Black History @ Historical Newspapers & eLibrary

ProQuest Historical Newspapers: February is Black History Month. As this important month gets underway, don't miss our newest additions to ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Graphical Edition (free trial signup).

A number of topics related to black history and the civil rights movement now contain articles from two important American newspapers: Chicago Defender and Hartford Courant.

Articles from the Chicago Defender, perhaps America's premier black newspaper, bring a bold and often irreverent perspective to topics such as John Brown's raid, the Montgomery bus boycott, the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, the assassination of Martin Luther King, and the Jim Crow segregation laws.

The language used in the Jim Crow articles, for example, is far more colorful than anything readers of America's paper of record, the New York Times, would ever have encountered.



In a not-entirely-atypical article from 1911, the writer of "Hoke Smith Vomits on the Negro" accuses a famous pro-segregation Georgia politician of consorting with "murderers and rapists." And in "It's Hell!," written after World War I, the reporter laments that black soldiers fought to protect the "damn worthless hide" of the southern gentleman.

The tone of articles from the Hartford Courant, America's oldest continuously published newspaper, and one of the first to be run by a woman, tends to be more measured. But not overly so--a fact that Thomas Jefferson, who once sued the paper for libel (and lost), would no doubt attest to.

In articles covering important historical topics such as the Dred Scott decision, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Gettysburg Address, and the Lincoln assassination, the Hartford Courant demonstrates unwavering support of Abraham Lincoln and the causes for which he fought.



For your convenience, here's a list of our ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Graphical Edition subtopics in which the new content occurs:

• The Slave Experience
  
  
• Fugitive Slave Act
  
  
• Dred Scott Decision
  
  
• Bleeding Kansas
  
  
• John Brown's Raid
  
  
• South Carolina Secession
  
  
• Battle of Gettysburg & the Gettysburg Address
  
  
• Freeing Slaves
  
  
• Lincoln Assassination
  
  
• Beginning of Jim Crow Laws
  
  
• Brown v. Board of Education
  
  
• Montgomery Bus Boycott
  
  
• Greensboro Sit-In
  
  
• 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing
  
  
• March on Washington
  
  
• Watts Riot
  
  
• Martin Luther King Jr. Assassinated

Don't have access to HNP? Sign up for a free trial to span the entire month of February!

We're hopeful that this new material will show you why a recent Booklist review called Historical Newspapers "a fantastic resource for any school."


eLibrary: Don't miss our newest content updates for Black History Month inside eLibrary (free trial).

You'll find a new Oxford University Press (OUP) book entitled Slavery and the Making of America (2005) written by James and Lois Horton.

You can find this timely title by selecting the Books source icon on the main search page, then scroll down to the S titles in our alphabetical list.

The book is the perfect companion to the popular 2005 PBS television series of the same name, and the title complements other OUP black history eBooks in your subscription, including The Struggle Against Slavery: A History in Documents and Strange New Land: Africans in Colonial America. These are titles you won't find in any other K-12 online learning solution.

Best of all, Slavery and the Making of America is presented with our latest generation eLibrary eBook functionality, including an interactive Table of Contents page, enlargeable inline images, and inline text links to footnotes.

These functionality enhancements make the book easier to navigate and more visually appealing.