Web Sites Concerning the American South

Documenting the American South
Sponsored by the Academic Affairs Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, DAS is “a collection of sources on Southern history, literature, and culture from the colonial period through the first decades of the 20th century.” More than 1,000 books and manuscripts dealing with slavery, literature, education, and religion in the South are divided into categories that include: First-Person Narratives of the American South; Library of Southern Literature; North American Slave Narratives; The Southern Homefront, 1861-1865; The Church in the Southern Black Community; and The North Carolina Experience, Beginnings to 1940.

Southern Oral History Program
Also housed at the University of North Carolina, the Southern Oral History Program is “committed to preserving the voices and perspectives of everyday people.” The site holds more than 2900 interviews with people from all walks of life.There are also transcripts of the interviews .

First Person Narratives of the American South, 1860 – 1920
A wide variety of primary documents provide insight into Southerns viewpoints about the American South. “It includes the diaries, autobiographies, memoirs, travel accounts, and ex-slave narratives of not only prominent individuals, but also of relatively inaccessible populations: women, African Americans, enlisted men, laborers, and Native Americans.” There are also forty first-person narratives, many published before 1860

Race and Place
Maintained by the Virginia Center for Digital History, this multimedia site seeks “to connect race with place” with its collection of oral histories, political broadsides, photographs, maps, and letters.The focus is on segregated Charlottesville, Virginia, from the late 1880s until the mid 1900s. Of particular interest are the two African-American owned newspapers from the period.