African American Studies

The Black Metropolis Research Consortium (BMRC) is a University of Chicago-affiliated association of libraries, universities, and other archival institutions. Its mission is to make broadly accessible its members’ holdings of materials that document African American and African diasporic history, especially in Chicago. Searchable databases include copies of The Green Book (travel guide for Afircan-Americans during the Jim Crow era), Digital Howard, and Umbra

Online Reference Guide to African American History divided into three main areas: African American History (AAH), African American History in the West (AAW), and Global African History (GAH). Under each of those headings is a vast array of resources.--for example encyclopedia entries, full text primary documents, and major speeches. There are also historical timelines, a list of major newspapers, magazines, and journals, and research guides and websites.

Oral histories, documents, and photos related to the Civil Rights era.

A growing collection of digitized historical documents (sermons, bulletins, pamphlets, posters, etc.) from a variety of Churches in Detroit--especially black churches founded during the 1930s and '40s, as well as church histories, and oral interviews with parishioners. Sponsored by Michigan State University.

Collection of photographs, maps, business and public records, and other documents related to the history of Durham, which in the late 19th and early 20th centuries developed a strong community of black entrepreneurs.

Digital Harlem is part of a collaborative research project on everyday life in Harlem between 1915 and 1930 undertaken by four historians at the University of Sydney, in Australia. Unlike most studies of Harlem in the early twentieth century, this project focuses not on black artists and the black middle class, but on the lives of ordinary African New Yorkers, primarily by using legal records, which reveal information about streetlife, language, music, family life, sexuality and private spaces, as well as criminal activity.

In the 1930s, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC), appraised real estate in urban areas, working in partnership with local real estate brokers. HOLC maps assigned residential areas a grade from one to four” with corresponding letters and colors: A (Green), B (Blue), C (Yellow), D (Red). Red districts, representing the least desirable investment areas, were often majority-black, and the "redlining" represented by the HOLC maps influenced a lack of investment in the inner cities and eventually, older suburbs.

Sponsored by the Chicago Historical Society

In the 1930s, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC), appraised real estate in urban areas, working in partnership with local real estate brokers. HOLC maps assigned residential areas a grade from one to four” with corresponding letters and colors: A (Green), B (Blue), C (Yellow), D (Red). Red districts, representing the least desirable investment areas, were often majority-black, and the "redlining" represented by the HOLC maps influenced a lack of investment in the inner cities and eventually, older suburbs.

Collections of maps, images and texts related to the numerous migrations that have punctuated African American history, from the Middle Passage to more recent migration from Africa and within the United States. Developed by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Sets of maps accompanying Professor Colin Gordon's book of the same name, describing the effects of restrictive covenants, white flight, zoning, and urban renewal in St. Louis over the past century.

In the 1930s, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC), appraised real estate in urban areas, working in partnership with local real estate brokers. HOLC maps assigned residential areas a grade from one to four” with corresponding letters and colors: A (Green), B (Blue), C (Yellow), D (Red). Red districts, representing the least desirable investment areas, were often majority-black, and the "redlining" represented by the HOLC maps influenced a lack of investment in the inner cities and eventually, older suburbs. Maps include links to the original data from the reports.

Collection of oral histories, maps, films, and essays documenting the history of civil rights and labor in Seattle and Washington State.

In the 1930s, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC), appraised real estate in urban areas, working in partnership with local real estate brokers. HOLC maps assigned residential areas a grade from one to four” with corresponding letters and colors: A (Green), B (Blue), C (Yellow), D (Red). Red districts, representing the least desirable investment areas, were often majority-black, and the "redlining" represented by the HOLC maps influenced a lack of investment in the inner cities and eventually, older suburbs. This site, focusing on cities in North Carolina, allows the user to overlay the HOLC-defined districts on top of later urban renewal projects.

In the 1930s, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC), appraised real estate in urban areas, working in partnership with local real estate brokers. HOLC maps assigned residential areas a grade from one to four” with corresponding letters and colors: A (Green), B (Blue), C (Yellow), D (Red). Red districts, representing the least desirable investment areas, were often majority-black, and the "redlining" represented by the HOLC maps influenced a lack of investment in the inner cities and eventually, older suburbs.

This site links with the Southern Redlining Collection, and both sites provide links from maps to the original reports providing data that led to a district's categorization.

In the 1930s, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC), appraised real estate in urban areas, working in partnership with local real estate brokers. HOLC maps assigned residential areas a grade from one to four” with corresponding letters and colors: A (Green), B (Blue), C (Yellow), D (Red). Red districts, representing the least desirable investment areas, were often majority-black, and the "redlining" represented by the HOLC maps influenced a lack of investment in the inner cities and eventually, older suburbs. Maps for many cities across the United States.