This is just a sample of the free archives and primary source portals that will help you research your paper topics. Let me know if you discover something that should be included here! – Michael
The African Activist Archive preserves and disseminates the records of activism in the United States to support the struggles of African peoples against colonialism, apartheid, and social injustice from the 1950s through the 1990s. The website includes: pamphlets, newsletters, leaflets, buttons, posters, T-shirts, photographs, and audio and video recordings.
AODL is a a portal to multimedia collections about Africa, including primary sources on wide variety of topics such as Islam in Africa, colonial histories, oral narratives, slave biographies, and much more.
This resource reproduces online and searchable PDF page images on important British Foreign Office and Colonial Office documents on Africa from the start of the historical modern British colonial enterprise in Africa through the first years of African national independence.
The W.E.B. Du Bois Papers at UMass Amherst contain many digitized documents pertaining to the Pan-African Congresses. Try a free search, or follow these subject links to explore a particular congress.
The Foreign Relations of the United States series is the official documentary historical record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions that have been declassified and edited for publication. This link provides documents from the Nixon Administration pertaining to the Nigerian Civil War.
The Church Missionary Society, founded in 1799, is a British mission society of Anglican Communion and Protestant Christians. Many of the Society's founding and principal missions were located in Africa. This link retrieves numerous CMS publications from the 19th century.
The Foundation partnered with Google to create this memorial to Biko's life and work. It contains five exhibits on the Biko's early years, his work on the Black Consciousness Movement, his final days, the inquest into his death, and his legacy.
Struggles for Freedom: Southern Africa brings together materials from various archives and libraries throughout the world documenting colonial rule, dispersion of exiles, international intervention, and the worldwide networks that supported successive generations of resistance within the region. Contains many digital objects from anti-apartheid groups such as the National Union of South African Students.
Aluka is an international, collaborative initiative building an online digital library of scholarly resources from and about Africa. Aluka is derived from a Zulu word meaning to weave, reflecting Alukas mission to connect resources and scholars from around the world.
DPLA brings together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world. Includes many primary sources and other public domain materials.
HathiTrust is a partnership of academic & research institutions, offering a collection of millions of titles digitized from libraries around the world.
Use the Internet Archive to search for digital copies of books the library has only in print. Thanks to a program called controlled digital lending, you can check out and download these books as if they were physical copies on library shelves. You will need to create an account in order to borrow books.
JSTOR is a vast archive of academic journals and History is one of its biggest collections. I've linked to JSTOR's advanced search so you can limit by discipline. Also, you can limit your searches to research articles, useful because JSTOR has loads of book reviews that may otherwise clutter your search results.
Searchable collection of historical African newspapers. Includes over 40 newspapers published between 1800 and 1922 in Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda, and Zimbabwe.
Chronicling America provides information about historic newspapers and select digitized newspaper pages from 1836-1922. Use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present.
Contains FBIS daily reports from 1941-1996. These reports consist of translations or transcriptions of intercepted radio broadcasts from foreign governments, official news services, and clandestine broadcasts from occupied territories. A major resource of the U.S. intelligence community.
This database offers full-text and full-image articles from the New York Times and Washington Post; the collection includes digital reproductions of every page from every issue in downloadable PDF files.
The Times Digital Archive, makes 221 years of this highly regarded resource available for students and researchers of 19th-, 20th-, and early 21st-century history, literature, culture, business, art and architecture, and more. Every complete page of every issue is full-text searchable every headline, article, editorial, announcement, image and advertisement.
A collection of declassified and historically significant CIA documents. Some documents have been arranged by topic, e.g, the Reagan, China, and Vietnam collections.
The Foreign Relations of the United States series is the official documentary historical record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions that have been declassified and edited for publication. Organized by year and topically within years.
"This website provides a wealth of information about the Department’s FOIA program and how to obtain access to the Department’s records, as well as a search tool containing 110,585 searchable documents reviewed and released to the public."