As the USC community reflects on Black history throughout the month of February, an online collection of primary source documents offers insights into the challenges and triumphs of the Black freedom movement in the United States. Consisting of thousands of digitized government documents, personal papers, and organizational records, ProQuest's Black Freedom Struggle spans the 18th century to the present day. Among the tens of thousands of documents are writings by abolitionist David Walker; the papers of civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune; the FBI's file on Martin Luther King, Jr.; and records from the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division.
A selection of the primary sources is freely available via ProQuest, while USC students, faculty, and staff can access the collection through the USC Libraries.
To discover more resources related to Black History Month, consult librarian Christal Young's African American Studies research guide, which includes an extensive list of suggested primary source collections.