African American Communities

African American Communities provides access to primary source materials documenting race relations across social, political, cultural and religious perspectives in the United States from 1863-1986.  This collection focuses on Atlanta, Chicago, St Louis, Brooklyn, and towns and cities in North Carolina, and provides multiple views of the African American community through personal diaries and scrapbooks, pamphlets, newspapers and periodicals, correspondence, official records and oral histories.

The collection includes:

• Chicago Urban League Papers, c.1916-1985
• Material from the papers of Thomas J. Pearsall, James B. McMillan and Algernon Lee Butler
• Complete run of The Messenger, 1925-1928
• The Long, Rucker and Aiken family papers
• Urban League of St. Louis Records
• Material related to the Pruitt-Igoe housing project
• Interactive exhibition on the African American community of Weeksville in Brooklyn
• thematic guides
• community case studies
• A visual gallery organised by key theme
• Specially-commissioned contextual essays from academics and collection specialists

The themes and subjects covered in this collection include: migration of African Americans from the South into northern cities, education of freedmen after the Civil War, demographics, voting rights, civil rights activities in Chicago and Atlanta, African American culture, African American Americans in the military, health care and welfare programs, role of the church in African American communities, desegregation, and many more.

Sources include:

• Atlanta History Center

• Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Special Collections Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

• Richard J. Daley Library, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Washington University, St. Louis

• The Newberry Library

• Weeksville Heritage Center