African American Biographical Database

The largest electronic collection of biographical information on African Americans from 1790 to 1950.*

African American Heritage

This collection was created in partnership with leading African American genealogists to develop a comprehensive mix of resources, records, and tools specifically pertaining to African Americans.*

African American Music Reference

Contains comprehensive coverage of blues, jazz, spirituals, civil rights songs, slave songs, minstrelsy, rhythm and blues, gospel, and other forms of black American musical expression chronicling the rich history of this music through 1970.*

African American Reference E-book Titles

Search over 25 reference titles related to African American culture, history, and literature simultaneously.*

Atlanta Daily World Historical Archive

The Atlanta Daily World had the first black White House correspondent and was the first black daily in the nation in the 20th century. Search full text from 1931 to 2003.*

Black Drama

Contains the full text of plays written from the mid-1800s to the present by playwrights from North America, English-speaking Africa, the Caribbean, and other African diaspora countries.*

Black Short Fiction

Short fiction produced by writers from Africa and the African Diaspora from the earliest times to the present compiled from early literary magazines, archives, and the personal collections of the authors.*

Black Studies Center

Black Studies Center is a fully cross-searchable gateway to Black Studies including scholarly essays, recent periodicals, historical newspaper articles, and much more.*

Black Thought and Culture

An electronic collection of non-fiction writings by major American black leaders covering 250 years of history including letters, speeches, prefatory essays, political leaflets, interviews, periodicals, and trial transcripts.*

Black Women in America (For Remote Users)

An online reference e-book that celebrates the remarkable achievements of black women throughout history and highlights their ongoing contributions in America today by looking at women such as Venus and Serena Williams, Condoleezza Rice, Carol Moseley Braun, Ruth Simmons, and Ann Fudge who have become household names for their remarkable contributions to sports, politics, academia, and business.*

Black Women in America (In Library Version)

An online reference e-book that celebrates the remarkable achievements of black women throughout history and highlights their ongoing contributions in America today by looking at women such as Venus and Serena Williams, Condoleezza Rice, Carol Moseley Braun, Ruth Simmons, and Ann Fudge who have become household names for their remarkable contributions to sports, politics, academia, and business.*

Black Women Writers

Presents literature and essays by authors from Africa and the African Diaspora.*

Chicago Defender Historical Archive

Full page view of the Chicago Defender from 1910-1975.*

Civil War Era

Includes the full text of 13 regional newspapers from all sides of the conflict from 1840-1865 as well as 2,000+ slavery, anti-slavery Civil War pamphlets published beween 1852 and 1918.*

Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896-Present Day (For Remote Users)

An online reference book tracing the transition from the Reconstruction Era to the age of Jim Crow, the Harlem Renaissance, the Civil Rights Movement, and including the 2008 election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States.*

Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896-Present Day (In Library Version)

An online reference book tracing the transition from the Reconstruction Era to the age of Jim Crow, the Harlem Renaissance, the Civil Rights Movement, and including the 2008 election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States.*

Gale Virtual Reference Library

Full-text reference books on topics including biography, business, the environment, history, law, literature, social sciences, medicine, religion, the sciences, and multicultural studies.*

HeritageQuest Online (In Library Use)

A comprehensive treasury of American genealogical sources—rich in unique primary sources, local and family histories, and finding aids. It delivers an essential collection of genealogical and historical sources—with coverage dating back to the 1700s—that can help people find their ancestors and discover a place’s past. The collection consists of five core data sets: U.S. Federal Censuses, Genealogy and local history books, Revolutionary War Records, Freedman’s Bank Records, The LexisNexis U.S. Serial Set *

HeritageQuest Online (Remote Users)

A comprehensive treasury of American genealogical sources—rich in unique primary sources, local and family histories, and finding aids. It delivers an essential collection of genealogical and historical sources—with coverage dating back to the 1700s—that can help people find their ancestors and discover a place’s past. The collection consists of five core data sets: U.S. Federal Censuses, Genealogy and local history books, Revolutionary War Records, Freedman’s Bank Records, The LexisNexis U.S. Serial Set *  

HistoryMakers Digital Archive

The nation’s largest African American video oral history collection. Biographies and video interviews with over 2500 notable African American history makers. Tip for remote users: To log in, search for and select Houston Public Library in the institution field on the left, then enter your library card number. (Works best with Chrome, Safari, and Firefox browsers.) *

New York Amsterdam News Historical Archive

A leading Black newspaper of the 20th century, especially the 1940s. Search fulltext from 1922 to 1993.*

Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive: Debates over Slavery and Abolition

Includes documents, newspaper collections, and books from the United States, Europe, and other parts of the world published in the antebellum.*

Slavery in America

This is a digital collection of over 600 documents: personal narratives, pamphlets, political speeches, sermons, plays, songs, poetic and fictional works published between the 17th and late 19th centuries.*

African American Intellectual History Society

A scholarly organization that aims to foster dialogue about researching, writing, and teaching black thought and culture.

