These reference sources are a great place to start your research. Encyclopedias and other works offer comprehensive lists of topics you could focus on and provide reference lists of resources that will help you go deeper.
John Hope Franklin has devoted his professional life to the study of African Americans. Originally published in 1943 by UNC Press, The Free Negro in North Carolina, 1790-1860 was his first book on the subject. As Franklin shows, freed slaves in the antebellum South did not enjoy the full rights of citizenship. Even in North Carolina, reputedly more liberal than most southern states, discriminatory laws became so harsh that many voluntarily returned to slavery.
Surprisingly, there existed a small population of southern blacks who experienced economic gains in the fifty years following the Civil War. This book examines the characteristics of North Carolina's African-American population in order to explain the social and political factors that shaped economic opportunity for this group.
The African American National Biography presents history through a mosaic of the lives of thousands of individuals, illuminating the abiding influence of persons of African descent on the life of this nation from the arrival of Esteban in Spanish Florida in 1529 through to notable black citizens of the present day.
Ninety years after W.E.B. Du Bois first articulated the need for "the equivalent of a black Encyclopedia Britannica," Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates Jr., realized his vision by publishing Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience in 1999. This new, greatly expanded edition of the original work broadens the foundation provided by Africana.
Narrative biographical essays, edited by noted scholar Jessie Carney Smith, discuss each woman's significant achievements and the public response to those achievements. "Book I features approximately 425 entries; "Book II and "Book III each provide approximately 300 additional entries.