Researching Slavery and the Slave Trade

Collection of books and articles that document the individual and collective story of African Americans struggling for freedom and human rights in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries. This collection includes all the existing autobiographical narratives of fugitive and former slaves published as broadsides, pamphlets, or books in English up to 1920, along with many biographies of fugitive and former slaves and some significant fictionalized slave narratives published in English before 1920.

"In contrast to the popular belief that the abolitionist crusade was driven by wealthy whites, some 300 black abolitionists were regularly involved in the antislavery movement, heightening its credibility and broadening its agenda. The Black Abolitionist Digital Archive is a collection of over 800 speeches by antebellum blacks and approximately 1,000 editorials from the period. These important documents provide a portrait of black involvement in the anti-slavery movement; scans of these documents are provided as images and PDF files."

Comprehensive collection of Anglo-American pamphlets, largely from the 19th century, organized and bound by subject. A printed subject index is available at the John Hay Library.

Official records that document the institution of slavery in Cuba as practiced between 1820 and 1892

Letters of a Bristol, Rhode Island, family that maintained a plantation in Cuba in the antebellum era.