African-American Studies Collections

Resources in the Libraries' General Collections

---

Introduction	Collections Overview
History	Conclusion
Scope

---

INTRODUCTION

Librarians and faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-Chapel Hill) have collected materials by and about African Americans at the research level for most of this century. As a result, the African Americana holdings on campus are remarkable for their breadth and depth. The present document outlines the historical development of the Library’s collections, indicates their scope, and summarizes their subject strengths. It concentrates on the holdings in the Library’s general rather than special collections.

HISTORY

The modern development of the Library’s African Americana research collections began in the 1930s. During that decade, J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton founded the Southern Historical Collection and began to amass large manuscript holdings that included significant collections of materials related to the social and economic conditions of African Americans. About the same time UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke University received grant funds to purchase published materials on "[a]ll aspects of Negro history, literature, education, economic and social conditions, religion, health, etc." By the beginning of the Second World War, UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke together had amassed more than ten thousand volumes of African Americana. Faculty and librarians have continued to give high priority to the development of the African American collections through the years, often supplementing state funds with grants.

The extensive holdings of audio-visual materials by and about African Americans date from the 1970s, with the development of the Media Resources Center in the Undergraduate Library, and the 1980s, with the founding of the Southern Folklife Collection in Wilson Library. The creation of the Electronic Information Service in Davis Library, also in the 1980s, enabled librarians to begin collecting electronic materials related to African American studies. During the 1990s grant funds for the cooperative purchase of Southern Americana allowed librarians at UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke, and North Carolina State University to further expand their African Americana collections.

SCOPE

The African Americana collections at UNC-Chapel Hill cover all subjects in the humanities, fine arts, social sciences, law, and health sciences. They encompass all relevant physical formats: printed volumes, microforms, computer files, sound and music recordings, moving images, photographs, maps, and manuscript and archival materials.

By any measure, these collections are among the largest and most distinguished in the country. Whether one counts the number of titles in various Library of Congress classifications or subject categories or evaluates holdings according to standard bibliographies, the African Americana collections at UNC-Chapel Hill compare favorably with those at universities as distinguished as Harvard, Columbia, and Yale.

The largest concentrations of materials are in the Davis, Wilson, and Undergraduate libraries. Important segments are also found in the Art and Music libraries and in the computer files collections of the Institute for Research in Social Science. Because these materials cover all subjects, come from all over the world, and appear in all formats, more than a score of librarians in nearly a dozen library units select African Americana.

COLLECTIONS OVERVIEWS

[Humanities] [Folklore] [History & American Studies] [Literature] [Religion]
[Fine Arts] [Art] [Film] [Music] [Social Sciences] [Political Science & Civil Rights]
[Sociology & Race Relations] [Economics & Socio-Economic Data]

Although the largest concentration of African Americana in the general library collections is in the classification range covering E184.5-E185.9, most printed materials by and about African Americans are spread throughout the Library of Congress and Dewey classes. If one looked under the subject heading "Afro-Americans--Education," for example, nearly all the books would be found in the L class, while works by and about African American writers are in the P class. In addition, there are large numbers of printed government documents, microforms, and computer files related to African Americans that are not cataloged.

Humanities

The library collections include tens of thousands of books and serials by and about African Americans in all areas of the humanities. There are special strengths in folklore, history, literature, and religion.

Folklore:

Because faculty and librarians at UNC-Chapel Hill have been responsible for developing the folklore collections for the Research Triangle for the past 50 years, holdings are particularly strong in folklore in general and in African American folklore in particular. Works on African American folktales, crafts and folksongs are especially well represented. These print materials are supplemented by slides, audio and video recordings, and dozens of documentary films on African American folklore in the Media Resources Center in the Undergraduate Library and the sound recordings in the magnificent Southern Folklife Collection in the Manuscripts Department.

History and American Studies:

Although many titles on African American history appear in the E184.5-E185.9 classification range, many more do not. Books about slavery, histories of African American military units, and biographies about African Americans, for example, often appear elsewhere. In addition to books and serials, the library has many African American newspapers on microfilm, notably the Black Newspaper Collection, and in electronic formats, particularly Ethnic Newswatch, a compact disc with full-text coverage of current African American newspapers.

The Documents Section of the Davis Library Reference Department holds a number of important collections dealing with the political, economic, and historical development of African Americans from 1789 to the present. They comprise another rich body of resources, including exceptional files of federal and state publications. The federal congressional and executive department series, state legislative journals, and colonial and state records are particularly strong. Some examples include annual reports and general publications from the Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands Bureau (Freedman’s Bureau 1865-1878), the Civil Rights Commission, the Equal Rights Opportunity Commission, and the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. The library also has voluminous congressional materials on important legislation dealing with the history of equal rights, dating from investigations into such historical events as Ku Klux Klan activities in the 1870s and early 1900s. Documents can be found by coming to the Reference Department and using major indexes such as the Monthly Catalog of U. S. Government Publications, the Serial Set Index, and the CIS Index, or by talking with the reference librarians.

The Microforms Collection holds numerous collections of important primary materials dealing with African American history. A partial list includes the Papers of the Pennsylvania Abolitionist Society, 1775-1916; the Anti-Slavery Collection, 18th-19th Centuries; the Federal Writers’ Project Slave Narratives; the W. E. B. DuBois: The First Four Decades of His Published Writing; the Carter G. Woodson Collection of Negro Papers; and the Microfilm Edition of Slavery and Anti-Slavery Pamphlets from the Libraries of Salmon P. Chase and John P. Hale.

