Primary sources are documents, images or artifacts that provide firsthand testimony or direct evidence concerning an historical topic. Primary sources are original documents created or experienced contemporaneously with the event being researched. They can include newspaper articles, pamphlets, diaries, correspondence, photos, video and audio recordings, speeches, government publications, and oral histories.
This website contains approximately 1,600 documents focused on six different phases of Black Freedom:
Slavery and the Abolitionist Movement (1790-1860);
The Civil War and the Reconstruction Era (1861-1877);
Jim Crow Era from 1878 to the Great Depression (1878-1932);
The New Deal and World War II (1933-1945);
The Civil Rights and Black Power Movements (1946-1975);
The Contemporary Era (1976-2000)