Note: Slave narratives provide an invaluable resource for studying the history of American slavery. These primary source materials provide a unique insight into everyday life under that peculiar institution (a popular euphemism for slavery). The resources listed in this guide include examples of slave narrative and other resources for helping you identify items of interest for the study of the American slave narrative.
To Find Books
Use the MERLIN Library Catalog and the MOBIUS Union Catalog to find resources relevant to your research. Relevant works can be found using subject headings (Library of Congress) such as:
- Slaves - United States - Biography
- Slaves' Writings, American
- Slaves - Southern States - Biography
- Women Slaves - United States - Biography
Narratives from individual states can also be found using subject headings such as:
Slave narratives and works related to the study of slave narratives can also be found by browsing the shelves on the fourth floor between the call numbers E441 and E449.
Finally, more general works on slavery in American history can be found using subject headings such as:
- Slavery - United States
- Missouri Compromise
- Slavery - Southern States
- Kansas-Nebraska Bill
- Slavery - Kentucky
To find the location of a book in Miller Nichols Library, see the Location Guide.
To Find Articles
Remote (off-campus) access to databases is available only to UMKC students, faculty, and staff. All other users must access online resources within the Libraries. Begin searching by selecting a database. After selection you will be prompted to provide a UMKC Single Sign-On user name and password OR a 9-digit UMKC ID number followed by the letter k (example: 0123456789k) and last name, as needed.
- Black Studies On Disc. 1600s - present. Accessible only from the computers in the Information Commons on the First Floor of the Miller Nichols Library. Ask for assistance at the Reference Desk.An interdisciplinary index to scholarship relevant to the field of African-American Studies, including African-American history and literature.
- OmniFile V Full Text (Wilson) 1982 - present.
Save to del.icio.us
Selected full text 1994 - present.Provides indexing, abstracts, and some full-text from five of Wilson's full-text indexes: General Science Full Text, Humanities Full Text, Readers' Guide Full Text, Social Sciences Full Text, and Wilson Business Full Text. - MLA International Bibliography (Chadwyck-Healey) 1884 - present. Save to del.icio.usAn index to scholarship in literature, linguistics, film, folklore, and cultural
studies. The print version of this bibliography is available in the Miller Nichols
Library and
covers 1921 - 1999. The location and call number are Reference Index Wall Z7006
.M64. See the MLA
Directory of Periodicals for a list of periodicals indexed.
- ISI Web of Science
Note: This database is no longer available.. Permits multidisciplinary searching for articles from international academic journals in the sciences, social sciences, and the arts and humanities. This combined database for the Science Citation Index, the Social Sciences Citation Index, and the Arts & Humanities Citation Index offers cited reference searching. Link to ISI Web of Science user's guide. - JSTOR 1838 - present. Save to del.icio.us
Full text. Coverage varies by title.
New Additional journals are now available with the addition of these collections: A&S Complement, A&S V, and Business II.Contains fully searchable scanned articles from selected journals in a broad range of disciplines, including African-American studies, art, ecology, economics, education, history, law, literature, music, general science, sociology, and statistics. (To see a complete list of discipines and journal titles, link to the JSTOR browse list.) Covers the full run of journals from the first issue of volume one; however, the most recent three to five years of journals are not generally available.
Specifically, some of the journal titles include:- African American
Review (1992-1997)
- Black American Literature Forum (1976-1991)
- Negro American Literature Forum (1967-1976)
- Callaloo (1976-1994)
- Journal of Black Studies (1970-1997)
- Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (1993-1998)
- Journal of Negro Education (1932-1995)
- Journal of Negro History (1916-1997)
- Transition (1961-1995)
- African American
Review (1992-1997)
University Libraries Photocopying and Printing Services
Reference Sources: Encyclopedias, Bibliographies, Slave Narratives
Reference sources are useful for locating background information, definitions, general descriptions, and basic facts. Use these books to help you select or focus your research topic.
All call numbers in this guide refer to the UMKC Miller Nichols Library, unless otherwise noted. Titles are linked to the corresponding MERLIN Library Catalog record.
Encyclopedias and Dictionaries
| Afro-American Writers Before the Harlem Renaissance, Volume 50 of the Dictionary of Literary Biography | Ready Ref PN451 .D43 |
| Encyclopedia
of African-American Culture and History (5 vols.) |
Ref E185 .E54 |
Bibliographies
| Black
Slavery in the Americas: An Interdisciplinary Bibliography, 1865-1980 Somewhat dated, but provides a good starting point for general research on the history of slavery in North and South America. |
Ref Z7164.S6 S63 |
Additional Sources
| A History of Afro-American Literature | PS153 .N5 J33 |
| The
Slave Narrative: Its Place in American History |
E444 .S8 |
Slave Narratives (Selected examples)
| Six Women's Slave Narratives | E444 .S59 |
| The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography (19 vols. + Supplements) | E444 .A45 |
| Up from Slavery; An Autobiography by Booker T. Washington | E185.97 .W3163 |
Note: Many more examples of slave narratives, and materials relevant to the study of American slavery can be found in our Special Collections Department.
Web Resources
- Library of Congress
(www.loc.gov/)- American Memory
Collections
(memory.loc.gov/ammem)- Born in Slavery:
Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938
(memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/) - American
Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project 1936-1940
(memory.loc.gov/ammem/wpaintro/wpahome.html)
- Born in Slavery:
Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938
- American Memory
Collections
- North American
Slave Narratives
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
(metalab.unc.edu/docsouth/neh/neh.html)
For additional resources, please consult the Library Guide to Ethnic Literature.
Use search engines linked on the Internet Search Tools page to identify additional Web resources.
For further assistance, please contact the
Miller Nichols Library Reference Desk at (816) 235-1534.
