For research and learning on every facet of Black history and culture

Awarded 4 Stars and the 2022 Readers' Choice for Best New Product by The Charleston Advisor

ProQuest’s comprehensive, award-winning Black Studies content available in a single location for deeper, more meaningful research, teaching, and learning. Developed in collaboration with faculty, scholars and librarians, this database combines multi-format primary and secondary sources, like historical Black newspapers, archival documents, government materials, videos, scholarly journals, essays and more. This outstanding content is supplemented with user-friendly features including timelines, topic pages, and collection pages for easier navigation and discovery.

ProQuest Black Studies is positioned to become the database of choice for both students and scholars in African American studies.

MICHAEL RODRIGUEZ, LIBRARY JOURNAL EREVIEW

Customer Resources

Short Description

Benefits

Depth and Detail

Depth and Detail

Topics pages on people, organizations and events – helping students get important background information.

Contextual Understanding

Contextual Understanding

Timeline organized by key categories, events and people for awareness of context and connections.

Get Precise

Get Precise

Segmented search results by content type such as archival materials, newspapers, periodicals and more.

Ease of Use

Ease of Use

Multi-faceted results filtering, browse content lists and quickly download PDFs.

ProQuest Black Studies contains a vast collection of primary and secondary sources found nowhere else, covering a range of disciplines, about Black culture and experience.

Michelle N. Hunt, The Charleston Advisor 4-Star Review

Featured Content

Black Historical Newspapers

Black Historical Newspapers

The ten newspapers included in ProQuest Black Studies are among the most distinguished African American newspapers in the U.S. Titles include: Atlanta Daily World, Baltimore Afro-American, Chicago Defender, Cleveland Call and Post, Los Angeles Sentinel, Louisville Defender, Michigan Chronicle, New York Amsterdam News, Norfolk Journal and Guide, Philadelphia Tribune, and Pittsburgh Courier. 

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NAACP Papers

NAACP Papers

The archival collections in ProQuest Black Studies are highlighted by the NAACP Papers, which have been called the most important collection for research on the Black Freedom Movement in the 20th Century.

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Civil Rights Organizational Papers

Civil Rights Organizational Papers

Alongside the NAACP Papers, ProQuest Black Studies will also include records of three of the most important civil rights organization of the 1950s and 1960s: Congress of Racial Equality; Southern Christian Leadership Conference; Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

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Black Abolitionist Papers

Black Abolitionist Papers

This primary source collection details the extensive work of African Americans to abolish slavery in the United States prior to the Civil War. Covering the period 1830-1865, the collection presents the international impact of African American activism against slavery, in the writings of the activists themselves.

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These are the sources I would come back to again and again, and where I would send my students, to find what's not available anywhere else: the primary source collections and the newspapers.

Hasan Kwame Jeffries, Assistant Professor of History, The Ohio State University

Black Studies Comparison Chart

EXTRAORDINARY CONTENT

Black Studies Comparison Chart

Key facts, highlights and testimonials reflect the value of this collection.

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Case Studies
Unearthing a Hidden History

Unearthing a Hidden History

How historian Evan Faulkenbury used primary source documents to uncover the little-known Voter Education Project for his book.

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Teaching with Primary Sources

Teaching with Primary Sources

Why one professor assigns civil rights content from History Vault to his undergraduate seminar students – and the profound impact on their learning experience.

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Extraordinary range of content
10M

Pages

8M+

Records

120

Primary Source Collections

1650-2020

Years of Coverage

An essential acquisition for libraries serving scholars in civil and human rights American history, criminal justice, social choice and political theory, military history, and sociology. A tremendously significant historical resource.

Cheryl LaGuardia, Library Journal review of NAACP Papers

Resource Guides
The Civil Rights Movement

The Civil Rights Movement

Descriptions of recommended books and primary source content to help novice researchers get acquainted with writing about civil rights history.

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Black Women and Civil Engagement

Black Women and Civil Engagement

Discover different avenues for research and learning about women’s critical involvement in civic activity from Reconstruction through the Jim Crow era.

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This is a remarkable resource. … It will be of great value to academic researchers and all readers who are motivated to analyze primary documents in their quest to uncover the attitudes and actions of African American organizers as well as those of officials in power.

T. M. Hughes, Choice Review of Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century

Essays
African American Police League

African American Police League

Howard Saffold, founding member of an organization dedicated to fighting racial abuse and discrimination in the Chicago Police Department, shares his experiences.

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FBI Files Enable Balanced Research

FBI Files Enable Balanced Research

Professor Joe Street explains how documents from History Vault have informed deeper insights about the controversial Black Panther Party and his book on the organization’s history.

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[These materials] provide students and their instructors with abundant resources on a wide range of subjects that allows them to concentrate on learning the historian’s craft through independent research.

Eric Arnesen, Professor of History, George Washington University

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