Researching Black History at the BPL

• Papers of the NAACP by August Meier (Editor)

  Call Number: E185.5 .N276 1982x

  ISBN: 0890933979

  This is a very large collection that covers the period from the founding of the association in 1909 to the 1970s. There are print guides to the collection

• Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Papers, 1959-1972 by Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (U.S.)

  Call Number: E185.61 .S916 1981x

  This organization was very active in Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s

• The Papers of the Congress of Racial Equality, 1941-1967 by Congress of Racial Equality

  Call Number: E185.61 .C7626 1980x

  This set, along with the addendum set, covers the work of another of the Big Four civil rights groups of the 1960s.

• The Black Culture Collection From Atlanta University

  Call Number: E185.5 .A92

  This is a large collection of materials from the early American history up to the twentieth century.

• Black Abolitionist Papers, 1830-1865

  Call Number: E449 .B625 1981x

  Covers the abolitionist movement throughout the world up to 1865.

• Race, Slavery, and Free Blacks by Loren Schweninger (Editor); Robert Shelton (Editor); Charles Edward Smith (Contribution by)

  Call Number: E441 .R268 1998x

  ISBN: 9781556557323

  Publication Date: 1998-01-01

  Reproduces a collection of nearly 3,000 petitions assembled over a period of ten years by the Race and Slavery Petitions Project, University of North Carolina at Greensboro from state archives in Alabama, Delaware, Florida, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.
  In 2 series- Series I, Petitions to Southern Legislatures, 1777-1867 and Series II, Petitions to Southern County Courts, 1775-1867

• Records of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters by William H. Harris

  Call Number: HD6515.R362 B76 1990x

  ISBN: 9781556552793

  Publication Date: 1993-06-01

  Series A, Holdings of the Chicago Historical Society and the Newberry Library, 1925-1969

• Claude A. Barnett Papers

  Call Number: PN4882.5.B37 C59 1980x

  The title of this collection does a disservice to the contents. Claude Barnett ran the Associated Negro Press, a wire service for African American newspapers

• Microfilm Edition of the Papers of the Maryland State Colonization Society

  Call Number: E448 .M393

  Includes minutes, correspondence, financial records, records of manumission and emigration, reports of colonial agents, pamphlets and books on the colonization movement, copies of the Maryland Colonization Journal (Baltimore, 1835-1861), the Liberia Herald (Monrovia, 1842-1857), and census records of Maryland in Liberia.

Image Above, Top: Congress of Racial Equality members carry picket signs outside of Columbia University's John Jay Hall in support of employee demands for union representation. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Image Above, Bottom: Roy Wilkins, Executive Secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People;
A. Philip Randolph, organizer of the demonstration and veteran labor leader who helped to found the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, American Federation of Labor (AFL), and a former vice president of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO); Walter P. Reuther, President of the United Automobile Workers Union and Vice President of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, leading marchers down the street during the March on Washington. Courtesy of the National Archives.