LibGuides: Race and Ethnic Studies: Home

Where Do I Start?

Below are some of our most useful resources for this topic. You will find a complete list of resources on Race and Ethnic Studies in our Databases & Resources A-Z list.

Scholarly Articles:

Black Studies Center This link opens in a new window
Black Studies Center consists of scholarly journals, commissioned overview essays by top scholars in Black Studies, historic indexes, and The Chicago Defender newspaper from 1910-1975.
At the heart of Black Studies Center is Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience, consisting of essays that provide an introduction to major topics in Black Studies. Black Studies Center provides the historical full-text of one of the most influential black newspapers in the United States, The Chicago Defender.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Provides a searchable database for the backfiles of hundreds of full text journals across a wide variety of disciplines. (Backfiles start in the 1800s and end 3-5 years prior to current date.)
Peace Research Abstracts This link opens in a new window
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Provides bibliographic records covering essential topics related to peace analysis including conflict resolution, international affairs and peace psychology.
Race Relations Abstracts This link opens in a new window
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Contains over 75,000 records going back to 1975. Sources include Race & Class, Ethnic & Racial Studies and Journal of Social Issues.
Social Explorer This link opens in a new window
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Social Explorer is a demographic research tool that includes over 220 years of data and enables the creation of customizable, interactive maps
Social Explorer, allows you to: *Access the most current and comprehensive demographic information with over 40 billion data elements and 220 years of data, including the entire US Census from 1790 to the present ; * Visualize data with customizable, user-friendly maps, allowing unparalleled exploration of demographic and social change, revealing the patterns buried in raw numbers; *Create interactive, easily navigable maps, making it easy to explore the vast array of available demographic information; *Develop professional-looking reports, presentations, and graphics - save and automatically export reports to Excel and a variety of statistical packages ; *Save time and eliminate errors - reports automatically calculate aggregates, percentages, and medians. Also, full source documentation is available for all reports and every variable links directly to information about where the data originated and how it was computed.
SocINDEX with Full Text This link opens in a new window
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In addition to nearly 900 full-text journals, SocINDEX with Full Text also contains informative abstracts for more than 1,500 "core" coverage journals dating as far back as 1895. In addition, it also provides data mined from nearly 420 "priority" coverage journals and over 2,900 "selective" coverage journals. offers comprehensive coverage of sociology, encompassing all sub-disciplines and closely related areas of study.
In addition, it also provides data mined from nearly 420 "priority" coverage journals and over 2,900 "selective" coverage journals. offers comprehensive coverage of sociology, encompassing all sub-disciplines and closely related areas of study. These include abortion, criminology and criminal justice, demography, ethnic and racial studies, gender studies, marriage and family, political sociology, religion, rural and urban sociology, social development, social psychology, social structure, social work, socio-cultural anthropology, sociological history, sociological research, sociological theory, substance abuse and other addictions, violence and others.

Primary Sources:

Accessible Archives (Now History Commons) This link opens in a new window
Provides historical and genealogical primary documents, including Civil War collections, the New York Herald, the Charleston Mercury, and the Richmond Enquirer newspapers.
African American Archives This link opens in a new window
*** Browse -> Non-military Records -> African American Collection *** Provides over one million pages of original historical documents pertaining to the African American experience over several centuries, and is richly-detailed with narratives and quantitative data alike.
*** Browse -> Non-military Records -> African American Collection ***
American Race Relations: Global Perspectives, 1941-1996 This link opens in a new window
Reports, publications, and news broadcasts covering America's fight for racial justice, with firsthand analysis of race relations in Latin America, Europe, Africa, and Asia
*Translated CIA documents provide viewpoints on the fight for racial justice
*A wealth of unique primary source documents on racial justice from around the world
Black Life in America This link opens in a new window
The experience and impact of African Americans as recorded by the news media
*Series 1: 1704-1877: Arrival in America through Reconstruction
*Series 2: 1878-1975: Jim Crow through the Civil Rights Movement
*Series 3: 1976-Present

*Sourced from more than 19,000 American and global news sources, including over 400 current and historical Black publications
Civil Rights and the Black Freedom Struggle (ProQuest History Vault) This link opens in a new window
ProQuest History Vault's coverage of the Black Freedom Struggle offers the opportunity to study the most well-known and also unheralded events of the Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century from the perspective of the men, women, and sometimes even children who waged one of the most inspiring social movements in American history.
This consists of the NAACP Papers and federal government records, organizational records, and personal papers regarding the Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century.
Indigenous Peoples of North America, Parts I and II This link opens in a new window
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Gain insight into the cultural, political, and social history of Native Peoples from the seventeenth to the twentieth century.
Perpetual access through VIVA.
We Were Prepared for the Possibility of Death: Freedom Riders in the South, 1961 This link opens in a new window
Contains primary documents from the FBI Library related to the 1961 Freedom Ride and subsequent events.
(This collection is found in Gale's Archives Unbound database.)

Other Resources:

Films on Demand (Coverage varies) This link opens in a new window
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Provides streaming videos from the Films for the Humanities & Sciences, Cambridge Educational and many others and includes a comprehensive coverage of major fields of knowledge.
Polling the Nations (1986-present) This link opens in a new window
Polling the Nations is an online database of public opinion polls containing the full text of 600,000+ questions and responses, from 18,000+ surveys and 1,700+ polling organizations, conducted from 1986 through the present in the United States and more than 100 other countries around the world.
Statista This link opens in a new window
Statista is a statistics portal that provides data on over 80,000 topics from more than 10,000 different sources. The content is purely aggregated statistics, and it is geared towards business and marketing statistical needs, with a focus on current awareness, not historical statistics. Easy to use infographics and tables are created on a regular basis, and all graphics are available for download as images to insert into presentations.

Departmental Links

Your Librarian

Jennifer Beach

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Greenwood Library - 122

434-395-2257

Subjects: English, General, Library Tips and Tools, Modern Languages, Newspapers, Race and Ethnic Studies, Reference and Research, Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies