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African American History Resources |
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are some of the most valuable of the hundreds of sites
dealing with Black history. The African American Mosaic Amistad Research Center Association of Black Women
Historians A Deeper Shade of History African American Nurses Images and Exhbits The web sites listed here are arranged generally by broad theme and then by region. Web sites that cover huge time frames and regional areas are listed under the "general" heading. A site that fits in more than one category might be listed twice. If you want more images, check out the "Images" page. Virtually every site listed there contains images of African Americans as well. The sites listed here are simply the places with the largest collections of images of African Americans. General African American Mosaic and the African American Odyssey are two exhibits from the Library of Congress collections. All the images here should be in the public domain unless otherwise noted. Excellent download quality. American Memory: African American History Smithsonian Institution Research Information System (SIRIS) Image Gallery has the Scurlock Studio Collection. Addison Scurlock and his two sons were major African American photographers in Washington D.C., and the Archives Center at the Smithsonian has now didgitized over 2,000 of the photographs from that collection. They are an incredible resource and of excellent quality. Just click on Cross-Searching Center and type the name "Scurlock" into the search box. Each Smithsonian archive follows the fair use rule, "Fair use of copyrighted material includes the use of protected materials for non-commercial educational purposes, such as teaching, scholarship, research, criticism, commentary, and news reporting." Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture Early Years The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record A wonderful exhibit with a number of excellent illustrations from the Library of Virginia. The images on this website are for educational and non-commercial purposes. They are provided for the personal use of students, teachers, scholars, and the general public. Excellent download quality. Harpers Weekly Images Free Feature Black America 1857-1874 . Excellent download quality. Humanities Interactive This is a wonderful site from the Texas Council for the Humanities. It has a variety of excellent exhibitions including "Africa in the Americas" (under "The New World" collection heading.) The site’s permissions page is empty. Excellent download quality. Civil Rights African-American Political and Cultural Figures page of "Camera on Assignment: The Ollie Atkins Photograph Collection" has some excellent images of political and cultural leaders in the 1950s and 1960s. All the images are copyrighted to George Mason University Libraries and there is no information on use restrictions other than to contact the institution.Excellent download quality. Birmingham News photographs of civil rights activity in that city have just been discovered and many of those images are now online, along with the story of how they were discovered. An wonderful new resource. According to the site " Photos may not be reproduced without prior written consent." Excellent download quality. Civil Rights Movement Veterans This is a great site with amazing photographs. (To get to the photographs click on "Images" on the list on the left side of the screen on the homepage.) Unfortunately the captioning isn't always very clear. To find out who took the photograph and equally as importantly who owns it, right click on the image. Click on "properties" and a box will appear. The credit is listed in brackets under "alternate text." Be very careful with these photographs. They are copyrighted. Memphis Civil Rights Research Consortium: Images of the Struggle Some of the photographs in this exhibit are from private donations while others represent materials drawn from the archives of the area newspapers most notably the Press Scimitar and the Commercial Appeal. There is no information on the site regarding copyright and permission policies. Very good download quality. South Arkansas History Commission Photographs This site has a great many wonderful images, particularly of the desegration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, but they do not display automatically. You have to click on "Details" and then on "A look inside: url" The Arkansas History Commission (AHC) holds visual materials for purposes of private study, research, and scholarship. Not all AHC images are in the public domain. The patron using AHC visuals (including digital images) does so with the agreement to having read its Copyright Notice and assumes all responsibility for any infringement of copyright held by others in the use of AHC visuals. The downloaded images are of very high quality. Even a zoomed in detail holds up fairly well. Birmingham News photographs of civil rights activity in that city have just been discovered and many of those images are now online, along with the story of how they were discovered. An wonderful new resource. According to the site " Photos may not be reproduced without prior written consent." Excellent download quality. Cook Collection Photographs, "Through the Lens of Time" This is a wonderful collection of nearly 300 images of African Americans dating from the nineteenth and early twentieth century from the Cook Collection of Photographs at the Valentine Richmond History Center. The photos are by George S. Cook (1819-1902) and Huestes P. Cook (1868-1951) primarily of the Richmond and Central Virginia area. Fair use applies. Excellent download quality. LOUISiana Digital Library This broad database includes documents and images. The collections gathered here include the Historic New Orleans Collection, Louisiana State Archives and the American Missionary Association collection at the Amistad Research Center. Excellent download quality. Memphis Civil Rights Research Consortium: Images of the Struggle Some of the photographs in this exhibit are from private donations while others represent materials drawn from the archives of the area newspapers most notably the Press Scimitar and the Commercial Appeal. There is no information on the site regarding copyright and permission policies. Very good download quality. Florida Photographic Collection (State Archives of Florida) There are over 100,000 photographs on the website, and many excellent images of African Americans included some less well known photographs of Mary McLeod Bethune and Bethune-Cookman College. All the images in the collection are in the public domain. Excellent download quality. Library of Virginia Photographic Collections This site is not easy to use, but there are a great many images from local Virginia library collections here. The site is unclear on whether it follows Fair Use. Excellent download quality. Smithsonian Institution Research Information System (SIRIS) Image Gallery has the Scurlock Studio Collection. Addison Scurlock and his two sons were major African American photographers in Washington D.C., and the Archives Center at the Smithsonian has now didgitized over 2,000 of the photographs from that collection. They are an incredible resource and of excellent quality. Just click on Cross-Searching Center and type the name "Scurlock" into the search box. Each Smithsonian archive follows the fair use rule, "Fair use of copyrighted material includes the use of protected materials for non-commercial educational purposes, such as teaching, scholarship, research, criticism, commentary, and news reporting." University of Virginia Special Collections Library has two wonderful collections online: The Holsinger Studio Collection is mostly studio photographs from Charlottesville Virginia from the 1890s through 1920. There are 9,500 images including 500 portraits of African Americans. Excellent download quality. The Jackson Davis Collection of African American Educational Photographs contains over 6,000 photographs of African American schools, teachers and students throughout the Southeastern United States was intended to demonstrate the wretched conditions of African American schools in the south and to show how they could be improved. They provide a unique view of southern education during the first half of the twentieth century. Excellent download quality. UVA allows use of the images for research, teaching, and private study. "For these purposes, you may reproduce (print, make photocopies, or download) materials from this website without prior permission, on the condition that you provide proper attribution of the source in all copies (see below). Although we do not require you to contact us in advance for these purposes, we do appreciate hearing from teachers, students, and researchers who are using our resources in interesting ways" (send e-mail to Special Collections at mssbks@virginia.edu) Vanishing Georgia This digital collection comprises nearly 18,000 photographs from the Georgia Archives and documents more than 100 years of Georgia history and life. The site is not clear on Fair Use policies. Very good download quality. Virginia Historical Society has an easily searchable Museum and Photograph online catalogue. Where a digital copy has been made it is linked to the catalogue and there is an option to limit the search to objects with digitized images. A search using the term "African American" yielded 186 results and included objects as well as images. The site declares "If patrons have acquired a copy of an image for research purposes and wish to reproduce it in any format, including personal, non-commercial web sites, they must seek the written permission of the VHS, include a credit line statement, and follow the criteria set forth in its usage policy. The VHS reserves the right to request the removal of its images from any web site. Anyone wishing to reproduce an image may be required to pay use fees." Northeast Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Digital Images Online The Beinecke Library houses the Randolph Linsly Simpson African-American Collection as well as the Langston Hughes Collection and the James Weldon Johnson Collection. The James Weldon Johnson Collection includes a number of Van Vechten photographs of important figures from the Harlem Renaissance. Downloads should not be used for any purpose other than private study, scholarship, or research. It is not necessary to seek the Library's permission to publish texts or images (unless the University is identified as the copyright holder.) The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library should, however, be cited as the source. Excellent download quality. It's time to celebrate!! The Charles 'Teenie' Harris Archive collection has been saved and is now housed at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. Harris, a photographer for the Pittsburgh Courier, was one of the best. Download quality is excellent. The Carnegie requires permissions however. