What Is a Primary Source?
Primary sources are "first-hand" information, sources as close as possible to the origin of the information or idea under study. Primary sources are contrasted with secondary sources, works that provide analysis, commentary, or criticism on the primary source.
In art, literature, and cultural studies, primary sources include original creative works, such as paintings, architectural plans, music, poems, novels, movies, television shows, and even advertisements.
In historical studies, primary sources include written works, recordings, or other sources of information from people who were participants or direct witnesses to the events in question. Examples of commonly used historical primary sources include government documents, memoirs, personal correspondence, oral histories, and contemporary newspaper accounts.
In the sciences, primary sources are usually articles or data resulting directly from experiments, fieldwork, or clinical trials.
Note that the "primacy" of a source can be relative. In cases where original records were lost or a live performance was never recorded, a review or commentary from a third party may be the most primary source available.
- What is primary research and how do I get started?The OWL at Purdue has a helpful page about primary resources.
- Primary vs. Secondary Sources VideoThis short video uses the Apollo 11 mission to describe the difference between primary and secondary sources.
Enjoy this video introduction to UCLA Library Special Collections!
African American Studies - Print Primary Resources
Search in the UCLA Library Catalog scope for african americans sources as a Subject search to find items with this subject heading leading to primary source materials. Most will be printed items, but there may be some links to online resources.
To find oral history transcripts in the library, search in the UCLA Library Catalog for "african american" as a Subject and "oral histories" as a Subject. There are more than 100 items listed. Another search that yields over 700 results is "african american" as a Subject and "interviews" as a Subject.
Online Collections: eBooks, audio, manuscripts, etc.
Below are some collections covering a wide range of material relating to African or African American Studies.
- Africa Cartoons: Encyclopedia of African Political CartooningA digital platform of political cartoons from countries throughout the continent of Africa.
- African Activist ArchiveThe African Activist Archive is preserving and making available online the records of activism in the United States to support the struggles of African peoples against colonialism, apartheid, and social injustice from the 1950s through the 1990s.
- African American Communities This link opens in a new windowFocusing predominantly on Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis, New York, and towns and cities in North Carolina this collection presents multiple aspects of the African American community through pamphlets, newspapers and periodicals, correspondence, official records and in-depth oral histories.
- African Diaspora This link opens in a new windowCovers 1860-present, and includes digitized primary source documents, secondary sources and videos from around the world with a focus on communities in the Caribbean, Brazil, India, United Kingdom, and France. With content from The National Archives and Records Administration (US), National Archives at Kew (UK), Royal Anthropological Institute, and Senate House Library (University of London),
- Black Drama: Second Edition This link opens in a new windowContains approximately 1600 plays by 200 playwrights, together with detailed, fielded information on related productions, theaters, production companies, and more. The database also includes selected playbills, production photographs and other ephemera related to the plays.
- Black Studies in Video This link opens in a new windowStreaming video access to documentaries, newsreels, interviews and archival footage surveying the evolution of black culture in the United States. Includes access to the African American Classics collection from California Newsreel.
- Black Thought and Culture This link opens in a new windowFull text collection of non-fiction published prose and oratory by leading African Americans. Writing is focused on research in black studies, political science, American history, music, literature, and art.
- Caribbean Literature This link opens in a new window
Full text collection of Caribbean poetry and fiction by hundreds of authors, presented in the original languages of publication.
- Civil Rights and the Black Freedom Struggle (via History Vault) This link opens in a new window
Includes NAACP Papers, federal government records, organizational records, and personal papers regarding the 20th Century Black Freedom Struggle. The collections in this category include documentation on the major events of the civil rights era, such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Freedom Rides, March on Washington, Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Selma to Montgomery March, and other events spanning the full 20th Century.
- Colonial State Papers This link opens in a new windowThousands of papers concerning English activities in the American, Canadian, and West Indian colonies between the 16th and 18th centuries.
- History Vault This link opens in a new window
UC-wide pilot (renewed through June 30, 2025) with access to selected History Vault modules, including content derived from primary source digitized microfilm that is cross-searchable. Modules include Civil Rights and the Black Freedom Struggle; Southern Life, Slavery, and the Civil War; American Indians and the American West; American Politics and Society; International Relations and Military Conflicts; Women's Studies; Workers, Labor Unions, and Radicals; Latinx History; Revolutionary War and Early America; and more.
- Images of Commemorative Fabrics from AfricaAfrican Commemorative Fabrics is a collection of machine-made commemorative textiles from various African countries. This collection provides researchers access to digitized fabrics that are printed with images and text documenting events and individuals of historical, political, religious, economic, educational, and sociological significance to African societies.
- International Digital Ephemera Project (IDEP)An initiative to digitize, preserve and provide broad public access to print, images, multimedia, and social networking resources produced worldwide. Several collections are about African resources--click on the links.
- LLMC-Digital This link opens in a new windowLaw Library Microform Consortium (LLMC) provides access to full text US federal material and Canadian materials. Also includes foreign countries, many in Africa--click on Browse Collections to select a country. These are mostly historical documents.
- Music Online: African American Music Reference This link opens in a new windowE-book collection of reference books, biographies, chronologies, sheet music, images, lyrics, liner notes, and discographies which chronicle the history of African American music.
- Music Online: American Music This link opens in a new windowAmerican popular songs of all genres from the 19th century to the 1960s. Includes jazz, blues, gospel, R&B and soul.
