Get to Know...Black History Month

at Murray State University Libraries

Photo credit: Demonstrators march down Constitution Avenue during the March on Washington on Aug. 28, 1963. Hulton Archive/Getty Images

In honor of Black History Month 2025 this February, we share with you a variety of resources on African American/Black History available from University Libraries and beyond. This year's theme is African Americans and Labor. Learn more about Black History Month from the website of the Association of the Study of African American Life and History (ASAALH), founded in 1915 by Dr. Carter G. Woodson. As always, let us know if you have any questions or suggestions about our collections or any of the information provided in our newsletters.

Journals

Access scholarly journals on African American/Black/Africana Studies via our BrowZine journal interface and/or our journal search page including:

African American Review

Black Camera

Black History Bulletin

Black Women, Gender + Families

The Black Scholar

Black Theology

Callaloo Black Literature Journal

Howard Journal of Communications

James Baldwin Review

Journal of African American History

Journal of African American Studies

Journal of Black Studies

Slavery and Abolition

Spectrum: A Journal on Black Men

Women, Gender, and Families of Color

You can also search for journals by title, subject, or ISSN from BrowZine's landing page.

Recently Acquired Books/eBooks on Black History

The quotes below are adapted from the book publishers' descriptions.

The Art of Remembering: Essays on African American Art and History

by Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw / "...Shaw explores African American art and representation from the height of the British colonial period to the present. She engages in the process of 'rememory'—the recovery of facts and narratives of African American creativity and self-representation that have been purposefully set aside, actively ignored, and disremembered."

Twice Forgotten: African Americans and the Korean War: An Oral History

by David P. Cline / "This collection of seventy oral histories, drawn from across the country, features interviews conducted by the author and his colleagues for their American Radio Works documentary, Korea: The Unfinished War, which examines the conflict as experienced by the approximately 600,000 Black men and women who served."

Black Female Intellectuals in Nineteenth Century America: Born to Bloom Unseen?

by Rebecca J. Fraser / "Drawing on letters, personal testimony, works of art, novels, and historic Black newspapers, this book is an interdisciplinary exploration of Black women’s contributions to the intellectual life of nineteenth-century America."

Stamped from the Beginning: A Graphic History of Racist Ideas in America

by Ibram X. Kendi / "Through deep research and a gripping narrative that illuminates the lives of five key American figures, preeminent historian Kendi reveals how understanding and improving the world cannot happen without identifying and facing the racist forces that shape it."

Black Ball: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spencer Haywood, and the Generation that Saved the Soul of the NBA

by Theresa Runstedtler / "Against a backdrop of ongoing resistance to racial desegregation and strident calls for Black Power, the NBA in the 1970s embodied the nation’s imagined descent into disorder...Weaving together a deep knowledge of the game with incisive social analysis, Runstedtler argues that this much-maligned period was pivotal to the rise of the modern-day NBA."

Slavery and Freedom in the Bluegrass State: Revisiting My Old Kentucky Home

by Gerald Smith (editor) / "Smith presents a collection of powerful essays that uncover the long-forgotten stories of pain, protest, and perseverance of African Americans in Kentucky. Using the song and the museum site of My Old Kentucky Home as a central motif, the chapters move beyond historical myths to bring into sharper focus the many nuances of Black life."

Databases, Abstracts, and Online Collections

Ebook Central

A search in our Ebook Central database for keywords related to Black or African American history will return a list of eBooks related to that topic, which you can filter by year published, subject, author, and book status. You can also browse publications by subject.

Race Relations Abstracts

Race Relations Abstracts, a database available via University Libraries subscription and part of the EBSCHOhost research platform, includes bibliographic records covering essential areas related to race relations, including ethnic studies, discrimination, immigration studies, and other areas of key relevance to the discipline.

Library of Congress Digital Collections

The Library of Congress (LOC) Digital Collections are extensive and in-depth, including:

Images free of copyright restrictions are found in Free to Use and Reuse Sets, including collections of African American Women Changemakers and William Gottleib's Jazz Photos.

The Black Freedom Struggle Website

ProQuest's Black Freedom Struggle Website is a collection of freely-available "primary source documents related to critical people and events in African American history, Black Freedom Struggle supports a wide range of students, as well independent researchers and anyone interested in learning more about the foundation of ongoing racial injustice in the U.S. – and the fights against it."

Additional Resources

Association for the Study of African American Life and History

Black History at Murray State

Black History Month website

National Archives: African American History Resources (Washington, DC)

National Center for Civil and Human Rights (Atlanta, GA)

National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel (Memphis, TN)

National Endowment for the Humanities: African American History and Culture in the United States

National Memorial for Peace and Justice and the Legacy Museum (Montgomery, AL)

National Park Service Celebrates Black History Month

New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

Notable Kentucky African Americans Database

Murray State Black Faculty and Staff Association

Murray State Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity and Access (IDEA)

Murray State Office of Student Enrichment, Academic Excellence & Leadership (SEAL)

Pogue Library's Oral Histories on Education and Desegregation

Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture (Washington, DC)

NMAAHC Black History Month 2025

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Get to Know...Black History Month