Research Guides: African, African American, & Diaspora Studies: Home

Frequently Used Resources

AfricaBib This link opens in a new window
Bibliographic information for Africana social science resources including Africana periodical literature, African Women's literature, and Education in Africa.
African Books Collective This link opens in a new window
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ABC is an African-owned, worldwide marketing and distribution outlet for books from Africa--scholarly, literature and children's books. Access includes pre-2020 backlist (1,490 ebooks), 2020 frontlist (76 ebooks), and 2021 frontlist (84 ebooks). The majority of titles are DRM-free.

Users will be routed to a Guest Access screen. Users then have the option to register personal or institutional email addresses.

African Journals Online (AJOL)
"AJOL provides free online hosting for over 500 peer-reviewed journals from 31 African countries, using open source software. AJOL's partner journals cover the full range of academic disciplines with particularly strong sections on health, agriculture and African studies."

Africa Knowledge Project This link opens in a new window
Africa-centered journals, bibliographies, scholarly essays, art exhibitions, and poetry from a diverse range of disciplines.
HistoryMakers Digital Archive This link opens in a new window
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Video archive of African American oral histories documenting the men and women who have made significant contributions to American life, history, and culture during the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Black Newspaper Collection This link opens in a new window
A collection of prominent Black newspapers, such as the Chicago Defender, Baltimore Afro-American, New York Amsterdam News, Pittsburgh Courier, and The Norfolk Journal and Guide.
JMU Library Catalog This link opens in a new window
Find journals, books, ebooks, films, sound recordings, and government documents available to JMU users.
Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
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Multidisciplinary index and full text source for scholarly journals and magazines.

The Black Book Interactive Project
"Seeks to increase the number of black-authored texts in the study of digital humanities. By generating a metadata schema that accounts for race and race-related issues, we will correct the digital divide in black-authored texts." From the University of Kansas.
Black in Data
"Black in Data represents a community of academics, professionals, and students working in various areas of data. We gather to support, learn from, and share opportunities with one another, and ultimately increase representation of Black people in data fields."
Cite Black Authors
"The Cite Black Author database is meant to amplify Black scholarly work, and to do that effectively we encourage everyone to search through the citations listed for topics that best align with your research."
Conducting Research through an Anti-Racism Lens
A guide for "incorporating an anti-racist lens at all stages of the research life cycle" by librarians at the University of Minnesota. Topics include primary research, secondary research, scholarly publishing, search algorithms, and cataloging systems.
Knowledge Equity Lab
"An inclusive, trans-disciplinary, experimental space based at the University of Toronto Scarborough’s Department of Global Development Studies."
Whose Knowledge?
"We are a global campaign to center the knowledge of marginalized communities (the majority of the world) on the internet."

African Americans in Harrisonburg Oral History Collection
"The oral histories comprising this collection were compiled as part of James Madison University’s 1978 summer workshop, "Oral Tradition and Storytelling in the Black Community of Harrisonburg.'" From the Special Collections at JMU Libraries.
Black Firsts at JMU
"This living digital archive originated in the course “Black Studies and Black Spaces: Black Critical Frameworks and Communities at JMU and Beyond, 1968 to the Present” and continues to grow, with research and support from AAAD minors, graduate students, JMU faculty, and alumni."
Black Comic Book Collection
A guide to Black comic book collections and resources in Special Collections at JMU Libraries.
Celebrating Simms: The Story of the Lucy F. Simms School
"The online companion to the permanent exhibition that celebrates the life of pioneering African-American educator, Lucy F. Simms, and the school named in her honor."
Furious Flower Archive
"Now in its third decade, the Furious Flower Poetry Center (FFPC) has been a driving force in showcasing, promoting, and analyzing African American poetry nationally and internationally."
Racial Terror: Lynching in Virginia
"This website focuses on telling the stories of all the known lynching victims who were killed in Virginia between 1866 and 1932, most of them African American men."