At Oberlin
- Oberlin College ArchivesUnpublished materials and objects, mostly relating to the history of the College and to some degree, the town.
- Oberlin College Special CollectionsRare and valuable published materials and objects -- including anti-slavery/abolition materials.
Databases
- African American Periodicals (1825-1995) This link opens in a new windowMore than 170 periodicals by and about African Americans, published in 26 states. Includes academic and political journals, commercial magazines, institutional newsletters, bulletins, annual reports and more.
- African American Poetry (1760-1900)Includes the full text of almost 3,000 poems written by African-American poets in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
- America's Historical Imprints This link opens in a new window
Full-text, searchable scans of source material of all types from the 17th and 18th centuries; an important resource for primary information about every aspect of life in 17th- and 18th-century America.
- National Underground Railroad Freedom CenterOhioLink has discontinued this resource as of August 2021.
- AM-Explorer This link opens in a new windowIncludes a collection called Slavery Abolition and Social Justice. Allows you to explore and compare unique primary material relating to the complex subjects of slavery, abolition, and social justice through primary source documents such as interactive maps, court records, documents, and more.
Websites
- The Oberlin Sanctuary ProjectThe goal of the Oberlin Sanctuary Project is to provide a forum for research, reflection, and discussion of what it means to be a sanctuary campus and community.
- Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 to 1938Contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project (FWP) of the Works Progress Administration, later renamed Work Projects Administration (WPA).
- Freedom on the Move: A Database of Fugitives from American SlaveryWith the advent of newspapers in the American colonies, enslavers posted “runaway ads” to try to locate fugitives. Additionally, jailers posted ads describing people they had apprehended in search of the enslavers who claimed the fugitives as property. Created to control the movement of enslaved people, the ads ultimately preserved the details of individual lives--their personality, appearance, and life story. Taken collectively, the ads constitute a detailed, concise, and rare source of information about the experiences of enslaved people.
- North American Slave Narratives -- Documenting the American South"North American Slave Narratives" collects books and articles that document the individual and collective story of African Americans struggling for freedom and human rights in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries. This collection includes all the existing autobiographical narratives of fugitive and former slaves published as broadsides, pamphlets, or books in English up to 1920. Also included are many of the biographies of fugitive and former slaves and some significant fictionalized slave narratives published in English before 1920.
- Black History Resources (National Archives)The Archives Library Information Center (ALIC) from the National Archives provides access to information on American history and government, archival administration, information management, and government documents to NARA staff, archives and records management professionals, and the general public.