The Media Resources Center in the Undergraduate Library includes dozens of feature and documentary films relating to various aspects of African American history. Most noteworthy among them are those relating specifically to Civil Rights. These include Eyes on the Prize, Thurgood Marshall, and a series of films on Martin Luther King.

The Rare Book Collection in Wilson Library includes a number of rare books, Confederate Imprints, and Southern pamphlets that document the period of the Civil War and early African American suffrage. It also has numerous journals, proceedings, and tracts both advocating abolition and justifying slavery.

Literature:

African American specialists in the English Department have helped librarians identify African American writers whose works should be in the library. Thanks to their advice, the Library’s coverage of hundreds of African American authors is comprehensive. Unfortunately, it is not always easy for users to identify these authors using the online catalog. They may need to ask librarians for help in locating them.

In addition to most current literary books and major reprint series such as the Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers, the libraries also have important microform collections of rare materials. Foremost of among these is Black Literature, 1827-1940, which will eventually contain over 150,000 pieces of fiction, poetry, book reviews, and literary notices from approximately 900 black periodicals and newspapers. In addition, the library also has the Database of African American Poetry, 1760-1900, on CD-ROM, which has complete texts of hundreds of poems-- including anti- slavery ballads and broadsides--by dozen of African American men and women. This database permits users to perform complicated searches and bring together information in ways that were not possible before.

The Media Resources Center in the Undergraduate Library has a number of audio and video interviews with African American authors. It also has films based on works by African American authors, including Roots and the Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.

There are many books, serials, and manuscripts relating to African American writers in the special collections housed in Wilson Library as well. The Rare Book Collection includes, among its earliest volumes, the poetic works of Phyllis Wheatley, a native African and slave. The Rare Book Collection also has more recent materials recording the strengthening of the African American voice in this century, particularly in the genres of drama and poetry. The holdings span the range of the black experience from such classics as the first proof editions of Richard Wright's Black Boy and Native Son to the first print appearances of contemporary African American writers.

Religion:

Although the Library at UNC-Chapel Hill has tended to rely on its cooperative relationship with the Duke Divinity School Library for research materials on religion, the collections here nevertheless include hundreds of titles on Christianity and Islam that may be of interest to students of African Americana. In addition, the Library has special strengths documenting the crucial role of the churches and their ministers in the African American community.

Fine Arts

The Fine Arts materials on African Americans include not only books and serials, but films, video and sound recordings, and musical scores. Although a few of the books in these areas can be found in Davis Library, most of the titles are located in the Art or Music Libraries, or in the Media Resources Center in the Undergraduate Library.

Art:

The Sloane Art Library in Hanes Hall has a good collection of books and exhibition catalogues on African American art and artists. Much of this material is classed in N6538.N5, but publications on individual artists are interfiled with those on other American artists working in the same medium (NB 237 for American sculptors, ND237 for American painters). There are a number of bibliographies of African American artists and art. Of these, the most comprehensive by far is 250 Years of Afro-American Art, which contains 25,000 citations to the life and work of 3900 artists.

Film:

The Media Resources Center in the Undergraduate Library holds a large number of films by and about African Americans. They include films by African American film directors, such as Spike Lee, Bill Duke, and Spencer Williams; films relating to the African American experience, such as Bill Cosby on Prejudice; films on African American issues, themes and stories, including I Remember Harlem; films on African American women, especially Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise; films on African Americans in politics, particularly Race for Mayor; and African Americans in the theater, notably Negro Ensemble Company. For a complete listing of titles and subject categories, check with the staff in the Media Resouces Center of the Undergraduate Library.

Music:

The Music Library has books, scores, and sound and video recordings in many areas of music by and about African Americans. Except for rare music items, which are housed in the Music Library’s Rare Book Room, all the Music Library’s print material (both books and scores) is available in open stacks. Please note that the most comprehensive listing for the Music Library’s holdings is the Music Library’s public catalogs for printed material and for sound recordings, both audio and video, and that large portions of the collections are not listed in Davis Library’s online or card catalogs. If users cannot find the materials about African Americans that they need, they should ask a librarian in the Music Library for help.

Social Sciences

Campus libraries have extensive collections of social science documentation on all aspects of the African American experience. They cover all disciplines, with the strongest holdings in politics and civil rights, sociology and race relations, and statistical data on social and economic conditions.

Political Science and Civil Rights:

The Library’s general collections contain virtually every significant book on the civil rights movement. In addition, the library possesses extensive microform collections of unpublished documentation on the major civil rights organizations, such as CORE, SNCC, and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. There are also collections of major African American leaders, including the FBI files on Martin Luther King, Jr., Jesse Jackson, and Malcolm X, and the papers of Bayard Rustin.

Sociology and Race Relations:

The library has comprehensive holdings of the major controversies related to African Americans, particularly those involving race relations and social conditions. These include abolitionist tracts of the ante-bellum era, modern studies of the Ku Klux Klan, and current works on Afro-centrism. Davis Library also has almost all federal government publications related to African Americans, including important unpublished materials from the National Archives in microform.

Economics and Socio-Economic Data:

Over the last several years Davis Library has acquired hundreds of statistical files on magnetic and optical disk covering almost all socio- economic characteristics of the country's African American population. Some of these are quite extensive. The 1990 federal census, for example, is projected to exceed 200 CD-ROMs. In almost every case, users can analyze these data by race and manipulate the information by any number of additional variables, such as sex, age, or geography.

CONCLUSION

The libraries at UNC-Chapel Hill have one of the largest and best collections of materials related to African Americans in the country. Many individuals have worked hard over many decades to build them. Librarians invite faculty and students to use these splendid collections of African Americana to their fullest advantage and to suggest new acquisitions.