Offering 230 full-text documents, this collection presents the written lives of American slaves, including all known published slave narratives and many published biographies of slaves. Materials include autobiographical narratives of fugitive and former slaves published in a range of formats, such as broadsides, pamphlets, and books.

In addition, biographies of fugitive and formal slaves and fictionalized slave narratives are included. The collection includes well-known authors, such as Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass, as well as many authors less commonly known. Documents are available in HTML and SGML/TEI file formats and are accessible through alphabetical and chronological listings. Users can also view images of the covers, spines, title pages, and versos of title pages. Documents have been indexed by subject, but searches return materials in additional collections. An introductory essay by Professor William Andrews is available.

This site consists of nearly 300 images of Afro-Virginians dating from the 1880s to the early 20th century. Images are scanned from prints taken by father and son, George S. Cook and Huestes P. Cook, principally in the Richmond and Central Virginia area. Users can search the digital collection by keyword or browse images, including agriculture, education, recreation, religion, tobacco, and urban life. Documentation of labor is the most extensive, while the images of children ad education are fascinating. This site is valuable to those studying African-American life at the turn of the century or Virginia history.

From Slavery to Freedom: The African-American Pamphlet Collection, 1822-1909 is precisely what it says, a collection of 396 pamphlets written by African Americans or by non-African Americans writing about slavery, Reconstruction, the colonization of Africa, and other pertinent topics.

According to the website, "[. . . t]he materials range from personal accounts and public orations to organizational reports and legislative speeches." Prominent authors include, but are certainly not limited to, Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington.

Material can be browsed by title, author, or subject; or you can run a key word search. If you need more material than what is available in the collection itself, there is a list of external resources with related content.

In a well-organized and enjoyable format, this site introduces Thomas Wright (Fats) Waller, one of jazz music's most renowned pianists. This exhibit features recordings and photographs of Fats Waller at the pinnacle of his career. The introduction to this exhibit "Life and Time of Fats Waller" includes a 1,000-word essay about Waller's legendary piano style. Visitors will also want to read the 500-word essay about his recording legacy and a 1,200-word essay that describes the continued influence of Waller's music today. Many of the more than 50 photographs, displayed in a slide-show format, have appeared in other publications, but others are shown for the first time. They include pictures of theater marquees and billboards, scenes aboard a ship bound for Europe, and pictures of Waller backstage as well as on-stage in performance. Other kinds of documents in the collection include seven record covers, several handwritten drafts of music, and a letter penned by Waller. As users navigate the sections, recordings from some of Waller's most memorable compositions play, including "Spreading the Rhythm Around" and "Honeysuckle Rose." For those seeking to learn more about the life and musical achievements of Fats Waller, the site includes 20 references to relevant books and articles.

This site contains biographical profiles of over 200 African American men and women who have contributed to the advancement of science and engineering. The site provides brief (roughly 250 word) biographies of scholars from fields such as biology, chemistry, physics, zoology, and veterinary medicine, as well as inventors. Among the scientists included in the site are prominent figures like George Washington Carver, scientist and inventor of numerous industrial applications for agricultural products, and astronomer and mathematician Benjamin Banneker.

Each entry also includes a bibliography of sources for further biographical information. The site is indexed by scientist name and profession, and there are special sections for the biographies of 20 women scientists and 14 of the first African Americans to receive PhDs in science. Though there are no primary documents on this site, it is a good place to find general information on prominent African American scientists throughout American history.

Unadorned and easy to navigate, this comprehensive website contains 46 first-person accounts of slavery and African life dating from 1682 to 1937. Each document is introduced with an illustrative sentence or short paragraph that describes the historical context.

There are both recognizable and unknown actors in this website. Former slaves such as Olaudah Equiano, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Tubman, as well as white abolitionists such as John Brown express forceful, if familiar, condemnations of slavery.

In addition, there are unheralded historical voices that not only speak poignantly, but also reflect different (African-centered) perspectives. For example, a ship doctor's searing report of the Middle Passage; a slave husband's anguished letter to his wife after she was sold; and black social reformers' protests against the cruel punishments of slave owners.

When taken together, the assembled testimonies, including those by women, present slavery as a deeply entrenched institution that provoked a wide range of compelling commentary.

The art of Dox Thrash (1893-1965) is exhibited in more than 60 images—mostly reproductions of his prints, but also including drawings and photographs of the artist at work. Born in Griffin, GA, Thrash spent most of his life in Philadelphia, which he expressively documented in his artworks. The exhibit proceeds along a timeline from birth to death that allows visitors to read a biographical narrative placing his life in appropriate historical context and to view images relevant to each period. Texts and images also can be downloaded in PDF format. Thrash's prints illuminated aspects of African American community life in Philadelphia with scenes of street life, workers, domestic scenes, and leisure activities. Thrash also portrayed scenes drawn from his experience as a soldier in World War I, life on the road, and the lynching of blacks.

In addition to his artistic creations, Thrash invented a new and influential printmaking technique—the carborundum process—in the 1930s as he worked in the WPA Graphic Arts Workshop. The exhibit provides descriptions and images of nine techniques Thrash used, and also includes four audio files of the curator discussing the process of putting the exhibit together. Valuable for students of the history of art and for those interested in expressive depictions of African American life and culture in Philadelphia.

More than 2,300 firsthand accounts of slavery and 500 black and white photographs of former slaves are presented on this website. These materials were collected in the 1930s by the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Project Administration, a Roosevelt Administration New Deal bureau.

Each slave narrative transcript is accompanied by notes including the name of the narrator, place and date of the interview, interviewer's name, length of transcript, and catalog information. Each photograph has similar notes. Browse photographs and narratives by keyword, subject, and narrator. An introductory essay discusses the significance of slave narratives and a selection of excerpts from eight narratives along with photographs of the former slaves. This is a rich resource for exploring slavery, historical memory, and New Deal efforts to document America's past.

This section, recently added to the Avalon Project, contains complete copies of Martin Luther King Jr.'s August 28, 1963, "I Have A Dream" speech; Frederick Douglass' 1855 My Bondage and Freedom; The Narrative of Sojourner Truth, dictated by Sojourner Truth and edited by Olive Gilbert; W.E.B. Du Bois' 1903 The Souls of Black Folk; and Up From Slavery: An Autobiography by Booker T. Washington. All of the transcripts are legible and available in HTML format.