HIST 4233

African American Cultural History

Background Information

It's important to understand the context of a primary source when examining it for research. BlackPast contains background information on several aspects of African American and Black history and experience.

 

*Note: While these articles are great ways to gather background information on a topic, they are not considered "peer-reviewed scholarly articles" as they have not been published in an academic journal or been through the peer-review process.

Hints!

Remember, there are several ways you can search through these websites! While many of them are easy to browse, others, like the Digital Public Library of Georgia, are easier to search in. 

 

 

If you want to look for African American cultural primary sources, I would suggest using the phrase: "African American*" OR black

 

Using quotations around keywords comprised of multiple words ensures that the database searches it as a term rather than looking for the words separately.

 

An asterisk (*) at the end of a search word is known as truncation. Truncation tells the database to search for all terms that begin with the phrase before the *. In this case, databases would use "African American*" and search for "African American" and "African Americans" Databases do not automatically search for plural forms of a word. Another example would be searching teach*. The database would use this to find articles with teach, teaches, teaching, teacher, teachers, etc. 

 

OR is a boolean phrase. This is used to expand your search. While some artifacts in the collection may be described as "African American", others may use the term "Black". If you just search for African American, the items described using Black ( such as the Hear Me Now: The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina exhibition featured at the MET) may not appear in your search results. 

 

African American Primary Sources

The links and databases in this section of the guide contain a variety of sources that can be searched! Each is either centered around or has a section for African American or Black history and culture. 

 

Art

Literature

Music, Theater, and Film