African American Studies: Letters, diaries, and papers

1863-1865 diaries of an African American woman in Philadelphia

The papers of nineteenth-century African American abolitionist Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) consist of approximately 7,400 items (38,000 images), most of which were digitized from 34 reels of previously produced microfilm. The collection spans the years 1841-1964, with the bulk of the material dating from 1862 to 1895. Many of Douglass’s earlier writings were destroyed when his house in Rochester, New York, burned in 1872.

Brings together disparate archival collections of personal and family papers, documenting the lives of people of African descent who were either born free or who escaped from slavery and lived freely in the United States prior to 1865. The site also includes multiple volumes of indenture and emancipation records.

The papers of educator, lecturer, suffragist, and civil rights activist Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954) consist of approximately 13,000 documents. Spanning the years 1851 to 1962, with the bulk of the material concentrated in the period 1886-1954, the collection contains diaries, correspondence, printed matter, clippings, and speeches and writings, primarily focusing on Terrell's career as an advocate of women's rights and equal treatment of African Americans.

The papers of Rosa Parks (1913-2005) span the years 1866-2006, with the bulk of the material dating from 1955 to 2000. The collection, which contains approximately 7,500 items in the Library of Congress's Manuscript Division, as well as 2,500 photographs in the Prints and Photographs Division, documents many aspects of Parks's private life and public activism on behalf of civil rights for African Americans.

This digitized collection includes over 100,000 items of correspondence (more than three quarters of the papers), speeches, articles, newspaper columns, nonfiction books, research materials, book reviews, pamphlets and leaflets, petitions, novels, essays, forewords, student papers, manuscripts of pageants, plays, short stories and fables, poetry, photographs, newspaper clippings, memorabilia, videotapes, audiotapes, and miscellaneous materials.