African American Women's Histories

African American Women's Histories is a collection of digitized primary sources illustrating achievements and everyday lives of African American women from the late 19th through early 21st centuries. It includes personal collections, professional papers, and organizational records that illuminate the intellectual work, social activism, creative achievements, and everyday lives of African American women. 

The collection includes papers from women who were trailblazers in the fields of education, law & politics, literature, medicine, music, sports, and more. It also includes papers highlighting civil rights activism, labor organizing, and other aspects of political and social activism. The original materials in this collection were sourced from libraries and archives with major African American history collections. These institutions include: 

• The Amistad Research Center
• Fisk University John Hope and Aurelia E. Franklin Library 
• Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at The University of Texas at Austin

Each institution provided multiple collections to be digitized. You may search or browse the database as a whole to view documents across all collections. However, because each collection centers on the achievements and influence of a specific person or organization, so one of the best ways to explore the database is to use the "Guide to the Collections" menu option and select one of the three source institutions. You will then be able to read through descriptions of each of the collections provided by that institution, and you will be able to determine which collection(s) will best meet your research needs. Then you may search or browse within just the documents in that collection.  

Rutgers University Libraries has access to Module 1 on this platform.