BlackPast

This 6,000 page reference center is dedicated to providing information to the general public on African American history and the history of more than one billion people of African ancestry around the world.

Buffalo Soldiers National Museum

BSNM is the only museum dedicated primarily to preserving the legacy and honor of the African-American soldier in defense of the United States of America from the Revolutionary War to present. 

Civil Rights in Black & Brown Oral History Project

This website is a publicly accessible, free, and user-friendly multimedia digital humanities database that provides video clips from the interviews to researchers as well as teachers, students, journalists, activists, and the general public.

Forever Free: 19th Century African-American Legislators and Constitutional Convention Delegates of Texas

Chronicle of early Texas politicians.

Hidden in History: African American Doctors in Fort Worth, Texas 1887-1925

Houston Museum of African American Culture

Collects, conserves, explores, interprets, and exhibits the material and intellectual culture of Africans and African Americans in Houston, the state of Texas, the southwest and the African Diaspora for current and future generations

Houston Mutiny and Riot Records

This collection consists of records concerning one the largest race riots in American history, the mutiny and riot of soldiers of the 3rd Battalion, 24th U.S. Infantry that occurred on August 23, 1917, at Camp Logan (now Memorial Park), Houston, Texas.

Houston Public Library Digital Archives

Unique materials for research, learning, and discovery from our Special Collections, including archival material from the African American Library at the Gregory School, the Clayton Library Center for Genealogical Research, and the Houston Metropolitan Research Center. Some collections are the result of collaborations with partner libraries, museums, and cultural heritage institutions.

Library of Congress African American History Digital Collections

Explore the rich history of African Americans through the Library of Congress's digitized collections of documents, photographs, records, oral histories, films and other historically significant resources.

Portal to Texas History

Digitalized rare, historical, and primary source materials covering the whole gamut of Texas history from prehistory to the present day. The Texas Digital Newspaper collection within the portal includes images of issues from The Houston Informer (1919-1924), Houston Daily Post (1893-1918), The Houston Post (1923-1924), Houston Post-Dispatch (1924-1925), and other Houston area newspapers, along with all known Republic of Texas Era newspapers. You may discover anything from an ancestor's picture to a rare historical map.

Ransom and Sarah Williams Farmstead

Through archeology, archival records, and oral history, the Ransom and Sarah Williams farmstead project has revealed the story of one African American family’s transition from slavery to freedom.

Rubin Hancock Farmstead

In an area now overrun by the busy interchange of Loop 1 and Parmer Lane in north Austin lie the remnants of what was once a thriving community of freed African-American slaves.

Rutherford B.H. Yates Museum

RBHY is dedicated to the preservation of historic structures on their original homesteads through internships, archeology, educational & community programs.

Texas African American Photography Archive

TAAP Archive provides a broad overview of African American photography in the urban and rural areas of Texas, spanning the period from the 1870s to the present and representing a variety of processes and makers. 

Texas Institute for the Preservation of History & Culture

African Americans have contributed significantly in all facets of the building of the Lone Star State — its infrastructure, image, and culture. For that, the Texas Institute for the Preservation of History and Culture is charting every aspect of the black experience in Texas as an online encyclopedia.

The African American Story: Texas State History Museum

Selection of stories about African Americans in early Texas.

The Green Book

A travel guide for African Americans in 1930s and 1940s New York.

The Wilbert M. Curtis Texas Prince Hall Library Museum

The WMCTPHLM houses numerous artifacts relating to the history of Freemasonry with particular emphasis on Masonry in Texas. 

To Bear Fruit for Our Race

History of Houston's medical community and the Houston Negro Hospital.

Uncovering the Movement: An Exploration of Civil Rights in Forth Worth

Detailed overview of Jim Crow life in Fort Worth, what members of community did to resist Jim Crow, and finally the outcomes of the Civil Rights Movement in Fort Worth. 

Women in Texas History

Our mission is to carry on Ruthe Winegarten’s legacy, to encourage the study of women in Texas history, and to foster independent scholarship in Texas women’s history