African American Experience Database

Even with the best of intentions, most librarians can't find the materials or the funding to satisfy students investigating the historical impact of African Americans on today's world. However, we now have a new resource offering students and teachers a wealth of cultural materials specifically designed for classroom research and personal inquiry.

The widest ranging and easiest-to-use online collection on African American life ever assembled, The African American Experience is the definitive electronic research tool for African American history and culture from one of the most respected publishers in the field. It provides rock-solid information from authorities in the field and to allows African Americans to speak for themselves through a wealth of primary sources. Drawing on over 450 titles, and designed under the guidance of leading librarians, this database gives voice to the black experience from its African origins to the present day.

-New material from print reference titles and multivolume sets, such as Barack Obama, the New Face of American Politics; The Martin Luther King, Jr. Encyclopedia; Encyclopedia of the Middle Passage; Encyclopedia of African American Women Writers [2 Volumes]; and Icons of Hip Hop [2 Volumes].
-A deep backlist of reference books and monographs, many now available in electronic format for the first time
-Over 5,000 primary documents: manuscripts, speeches, court cases, quotations, -advertisements, statistics, and other papers
-Over 3,500 interviews with former slaves-the WPA slave narratives-from the acclaimed The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography, now re-indexed and for the first time fully searchable
-Sixty-seven University Press texts from the early 1800s to the early 1970s—classics in black scholarship.

Try it here.