African-American Databases

Contemporary Black Biography     African-American History OnlineOxford African American Studies Center

African-American History Month has started and students will soon be searching for information to write papers, do presentations, and complete other school assignments.  In addition to the many print sources the library has available to meet this need, we also have a group of African-American databases students can use to find information.  Moreover, these databases may be accessed outside the library with your library card. The database descriptions come from the Birmingham Public Library website.

African-American History Online covers topics such as affirmative action, Africa, black nationalism, civil rights, emancipation, free blacks, the Harlem Renaissance, migrations, racial violence and hate crimes, religion, slave living conditions, slave liberation strategies, social work and philanthropy, sports, and visual arts.

Informative biographical profiles of the important and influential persons of African American and/or black heritage. Covers persons of various nationalities in a wide variety of fields, including architecture, art, business, dance, education, fashion, film, industry, journalism, law, literature, medicine, music, politics and government, publishing, religion, science and technology, social issues, sports, television, theater, and others.

The Oxford African American Studies Center provides students, teachers, and scholars with an authoritative and comprehensive source on the African American experience. The site is comprised of five major encyclopedias and content from eighteen additional reference sources from Oxford University Press, including more than 8,000 articles by top scholars in the field. The Oxford African American Studies Center combines the authority of carefully edited reference works with sophisticated technology to create the most comprehensive collection of scholarship available online to focus on the lives and events which have shaped African American and African history and culture.

The Birmingham Black Barons, one of the most successful baseball teams in the Negro Leagues, played from the 1920s until the 1950s. The team played their home games at Rickwood Field. This database is a keyword index to articles that appeared in local newspapers including the Birmingham News and the Birmingham World. The Government Documents Department of the Birmingham Public Library is compiling this database.

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