Some Recommended Reference Books
General
Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience
Call number: REF DT14 .A37435 2005
Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History
Call number: REF E185 .E54 1996
Encyclopedia of African American Society
Handbook of Black Studies
Call number: REF E184.7 .H25 2006
Biography
The African American National Biography
Call number: REF DS44 .C55
Macmillan Dictionary of Women's Biography
Culture
African-American Writers
Call number: REF PS153.N5 A344 2000
African-American Writers: A Dictionary
Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Call number: REF NX512.3.A35 E53 2004
Holidays, Festivals, and Celebrations of the World Dictionary
Rap and Hip Hop
Call number: REF E185.86 .R35 2003
Rap Music and Culture (Current Controversies)
Call number: REF ML3918.R37 R38 2008
Government, Law, Politics
Encyclopedia of Law & Society: American and Global Perspectives
Voting in America
Call number: REF JK1976 .V69 2008
History
Encyclopedia of African History
Routledge Atlas of African American History
Call number: REF E185 .E125 2000
Philosophy and Religion
The Encyclopedia of African and African-American Religions
Call number: REF BL2462.5 .E53 2001
Social Issues
Encyclopedia of Multicultural Psychology
Encyclopedia of Race and Racism
Women and Gender
Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender: Men and Women in the World's Cultures
Macmillan Dictionary of Women's Biography
Browse the E-Reference Books for further online titles. Search the Library Catalog and the I-Share Catalog for additional reference books.
Journals
Callaloo (1976-2003)
Callaloo (1995 on)
Databases
Use databases to find newspaper or journal articles. Use ILLiad to interlibrary loan articles that are not in full text in a database or in print in the Library.
For newspaper articles:
- Chicago Defender (African American newspaper based in Chicago)
- Abstracts and citations for 1905-1975
- Library has 1909-1956 on microfilm, July-December 1919 missing
- Ask at the Reference Desk for assistance.
Chicago Tribune (full-text, 1985-present)
Chicago Tribune Historical (full-text, 1849-1985)
LexisNexis Academic (full text of US and international newspapers)
For journal articles:
Academic Search Premier (multidisciplinary; indexes some newspapers also)
America: History and Life (American and Canadian history)
Historical Abstracts (world history)
JSTOR (multidisciplinary)
MLA International Bibliography (literature, language, & linguistics)
Project Muse (multidisciplinary)
SocIndex (sociology)
Google Scholar (for finding additional academic books and articles)
For additional databases, go to the Library's list of Databases.
General
The African-American Mosaic: A Library of Congress Resource Guide for the Study of Black History & Culture
Online branch of the Library of Congress resource guide to its African American
collections. Focuses on the topics of colonization, abolition, migration,
and the WPA (Works Progress Administration) and includes digital images
of some items in the collections.
E-Black Studies
Includes information on African American Studies degree programs and journals and a list of African American organizations. Features a section dedicated to Malcolm X. Also included are several e-books, such as Introduction to Afro-American Studies: A Peoples College Primer, conference presentations, and various video lectures on topics in African American Studies. Edited by Professor Abdul Alkalimat of the University of Illinois.
Culture
African-American Band Music & Recordings, 1883-1923
Includes sound recordings, essays, and artist biographies from the Library of Congress's Performing Arts Encyclopedia.
African-American Women Writers of the 19th Century
Keyword-searchable collection of 50+ writings by nineteenth-century African American women authors, such as Harriet Jacobs, Sojourner Truth, Phyllis Wheatley, and others. Author biographies are also included. From the New York Public Library Digital Library Collections: Digital Schomburg.
History Now:
Songs of the Civil Rights Movement
Lyrics and audio recordings of 6 songs used in the Civil Rights Movement. From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
History
African-American Archaeology, History, and Cultures
Includes alphabetical lists of links on African American archaeology;
African American history and cultures; and slavery/abolition. Links
are listed alphabetically. Use your browser's Find function (Control-F
on a PC, Open Apple-F on a Mac) to find specific terms. From the African
Diaspora Archaeology Network (ADAN).
Afrigeneas: African American & African Ancestored Genealogy
Includes links to numerous sources of African-ancestored genealogical
information including census, death, and marriage records; slave data;
and further resources by state.
BlackPast.org Reclaimed and Remembered: An Online Reference Guide to African American History
Focuses on three areas: African American History, African American History in the West, and Global African History. Some of the many resources include an online encyclopedia, primary documents, speeches, timelines, and links to hundreds of websites dealing with the history of people with African ancestors. Directed by Professor Quintard Taylor, University of Washington, Seattle.
In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience
Includes texts, maps, and images related to the thirteen major migrations impacting African Americans along with bibliographies, a timeline, and a search function. From the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
Key Figures
Benjamin Banneker:
Africans in America: Benjamin Banneker (from WGBH Interactive for PBS Online)
Frederick Douglass:
Africans in America: Frederick Douglass (from WGBH Interactive for PBS Online)
Frederick Douglass: Online Resources (from the Library of Congress)
The Frederick Douglass Papers at the Library of Congress
W.E.B. Du Bois:
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP): W.E.B. Du Bois
Toni Morrison:
Times Topics: Toni Morrison (from the New York Times)
Nobelprize.org: Toni Morrison (from the Nobel Foundation)
Tupac Shakur:
Times Topics: Tupac Shakur (from the New York Times)
Ida B. Wells:
Ida B. Wells (from the educational publisher Gale)
Illinois During the Gilded Age: Ida B. Wells (from Northern Illinois University Libraries' Digitization Unit)
- RefWorks is a bibliographic citation manager which can be used to save and organize your references, create a bibliography in the citation style of your choice, and help generate in-text citations or footnotes with the accompanying bibliography.
- Lake Forest College Citation Guides for Online Sources: MLA Citation Style
- Hacker Guide Companion Website
- College Statement on Plagiarism
- Search by article citation page (for finding out what access the library has to a given article)
- CUFTS (for finding out what databases index a given journal)