Research Guides: AAS 190: The Black Athlete in American Society: Primary Sources

Physical Primary Sources

Search LibrarySearch for primary sources

Consider using the following subheadings to identify useful primary source material: autobiographies, autobiography, campaign speeches, correspondence, diaries, interviews, personal narratives, public opinion, speeches, addresses.

Search EmoryFindingAids for Emory archival collections

Are you interested in visiting the Rose Library or another archive on campus to see primary source materials in their original form?
Start by exploring Emory's finding aids. These are guides to the collections housed in Emory's archives. Emory has several collections related to African Americans and Sports including the African American Sports Collection.
To actually see most of the documents, you'll have request boxes and make an appointment. Contact me (berica@emory.edu) for help with how to do this!

Curated & Specialized Digital Collections

National Museum of African American History and Culture: Sports
Digital selections from "Leveling the Playing Field," which explores the contributions of Black athletes.
DP.LA: Negro Leagues
Selection of digital resources related to African American baseball leagues.
Langmuir Photograph Collection
Emory collection of African American Photographs

Portals to Digital Archives

Don't know where to start? Try one of the following database portals. They allow researchers to search across the web and multiple databases produced by the same publisher.

Digital Public Library of America
Portal to Library and Archival Collections across the Web
Umbra Search
Portal to digital African American history and culture collections online

Archive Explorer (Adam Matthew)
Access primary sources for a wide variety of themes and topics. Materials concentrate on English language archival documents from the UK and the U.S.
Gale Primary Sources
Search a large number of primary source databases.
Readex AllSearch
Enables searching across all available Readex collections, including historic newspapers, books, pamphlets, and government publications from the Americas and Africa.

American Newspapers and News Sources

ProQuest News & Newspapers
An extensive collection of historic and present-day news sources from around the world. You can focus your search to a region, current newspapers, or historical newspapers.
America's Historical Newspapers
Access various historical newspapers that span from the seventeenth to the twentieth century.

Formerly Early American Newspapers Digital.
Accessible Archives

Access a diverse range of primary source materials from the 18th and 19th century America. Includes the Colonial Period, major wars, African-American History, the Industrial Revolution and more.
Ethnic NewsWatch
Contains U. S. newspapers, magazines, and journals of ethnic, minority, and native presses. Searchable in English and Spanish, materials span from 1960 to the present.
Nexis Uni
Full-text access to news, business, medical, educational and legal sources. The sources include international, national, and regional newspapers; magazines; trade journals; newsletters; wire service reports; and transcripts of television and radio news programs.

Formerly LexisNexis Academic.

Oral Histories

History Makers Digital Archive
Large digital collection of full-length, searchable interviews featuring prominent African American artists, business leaders, scientists, athletes, and intellectuals.

Historical Magazines

American Periodicals Series Online
Access American periodicals from the colonial period through the beginning of the 20th century.
HarpWeek
Contains scanned images of all the pages of Harper's Weekly together with a series of indexes.
OpinionArchives
Provides access to current issues and backfiles of a number of leading U.S. opinion publications including the Nation, New Republic, Commonweal, the New York Review of Books, Harper's, and more.