LibGuides: Africana Legal Studies Research: Primary Sources

Primary Sources

Primary sources are documents or records that contain firsthand information or original data person, event or thing. Usually, these sources are created by individuals or entities that experienced the event and reflect their viewpoint. In legal research, primary sources are considered government-generated documents with a similar focus. Common sources for slavery documents include slave narratives, diaries/letters/biographies, newspaper and periodical clippings, literature and photographs.

Enslaved African Narratives

African American Perspectives: Materials Selected from the Rare Book Collection
800 + titles including biographies, enslaved African narratives, speeches by members of Congress, legal documents, speeches, sermons and other material.
Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 to 1938
More than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project (FWP) of the Works Progress Administration, later renamed Work Projects Administration (WPA).
Voices Remembering Slavery: Freed People Tell Their Stories [Library of Congress]
The recordings of former slaves in Voices Remembering Slavery: Freed People Tell Their Stories took place between 1932 and 1975 in nine states. Twenty-two interviewees discuss how they felt about slavery, slaveholders, coercion of slaves, their families, and freedom. Several individuals sing songs, many of which were learned during the time of their enslavement. It is important to note that all of the interviewees spoke sixty or more years after the end of their enslavement, and it is their full lives that are reflected in these recordings
North American Slave Narratives
This collection includes all the existing autobiographical narratives of self-emancipated and formerly enslaved people published as broadsides, pamphlets, or books in English up to 1920. Also included are many of the biographies of self-emancipated and formerly enslaved people and some significant fictionalized first-person accounts of enslavement published in English before 1920.

Use these subject headings to find this content in the library catalog:

Materials available from the library:

God Struck Me Dead by Clifton Johnson (Editor); Albert J. Raboteau (Introduction by)
Call Number: Available for Interlibrary Loan
ISBN: 0829809457
Publication Date: 1993
An invaluable collection of vivid conversion narratives and autobiographies by illiterate but powerfully articulate ex-slaves, God Struck Me Dead is a window into the soul of America and its religious history.
Unwritten history of slavery, autobiographical account of Negro ex-slaves. by Fisk University. Social Science Institute
Call Number: Available for Interlibrary Loan
Publication Date: 1945

Cade, John B. “Out of the Mouths of Ex-Slaves.” The Journal of Negro history 20, no. 3 (1935): 294–337.

Newspapers

Chronicling America | Historic American Newspapers
Search America's historic newspaper pages from 1777-1963 or use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present.

Pamphlets

Antislavery Pamphlet Collection
The Antislavery Collection contains several hundred printed pamphlets and books pertaining to slavery and antislavery in New England, 1725-1911. The holdings include speeches, sermons, proceedings and other publications of organizations such as the American Anti-Slavery Society and the American Colonization Society, and a small number of pro-slavery tracts.

Court Records

Court Slave Records for DC
These records include emancipation papers, 1857-63, manumission papers, 1851-63, and case papers relating to fugitive slaves, 1851-63.
Slavery and the U.S. Supreme Court: The Amistad Case
This digital collection is comprised of correspondence, dating from 1839-1841, by abolitionists, pro-slavery advocates, governmental officials, and the Amistad Africans themselves, related to the development of efforts to provide legal assistance to the Africans. The resulting trials in the U.S. court system; the political interests on the part of the United States, Cuba, and Spain; and the personal experiences of the imprisoned Africans are detailed in these letters...
Slaves and the Courts, 1740-1860
These documents comprise an assortment of trials and cases, reports, arguments, accounts, examinations of cases and decisions, proceedings, journals, a letter, and other works of historical importance.

Living in Slavery

Slavery at Monticello
Provides interviews and histories relating to slavery at Monticello under Thomas Jefferson.
Texas Slavery Project
Transcriptions of laws, newspaper articles, correspondence and other primary sources pertaining to slavery in Texas.

Images and maps

Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora
The images in Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora have been selected from a wide range of sources, most of them dating from the period of slavery.
Runaway Slave Ads: Baltimore County, Maryland
Runaway Slave Ads cover the period from 1842 to 1863 and primarily advertise slaves that ran away from the Baltimore County, Maryland area.
Gladstone Collection of African American Photographs
The William A. Gladstone Collection of African American Photographs provides almost 350 images showing African Americans and related military and social history. The Civil War era is the primary time period covered, with scattered examples through 1945.
Slave Societies Digital Archive
Preserves endangered ecclesiastical and secular documents related to Africans and African-descended peoples in slave societies. SSDA holdings include more than 700,000 digital images drawn from close to 2,000 unique volumes dating from the sixteenth through twentieth centuries that document the lives of an estimated four to six million individuals

Diaspora

Danish West Indies Slave Records
The majority of the records cover the 19th century, with the oldest dating back to 1672. Most of the records from the Danish era are in Danish, some are in Gothic script.
Early Caribbean Digital Archive
Collection of pre-twentieth-century Caribbean texts, maps, and images. Texts include travel narratives, novels, poetry, natural histories, and diaries that have not been brought together before as a single collection focused on the Caribbean.
Black Cultural Archives [Britain]
Since 1981 Black Cultural Archives (BCA) has embarked on the journey to collect and preserve materials that redress the historical balance and representation of people of African and Caribbean descent in Britain.

Other Primary Sources

Anti-Slavery Manuscripts Collection
In the late 1890s, the family of William Lloyd Garrison, along with others closely involved in the anti-slavery movement, presented the Boston Public Library with a major gathering of correspondence, documents, and other original material relating to abolition.
Slavery Era Records [Fold 3]
These documents highlight the stories of individuals and government issues dealing with slavery in the United States.
Charles F. Heartman Manuscripts of Slavery Collection
The Charles F. Heartman Manuscripts of Slavery Collection consists of over 6000 pieces dating from 1724 to 1897, and relate directly to the social, economic, civil, and legal status of enslaved Negroes and Free People of Color in Louisiana an especially in New Orleans. The manuscripts are written in French, Spanish, and English.
Voyage of the Echo: The Trials of an Illegal Trans-Atlantic Slave Ship
This online exhibition examines the illegal trans-Atlantic slave trade through the voyage and capture of the slave ship Echo in 1858. ... The subsequent Echo trials in South Carolina provide insight into debates about the future of U.S. slavery in the years preceding the American Civil War. Published May 2014.
Race and Slavery Petitions Project
The Race and Slavery Petitions Project contains detailed information on about 150,000 individuals, including slaves, free people of color, and whites, extracted from 2,975 legislative petitions and 14,512 county court petitions, as well as from a wide range of related documents, including wills, inventories, deeds, bills of sale, depositions, court proceedings, amended petitions, among others.

Pence Law Library Guides

Africana Legal Studies Research