Collins Memorial Library: African American Studies: Articles

What's a secondary source?

In secondary sources, authors analyze and interpret primary source materials.

Secondary sources can be scholarly or popular. Scholarly sources (sometimes called "academic" or "peer-reviewed" sources) are written by and for experts and typically include bibliographies and citations. Popular sources are written for a general, non-expert audience and can be authored by anyone.

News Databases

Ethnic NewsWatch
Focus is on ethnic area studies, and related arts, business, education, environment, history, journalism, political science and sociology news. Some Spanish language sources are available.
Nexis Uni (formerly LexisNexis Academic)
Access to news, business, governmental and legal sources.
Chicago Defender Historical Newspaper (1909-1975)
Founded in 1905, the oldest and most respected African-American newspaper in Chicago.
New York Times (nytimes.com)
Full and unlimited access to all of the content on The New York Times web site. Users must register and log in. Once you’ve registered for an account, which you must do from within the campus network (i.e. on-campus), you may “log in” to that account from anywhere, anytime.

Once on the campus network, or connected to vDesk, to register go to: https://nytimesineducation.com/access-nyt/ and search for "University of Puget Sound."

Click "Create Account" and complete the registration fields using your @pugetsound.edu email address.

If you have previously registered your email address on The NYT site, click the "Already have an account? Log in here" link just below the "Create Account" button.

Access to the nytimes.com is partially supported by a contribution from ASUPS.

University e-Journal

Race & Pedagogy Journal
The Race and Pedagogy Journal provides a forum to cultivate a critical discussion around the issues of teaching and race to mitigate the effects of discrimination and structural racism, and thereby, improve education for all students. R&PJ is managed and edited by the University of Puget Sound under the auspices of the Race and Pedagogy Initiative. The journal was established in 2015 and publishes two issues a year. The editorial board seeks content that is diverse in voice and content, including scholarly articles, creative writing, personal narratives, and artwork by faculty, student scholars, practitioners, and the general public.

Search Primo

Key Databases

Black Studies Center
Includes scholarly essays, recent periodicals, historical newspaper articles, reference books, and much more. Including The Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience, Index to Black Periodicals Full Text, Black Literature Index, and the Chicago Defender historical newspaper from 1912-1975.
Academic Search Premier
A multidisciplinary database containing full text journal, magazine & newspaper articles, many from peer-reviewed titles. This scholarly collection covers information in nearly every area of academic study.
ProQuest Central
Covering more than 160 subject areas, ProQuest Central is a large aggregated database of periodical content. It features a diversified mix of content including scholarly journals, trade publications, magazines, books, newspapers, reports and videos.
JSTOR
An interdisciplinary journal archive. It includes archives of over one thousand leading academic journals across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, as well as select monographs and other materials valuable for academic work. Includes the Artstor image collections.
Project MUSE
Interdisciplinary database includes books and articles from scholarly publishers with focus on humanities and social science.
America: History & Life This link opens in a new window
Indexes articles, books, essays in books, and dissertations on the history and culture of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present.
Black Thought and Culture
A collection of approximately 100,000 pages of non-fiction writings by major American black leaders—teachers, artists, politicians, religious leaders, athletes, war veterans, entertainers, and other figures—covering 250 years of history. Includes letters, speeches, prefatory essays, political leaflets, interviews, periodicals, and trial transcripts.

Subject Related Databases

For more information, try these subject related databases.

Sociological Abstracts
Abstracts and indexes the international literature in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences.

PsycINFO
Use this comprehensive database to find articles and more about topics related to psychology and African Americans

ERIC (Education Resource Information Center)
The Education Resource Information Center, provides access to education literature and resources.

Finding Full Text Articles

If you have a citation to an article and want to find the full text,use Primo's advanced search. Change the "any field" to title. Type the journal title and the material type to journals.

Journal example:

Tan, Chang. 2012. "Art for/of the Masses." Third Text 26, no. 2: 177-194.

Where's The Fulltext?

There are three methods for obtaining the actual articles you wish to read:

Method 1: In some databases, you will be able to link directly to the fulltext article. Look around, as different databases have different interfaces. Look for a link or buttons that says "Check for Full Text" or Download PDF or similar. If given the choice between a PDF or HTML version of the article, always choose the PDF format. This will give you an exact image, including page numbers, of the article as it appears in the paper journal.

Method 2: If a direct link to full text is not available, then look for a link that checks for fulltext in Primo Search to see if the library subscribes to the journal.

Method 3: Use Interlibrary Loan. See box below.