Slavery  
 

An Annotated List of the Most Valuable Online Resources on Slavery

Clicking the links below will open a new window; close that window to return to this page.

Colonial Slavery 
  Africans in America: The Terrible Transformation
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/title.html
A companion site to the PBS television documentary "Africans in America," which explores the history of the Atlantic slave trade and the origins of American slavery during the period 1450-1750. The Narrative describes the history of the period; the Resource Bank provides annotated images, documents, biographies, and commentaries by historians; and a Teacher's Guide helps instructors integrate the materials into their classroom.
 
   
Nineteenth-Century Slavery 
  African American Religion in the Nineteenth Century
http://www.nhc.rtp.nc.us:8080/tserve/nineteen/nkeyinfo/nafrican.htm
Laurie Maffly-Kipp, a professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina examines the fusion of African and Christian religious beliefs and practices
 
   
  African American Women
http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/collections/african-american-women.html
The slave letters from the Duke University Library's Special Collections provide a rare firsthand glimpse into the lives of slaves and the relationships they had with their owners.
 
   
  Africans in America: Judgement Day
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/title.html
This site, a supplement to the PBS series, covers the years 1831-1865, and provides primary source documents and commentary from leading historians dealing with such topics as the the material conditions of slave life, the impact of slavery on the family, abolition, the Fugitive Slave Law, Bleeding Kansas, John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, and wartime emancipation.
 
   
  Exploring Amistad
http://amistad.mysticseaport.org/main/welcome.html
This site contains over 500 primary documents including court documents, journal entries, and newspaper stories dealing with the Amistad Affair, which began as a shipboard revolt off the coast of Cuba and resulted in a protracted legal battle over slavery and the slave trade.
 
   
  An Introduction to the Slave Narrative
http://metalab.unc.edu/docsouth/neh/specialneh.html
An interpretation of the slave narratives by William L. Andrews, a leading authority on the subject.
 
   
  North American Slave Narratives
http://metalab.unc.edu/docsouth/neh/neh.html
This site include all the narratives of fugitive and former slaves published in broadsides, pamphlets, or book form in English up to 1920 and many of the biographies of fugitive and former slaves published in English before 1920.
 
   
  Third Person, First Person: Slave Voices
http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/slavery/
This site uses documents from the Duke University Library's special collections to document the slave trade, slave labor, the impact of the Revolution on slavery, the nature of life in the slave community, and slavery's collapse.
 
   
Bibliography 
  The Roots of Slavery: A Bibliographical Essay
http://www.stratfordhall.org/schwarz.htm
An up-to-date review of the literature of American slavery.
 
   
Encyclopedia 
   
  Spartacus Internet Encyclopedia
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/slavery.htm
First person accounts, essays on the slave system, slave life, key events, and biographies of abolitionists.
 
   
Fugitive Slaves 
  Forgotten Heroes of Freedom
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/99nov/9911runaway.htm
Despite formidable odds, many enslaved African American ran away from slavery. Leon Litwack, the Morrison Professor of American History at the University of California at Berkeley, assesses the frequency of flight from slavery, the forms that this took, and the motives that precipitated flight.
 
   
  Virginia Runaways
http://www.uvawise.edu/history/runaways/
A digital database of runaway and captured slave and servant advertisements from 18th-century Virginia newspapers, this project offers full transcripts and images of all runaway and captured ads for slaves, servants, and deserters placed in Virginia newspapers from 1736 to 1790.
 
   
Images 
  Pictorial Images of the Transatlantic Slave Trade
http://gropius.lib.virginia.edu/SlaveTrade/
An extensive collection of maps, images, and portraits illustrating the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, as it took place from Africa through the middle passage and landing in the New World.
 
   
The Law of Slavery 
  Slavery and the Law
http://www.globaldialog.com/~mhbooks/books/slavery_law_intro.html
Paul Finkelman, a leading legal authority on slavery, looks at how lawyers and jurists were able to reconcile slavery with the nation's commitment to liberty and equality.
 
   
A Model Class Website 
  Slavery in the Western Hemisphere
http://cghs.dade.k12.fl.us/slavery/index.htm
An impressive "multimedia textbook" created by a high school advanced placement class that covers such topics as resistance, antislavery, interpretations of slavery, supplemented with primary sources.
 
   
Resistance 
  Denmark Vesey
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/1861jun/higgin.htm
An 1861 account of Denmark Vesey's attempted insurrection by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, published in The Atlantic. Also see "Denmark Vesey: Forgotten Hero," http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/vesey.htm
   
Underground Railroad 
  Taking the Train to Freedom
http://www.nps.gov/undergroundrr/contents.htm
This National Park Service site provides a general overview of the Underground Railroad, with a brief discussion of slavery and abolitionism, escape routes used by slaves.
 
   

Back to Top