the world. We provide expert family history services through our staff, original scholarship, data-rich website, educational opportunities, and research center to help family historians of all levels explore their past and understand their families’ unique place in history.