- Speeches given at UCLA between 1962-1973You can hear speeches given at UCLA by major Black activists -- such as Kwame Toure (Stokely Carmichael), Imamu Baraka (LeRoi Jones), Eldridge Cleaver, James Baldwin, James Nabrit (president of Howard University).
- The Sixties: Primary Documents and Personal Narratives This link opens in a new windowMemorabilia, posters, letters, newspaper clippings, diaries, articles, etc., organized by theme. Select "civil rights" theme for a focused search.
- Southern Life, Slavery, and the Civil War (via History Vault) This link opens in a new window
Consists of nine modules: Slavery and the Law; Slavery in Antebellum Southern Industries; records focused on the Slave trade and other legal issues pertaining to slavery; four modules of Southern Life and African American History, 1775-1915, Plantation Records; a module on the Civil War entitled "Confederate Military Manuscripts and Records of Union Generals and the Union Army"; and Reconstruction and Military Government after the Civil War. Slavery and the Law features petitions on race, slavery, and free blacks that were submitted to state legislatures and county courthouses between 1775 and 1867.
Enslavement - Online Primary Sources
Primary source material can be found in many places. Below are links to some major online sites that provide access to primary source material.
- Africa and the New Imperialism: European Borders on the African Continent, 1870-1914 This link opens in a new windowAfrica and the New Imperialism documents the period of rapid colonial expansion by European powers across the African continent during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Includes rare printed works, diaries and journals, correspondence, maps, photographs, and film footage.
- Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual RecordA collection of images of the experiences of Africans who were enslaved and transported to the Americas and the lives of their descendants in the slave societies of the New World.
- Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938From 1936 to 1938, over 2,300 former slaves from across the American South were interviewed by writers and journalists under the aegis of the Works Progress Administration. These former slaves, most born in the last years of the slave regime or during the Civil War, provided first-hand accounts of their experiences on plantations, in cities, and on small farms.
- Digital Library on American SlaveryDetailed information on about 150,000 individuals, including slaves, free people of color, and whites, extracted from 2,975 legislative petitions and 14,512 county court petitions, and from a wide range of related documents, including wills, inventories, deeds, bills of sale, depositions, court proceedings, amended petitions, among others.
- EnslavedMichigan State University, Matrix: Center for Digital Humanities & Social Sciences. This Wikibase instance provides for the exploration of individuals who were enslaved, owned slaves, or participated in the historical trade. Search over numerous datasets and browse interconnected data, generate visualizations, and explore short biographies of enslaved and freed peoples.
- Enslaved SpacesA map showing locations connected to the movement, containment, punishment, and trade in human capital within the Black Atlantic from 1440 until 1880. Sites of slavery in Africa served three systems: the domestic slave trade, the tran-Saharan slave trade, and the transatlantic slave trade. The first map covers West, Central, and North Africa.
- First Blacks in the AmericasA digital resource to teach and learn about the very early years of the arrival of free and enslaved blacks to the New World before and after the Transatlantic Slave Trade. The site was developed by the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute (CUNY DSI) at the City College of New York.
- Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive (Gale Primary Sources) This link opens in a new window
Searchable books, serials, manuscripts, court records, and reference publications. Access available for parts 1-4: Debates over Slavery and Abolition, Slave Trade in the Atlantic World, The Institution of Slavery, and The Age of Emancipation.
- Slavery Collections at the New-York Historical SocietyThis site provides access to 14 collections containing diaries, account books, letter books, ships’ logs, indentures, bills of sale, personal papers, and records of institutions, all relating to American slavery and the Atlantic slave trade.
- Sydney Howard Gay’s "Record of Fugitives"In 1855 and 1856, Sydney Howard Gay, the editor of the weekly abolitionist publication, the National Anti-Slavery Standard and a key operative in the underground railroad in New York City, decided for unknown reasons to meticulously record the arrival of fugitive slaves at his office. This website reproduces the Record of Fugitives, both in high resolution images of all of its pages and in a searchable transcript.
- SlaveVoyagesThis site offers three databases on voyages, transactions, and African individuals involved in the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
- Umbra: Search African American History This link opens in a new windowFree digital platform that brings together primary source content from numerous cultural institutions documenting African American history and culture. Includes images, text, sound, video, and physical objects.
Center for Research Libraries
Researchers at UCLA have access to the extensive primary source collections of the Center for Research Libraries, an international consortium of university, college and independent research libraries. CRL acquires and preserves newspapers, journals, documents, archives, and other resources for research and teaching. Material found on CRL Topic Guides can be requested on interlibrary loan or digitized on demand. Relevant Topic Guides are on African Studies or Black Studies.
Microform Resources
Microform is still a major tool for preservation of archival materials. Once a collection of material is created, the vendor will create a guide to the contents. Much of the microform in the UCLA Library is stored in the Southern Regional Library Facility (SRLF) and can be paged for use in the Research Library. The UCLA Library may have guides to collections that are owned by another library--in this case, the needed reels can be requested on Interlibrary Loan.
- Papers of the NAACPThis is the catalog of what ProQuest has in their product list. UCLA has purchased many of these papers. Search the UCLA Library Catalog for "papers of the naacp" in the title.
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Black Studies Research Sources from University Publications of America
UCLA has purchased some of these titles. Using the UCLA Library Catalog scope, search for Author/Creator contains "university Publications of America" AND Any field contains black or Africa* to see a list of the collections we have.