African Americans in North Carolina: Additional Resources

The majority of newspapers housed in Wilson Special Collections Library can be accessed on microfilm. This includes newspapers such as the Raleigh News & Observer and the Durham Herald-Sun. There are several additional ways to locate relevant newspaper articles.

Newspapers.com: This is a subscription service available to users affiliated with UNC-Chapel Hill and to patrons in the library buildings. The site contains digitized North Carolina newspapers and is full-text searchable. Most of the digitized newspaper issues date from the late 19th century to the first half of the 20th century. Later issues can be accessed on microfilm. For those interested in University history, this site is particularly useful. Digitized editions of the UNC student newspaper, The Daily Tar Heel, are available from 1893 through 1992.

Chronicling America: This Library of Congress project provides free access to historic American newspapers published between 1789-1924. To see a list of African American newspapers available through the site, go to their advanced search and choose Ethnicity.

DigitalNC: This site contains a wealth of useful resources from across North Carolina including community newspapers, student newspapers, and yearbooks. Black Ink, the newspaper of the Black Student Movement at UNC, is available here as are publications from African American colleges in North Carolina such as North Carolina Central University and St. Augustine's College.

America's News: This is a subscription service available to users affiliated with UNC-Chapel Hill and to patrons in the library buildings. Includes the complete electronic editions of more than 1,500 U.S. news sources and news video clips, covering local and regional news, including community events, schools, politics, government policies, cultural activities, local companies, state industries, and people in the community. America's News provides access to historical issues of the Greensboro News & Record, the Raleigh News and Observer, and the Charlotte Observer.

North Carolina People, Places, and Things Citation Search: This tool allows researchers to search citations for newspaper articles gathered by North Carolina Collection staff members. Bound volumes of clippings can be found in the North Carolina Collection Reading Room and are a great resource for finding information on people, places, and things in the state. Relevant clipping collections include North Carolina Biographical Clippings, North Carolina Subject Clippings, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Clippings, and Negroes in North Carolina Clippings, a set of newspaper clippings compiled by North Carolina Collection librarians in the 1970s.

North Carolina Periodicals Index: This resource, developed by East Carolina University, provides access to articles in regional publications. The indexed materials are part of ECU's holdings, but can also be sought out at other libraries, including Wilson Library at UNC-Chapel Hill. For example, try a subject search such as "African Americans."

The Southern Oral History Program (SOHP) is an effort to collect the many voices that have contributed to southern history. Researchers interested in African Americans in North Carolina will find first-person accounts related to many subject areas, including student life, desegregation, and protest movements at UNC-Chapel Hill. Over 5,000 people have been interviewed by faculty and students at UNC. The interview database can be accessed online. Many of the interviews can be found online while those that are not can be accessed at Wilson Library.

You can search this resource in three ways:

1. The interview collection is connected to the UNC Library catalog. Searching for certain subject headings or keywords may bring interviews into your search results alongside books and other materials.
2. The SOHP interview database can be searched by keyword or browsed by interviewee, interviewer, interviewee occupation, interviewee ethnicity, and project name. For research on African Americans in North Carolina, the "browse by ethnicity" option may be particularly useful.
3. You can also search the SOHP finding aid which provides an organized list of the collection's contents. You can easily search the finding aid using CTRL+F or simply browse through its contents.

Documenting the American South is a collection of digitized material related to the study of the American South. Books, diaries, posters, artifacts, letters, oral history interviews, and songs have been included. Contributing institutions include UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke University. Those interested in the history and culture of African Americans in North Carolina will find a lot of material here, freely accessible from off campus as well as on site. Users can search the entire site via full-text searching. For example, resources include biographies and information about Harriet A. Jacobs, including digitized versions of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Written by Herself.

African American Documentary Resources at UNC Chapel Hill

This is a guide to researching African Americans in the Southern Historical Collection at UNC-Chapel Hill, a collection of manuscripts and primary documents related to the American South.

The North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives

Digitized material from the NCC Photographic Archives can be searched by keywords.

State Publications about African Americans in North Carolina LibGuide

This guide is produced by staff at the State Library in Raleigh, North Carolina