Primary Source is...
A primary source (also called original source) can be an artifact, a document, a recording, a personal letter, memoirs or other source of information that was created at the time under study. A primary source serves as an original source of information about the topic.
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Primary and Secondary Sources (more!)
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African American Communities
Primary Source database that covers 5 key cities in African American History: Atlanta, Chicago, New York, St. Louis and various towns in North Carolina. Contains newspapers and periodicals, correspondence, official records, oral histories, and photographs from early 1800s to present. Topics covered include desegregation, urban renewal, housing, civil rights, protests, race relations, labor history, and arts and culture. Source archives include, Atlanta History Center, Southern Historical Collection from University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and University of Illinois at Chicago. Materials include Pruitt-Igoe materials, Chicago Urban League papers, Weeksville, The Pullman Company, and a run of The Messenger 1925-1928. The interface is easy to use, allowing the undergraduate researcher ease of use as well as a variety of ways to interact with the materials.
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African American History OnlineEncyclopedia covering 500 years of African American history. Contains some primary source materials.
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African American Women Writers of the 19th CenturyThis resource is a digital collection of some 52 published works by 19th-century black women writers.
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American Civil War: Letters and DiariesFull text of more than 100,000 pages of diaries, memoirs, and letters written by more than 2,000 participants in the American Civil War. A chronology of key events allows the user to see multiple perspectives surrounding a particular event
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American Periodicals Series Online, 1740-1940Searchable full-text database with digitized images of the pages of over 1,100 periodicals that first began publishing between 1740 and 1900, including special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines, and many other historically-significant periodicals.
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American Slavery: a composite autobiographyContains the collection of over 2,000 interviews conducted in seventeen states between 1936 and 1938 under the Federal Writers' Project of the Work Progress Administration, as published in 1972 in The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography edited by George P. Rawick.
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Black Thought and Culture: African Americans from Colonial times to the presentConsists of non-fiction writings by major American black leaders teachers, artists, politicians, religious leaders, athletes, war veterans, entertainers, and other figures covering 250 years of history. Also presents previously inaccessible material, including letters, speeches, prefatory essays, political leaflets, interviews, periodicals, and trail transcripts.
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Documenting the American SouthAn electronic collection sponsored by the Academic Affairs Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, provides access to digitized primary materials that offer Southern perspectives on American history and culture...Currently, DAS includes five digitization projects: slave narratives, first-person narratives, Southern literature, Confederate imprints, and materials related to the church in the black community
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Making of America Journals
A digital library of primary sources in American social history primarily from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology.
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North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories, 1800-1950Includes more than authors and approximately 100,000 pages contemporaneous letters and diaries, oral histories, interviews, and other personal narratives, which provide a unique and personal view immigrants' experiences in America and Canada between 1800 and 1950.
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North American Women's Letters and Diaries, Colonial to 1950Includes the immediate experiences of 1,325 women, as revealed in approximately 150,000 pages of diaries and letters....The collection also includes biographies and an extensive annotated bibliography of the sources in the database.
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Readers' Guide Retrospective
An article database indexing hundreds of popular general-interest magazines and journals published in the United States from 1890 through 1982.