Ethnic Studies

Slaves and the Courts, 1740 to 1860 - Library of Congress

This collection consists of 105 library books and manuscripts, totalling approximately 8,700 pages drawn principally from the Law Library and the Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress, with a few from the General Collections. The selection was guided in large part by the entries in Slavery in the Courtroom: An Annotated Bibliography of American Cases by Paul Finkelman (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1985), which was based on research in the Library collections. The documents comprise an assortment of trials and cases, reports, arguments, accounts, examinations of cases and decisions, proceedings, journals, a letter, and other works of historical importance. Most of the items date from the nineteenth century and include materials associated with the Dred Scott case and the abolitionist activities of John Brown, John Quincy Adams, and William Lloyd Garrison. Eighteenth-century cases include Somerset v. Stewart, decided in England a few years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which "underscored the great tension created by slavery in Anglo-American law." (Finkelman, p. 6)

Long Road To Justice: The African American Experience in the Massachusetts Courts

African Americans have sought racial justice in the Massachusetts courts. In examining this history, we see that victories have been won only through perseverance, courage and the willingness—often with blacks and whites joining forces—to take substantial risks. For African Americans in Massachusetts, the road to justice has been marked by high drama, agonizing frustration, great success, and tragic disappointment. Subjects include slavery in the courts, education in the courts, and participation in the court system in Massachusetts.

Documenting Ferguson
Documenting Ferguson is a collection of digital media created by community members in the wake of the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO. Includes audio, video, images, and text based documents.

Preserve the Baltimore Uprising
This digital repository was created in response to the death of Freddie Gray in 2015. The collection includes photos, video, oral recordings, produced recordings, written accounts, and emails that document a diversity of perspectives of individuals’ experiences of the Baltimore Uprising

A People’s Archive of Police Violence in Cleveland
This digital archive, created in the summer of 2015 by residents of Cleveland, OH in collaboration with professional archivists from around the U.S., documents experiences of police violence and incarceration in Cleveland. The collection includes police policies and incident reports, protest posters, oral history interviews, and video and audio press recordings. Part of this archival project includes the “Righting the Record" Oral History Project.

Library of Congress Black Lives Matter archive
Similar to Archive-It, the Library of Congress archives the BLM movement by regularly collecting digital captures of the Black Lives Matter website, as well as the Black Lives Matter social media accounts (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook).

Internet Archive #blacklivesmatter web archive
The Internet Archive uses a tool called “Archive-It” to “crawl” websites at regular intervals and archive versions of various webpages. In August 2014, the ArchiveIt team created a web archive and solicited urls to crawl related to the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO. It has since expanded to include webpages and posts related to the #blacklivesmatter movement more generally.

Project STAND : Student Activism Now Documentes
Project STAND is an online archive that documents student activism from colleges and universities across the country, including student participation in BLM. The site also provides guidance on how best to archive this type of activism.

Texas After Violence Project
The Texas After Violence project is a community-based archive that preserves the voices, experiences, and perspectives of people directly impacted by violence in Texas. They have conducted hundreds of oral history interviews through their "Life and Death in a Carceral State: Narratives of Loss and Survival," which interviews people directly impacted by murder, police violence, in-custody deaths, mass incarceration, and the death penalty.