Griot Resources

This guide contains recommended resources for doing research on Africa and Africans in the Diaspora.

Research Nexus

Core Databases 

The HistoryMakers Digital Archive is an online African American oral history video archive contains full-text and video interviews with distinguished members of the African American community and contributors to the global society. The collection includes interviews of President Barack Obama, Julian Bond, Marian Wright Edelman, and artist Leon Stull, Marvel Comics graphic artist. Database functions include: captioned video playback, video clip creation, and searchable transcripts.

African-American Experience is an information HUB developed by African American academicians and Librarians. The African American Experience has a diverse collection of information available. This database contains a collection of primary and secondary materials including advertisements, books, court cases, images, maps, and statistics.

Black Studies Center provides current and historical material for researching African-Americans, Africans in the Diaspora, and Mother Africa. This database is a fully cross-searchable gateway to Black Studies materials including access to scholarly essays, recent periodicals, historical newspaper articles, reference books, and other materials. The Black Studies Center content includes “The Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience,” “Index to Black Periodicals Full Text,” “Black Literature Index,” “The Chicago Defender 1912-1975,” “Handbook of African American Literature,” and “Encyclopedia of African Literature.”

Black Studies in Video is a primary resource delivering a distinctive visual and timely documentation of Africans in America. The Black Studies in Video covers culture, family, history, politics, and other aspects of Africans in America.

Black Thought and Culture database is an assemblage of unpublished Africana material, including letters, speeches, essays, ephemera, interviews, periodicals, and trial transcripts; such as: “The Transcript of the Muhammad Ali Draft Evasion Trial,” “The Black Panther Newspaper,” and Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation multimedia materials. This database also includes previous published classic Africana titles; such as: “Souls of Black Folk,” “Post Soul Nation,” and “Sister Outsider.”

African American Communities is a database archive focusing on Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis, New York, and North Carolina communities. This resource contains a diverse collection of primary source materials including art, documents, oral histories, community case studies, essays, images, realia, and media.  

Oxford African American Studies Center is a digital compendium of historical and cultural African and African American resources. This database features articles from Oxford University Press' reference works, primary sources with specially written commentaries, images, maps, charts and tables. The core content includes: "African American National Biography," "Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition," "Black Women in America, Second Edition," "Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619–1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass," "Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896 to the Present: From the Age of Segregation to the Twenty-First Century," "The Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature," "Oxford Companion to Black British History," "Oxford Encyclopedia of African Thought," and "Oxford Dictionary of African Biography.” 

Welcome to the Griot Resources Site, your information gateway for research, teaching, and learning. Feel free to contact me for your research and classroom needs.

                                                                        Leta Hendricks

African American and African Studies Librarian and Comparative Studies Librarian

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Leta Hendricks
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Contact:
222B Thompson Library 1858 Neil Avenue Columbus, OH 43210
614.688.7478
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