University Library News
Georgia State University

New! Online Portal of Manuscripts Documenting African-American Slavery and Abolition

New-York Historical Society Museum and LibraryThe New-York Historical Society has recently launched a new online portal linking to almost 12,000 pages of source materials relating to the history of slavery in the United States, the Atlantic slave trade, and the abolitionist movement.

These documents, from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, are now being made easily accessible to the general public for the first time. All together, these materials represent fourteen of the New-York Historical Society’s Manuscripts Department’s most important collections. Access to these materials is free; no subscription required!

Included in these collections are:

Slave voyage mapAnother useful primary-source collection for the study of African-American slavery and the Atlantic slave trade is the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database. This database includes information about over 35,000 slave trading voyages, and also includes the African Names Database, which identifies over 67,000 Africans aboard slave ships, using name, age, gender, origin, and place of embarkation.

The GSU Library’s database Eighteenth Century Collections Online also includes primary printed sources relating to slavery and abolition in the eighteenth century. Additionally, our African American Newspapers database includes newspapers published by African Americans before, during, and after the Civil War, providing insight into African-American perspectives on slavery and abolition in the nineteenth century.