Library Guides: African American History: Scholarly Encyclopedias & Dictionaries

Scholarly Encyclopedias & Dictionaries

Oxford African-American Studies Center This link opens in a new window
Scholarly essays from highly regard reference works produced by Oxford University Press.
The African American Studies Center features the three-volume Encyclopedia of African American History 1619-1895, published by Oxford in 2006; the three-volume Black Women in America, Second Edition, edited by Darlene Clark Hine in 2005, the highly acclaimed five volume Africana: the encyclopedia of the African and African American experience. The Center also includes content from much-anticipated forthcoming print publications including the African American National Biography project (estimated at 8 volumes), edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., scheduled for publication in 2008; and the Encyclopedia of African American Art and Architecture, due for publication 2007. In addition to these major reference works, AASC offers other key resources from Oxford's reference program, including the Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature and selected articles from other reference works.

Africana: the encyclopedia of the African and African American experience by Kwame Anthony Appiah (Editor); Henry Louis Gates (Editor)
Publication Date: 2005
"The most authoritative research and scholarly reference set on the African experience. Covers prominent individuals, events, trends, places, political movements, art forms, business, religion, ethnic groups, organizations and countries on both sides of the Atlantic."
The African American years
Black firsts : 4,000 ground-breaking and pioneering historical events

Gale Virtual Reference Library (GVRL) This link opens in a new window
Contains essays from hundreds of reference works. Find works on African-Americans under "Multicultural Studies". Includes the African-American Almanac, Encyclopedia of African American Society, and the Historical Dictionary of African-American Television.
A collection of over 2000 reference resources.

Historical Statistics of the United States This link opens in a new window
Quantitative facts of American history.
Provides a comprehensive compendium of statistics from over 1,000 sources recording every aspect of the history of the United States from population to prices; from voting patterns to Vietnam veterans; from energy to education; from abortions to zinc and everything in between. Over 80 scholars have contributed their efforts and expertise to select, assemble, and document the data, to write the introductory essays, and to analyze the material.