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture African American Images (Syracuse, N.Y.) This digital collection represents one fourth of the complete collection which is housed at the Beauchamp Branch Library in Syracuse. It is a basic site. No bells and whistles, but the download quality is good and the people are identified. There is no information about download restrictions. Midwest Part of the American Memory Collection at the Library of Congress includes The Chicago Daily News Collection, which comprises over 55,000 images of urban life captured on glass plate negatives between 1902 and 1933 by photographers employed by the Chicago Daily News, then one of Chicago's leading newspapers. The Chicago Historical Society encourages use of these images to the extent permitted under the fair use clause, but it does ask that a credit line be included with each image used. Excellent download quality. Kansas City Public Library The Missouri Valley Special Collections is the non-circulating local history and genealogy resources of the Kansas City Public Library. Among its collections it is the home of the the Ramos collection, which is comprised of books, pamphlets, and clippings on African American history and culture. The search term "African American" yielded 60 hits. Download quality is good. There is no information on dowload restrictions, however the library does charge a $10 flat fee for each reproduction order no matter hgow many images are being ordered. (The cost of each image is calculated separately.) West Part of the American Memory Collection at the Library of Congress is the South Texas Border Photographs, The Robert Runyon Collection This is a collection of over 8,000 items, is a unique visual resource documenting the Lower Rio Grande Valley during the early 1900s. Thee are not many African Americans in the collection but the few images there are beautiful. All images in this collection may be used for educational and scholarly purposes, but they do ask that a credit line be included with each image used. Excellent download quality. Denver Public Library This collection contains some 100,000 images of Colorado and the American West and includes some excellent photographs of African Americans in the West. This is a larger collection of images than the Denver Public Library’s American Memory Collection. The Denver Public Library does not seem to use the Fair Use rule. It also asks that images not be downloaded from the site. Images must be purchased through the Photo Sales Department. Humanities Interactive This is a wonderful site from the Texas Council for the Humanities. It has a variety of excellent exhibitions including "Africa in the Americas" (under "The New World" collection heading.) The site’s permissions page is empty. Excellent download quality. Los Angeles Public Library Digital Images is an excellent collection for images of African Americans in Los Angeles. However, it allows downloads for personal use only . Database photos are copyrighted and "may not be used in any manner without the written permission of the Los Angeles Public Library." They do charge for "educational presentations." Excellent download quality. Online Archive of California (OAC)-Image Search The OAC contains collections from a number of California institutions including UCLA, the San Diego Historical Society and the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley. The site also states that it allows a "broad spectrum of users: students, teachers, and researchers of all levels." Excellent download quality. The Texas/Dallas History & Archives Division Historic Photo Collection is not easy to serach if you want to go beyond the gallery views, but once you have the system down, it's worth it. The archives contains approximately 1,500,000 photographs and negatives of Dallas and Texas events. Around 6,000 have been scanned so far. The African American presence is quite good, particularly the Marion Butts Photograph Collection.The photographs all have the Dallas Public Library stamp across the center, so the images are meant solely for research purposes. Through Our Parents' Eyes: History & Culture of Southern Arizona is a small site about the variety of people who settled in Southern Arizona. The African American section doesn't have many photographs and the download quality is not very good, but they are well identified and interesting. University of Washington Digital Collections This site features photographs and documents from a number of institutionsin the Pacific Northwest. While there are not an enormous number of images of African Americans in the collections, there are quite a few. Fair use for personal study or research and for classroom teaching. For any other use, researchers must contact the repository that owns the image to obtain reproductions and to request permission to use the images. Each collection has specific copyright restrictions and usage rules. Excellent download quality. University of Southern California (USC) Digital Archive This archive has a number of collections online including over 300 images from the Charlotta Bass/California Eagle Photograph Collection. Excellent download quality. No information on use.
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 Family in Key West, Florida, at the turn of the century. Florida Photographic Collection, Florida State Archives. |