Everett Library: HST 291: Mapping Slavery: Primary Source Materials

Primary Sources

What are Primary Sources?

"Primary sources provide first-hand testimony or direct evidence concerning a topic under investigation. They are created by witnesses or recorders who experienced the events or conditions being documented. Often these sources are created at the time when the events or conditions are occurring, but primary sources can also include autobiographies, memoirs, and oral histories recorded later. Primary sources are characterized by their content, regardless of whether they are available in original format, in microfilm/microfiche, in digital format, or in published format."

~Primary Sources at Yale

Primary sources can be found in many different formats and locations. Libraries often house manuscripts, letters, memoirs, oral histories, and other primary source documents for students and researchers to use. However, thanks to digitization, many primary sources are now available on the World Wide Web.

For more information about the nature and types of Primary Sources, and how to recognize them, please visit the Primary Sources at Yale page provided by Yale University.

Primary Sources at Yale - Yale University
The nature and types of primary sources with tips on how to find and recognize them.
Primary vs. Secondary Sources - Princeton University
Describes the difference between primary and secondary sources with examples.

Primary Source Materials for the Transatlantic Slave Trade

From Slavery to Freedom: The African-American Pamplet Collection 1822-1909
396 pamphlets from the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, published from 1822 through 1909, by African-American authors and others who wrote about slavery, African colonization, Emancipation, Reconstruction, and related topics. The materials range from personal accounts and public orations to organizational reports and legislative speeches. Among the authors represented are Frederick Douglass, Kelly Miller, Charles Sumner, Mary Church Terrell, and Booker T. Washington."
The Slave Trade (National Archives)
Includes federal records documenting the history of American slavery and freedom from the founding period of our federal government in the late eighteenth-century through the modern Civil Rights era. In particular, highlights records of the United States District and Circuit Courts, U.S. Customs Service, and the Freedmen's Bureau.