Primary sources- which may include newspaper articles, photographs, letters, posters, and more- are an exciting way to experience history. The databases listed below allow you to search and browse primary sources reaching back to the 17th century, including books, photographs, audio files, and more.
To access from off-campus, simply enter your Hunter NetID and password when prompted.
- ArtStor- Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (New York Public Library) This collection, which is openly available to anyone via ArtStor, makes available "more than 2,000 images from the Schomburg Center, one of the world’s leading cultural institutions on the African American experience." Of particular interest is a 1922 photograph of medical students at The Meharry Colleges titled, "Solving Dental Problems." If you look closely, you see that each student is concentrating on a set of handheld teeth!
- Black Thought and Culture "Black Thought and Culture is a landmark electronic collection of approximately 100,000 pages of non-fiction writings by major American black leaders—teachers, artists, politicians, religious leaders, athletes, war veterans, entertainers, and other figures—covering 250 years of history." Select "Browse by Content type" and discover 23 different types of materials available- including Advertisements, Poems, and Oral Histories.
The African American Experience This database provides access to to the WPA Slave Narrative Collection. "From 1936 to 1938, the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) conducted interviews with more than 2,000 people who were formerly enslaved. These interviews are known collectively as the "Slave Narrative Collection of the Federal Writers' Project of the WPA." The collection features transcripts, audio, and photographs from the project. When reading and working with these materials, it is important to think critically about their origin and remember that these interviews took place during the Jim Crow era.
Check out more primary sources available through Hunter College Libraries here!
Highlight Image Citation: (Issued: 1922). The Meharry Colleges; Solving dental problems.. Retrieved from https://library.artstor.org/asset/31816476
Add new comment