Research Guides: African American and Black Diaspora Studies: Newspapers and Academic Journals

Finding Newspapers

NYU Libraries has access to over 1,200 databases that cover a wide range of topics. Use the Databases tab on the NYU Libraries website to find articles as well as historical newspapers, images, and more.

Not sure where to start? We've curated two lists: one list specific African American and Black diaspora studies and another specific to news and newspapers that would be useful at any point in the research process.

Databases

Accessible Archives This link opens in a new window
NYU's subscription provides the full text of several periodicals (and a few publicly available books). It is particularly strong on African American and abolitionist newspapers, the history of the United States before Reconstruction, and the campaign for women's suffrage in the United States.
African American Historical Serials Collection This link opens in a new window
The African American Historical Serials Collection is an archive of periodicals that document the history of African American religious life and culture between 1829 and 1922. It includes newspapers and magazines, plus reports and annuals from African American religious organizations, including churches and social service agencies.
African Newspapers This link opens in a new window
The African Newspapers database includes 19th and 20th century newspapers, and offers access to diverse titles from Africa across a range of academic disciplines.
Black Historical Newspapers (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
Black Historical Newspapers (formerly Historical African American Newspapers). Full historic content from major black newspapers: The Chicago Defender, The New York Amsterdam News, The Atlanta Daily World, The Baltimore Afro-American, and Los Angeles Sentinel.
Jamaica Newspaper Archive This link opens in a new window
Access Jamaica Newspaper Archive and discover stories of the past with NewspaperArchive.com. The archive covers Kingston history from 1834-2023, with lots of content from smaller, local newspapers. Articles have been scanned as PDFs and include images and advertisements, and are full text searchable.
NewsBank This link opens in a new window
Newsbank searches a collection of databases from the information vendor Newsbank, including the Archive of Americana, World News Archive, Foreign Broadcast Information Service Reports, and Access World News. These collections include: Early American Newspapers, Series XV, 1822-1879: Immigrant Communities; American Underworld: The Flash Press; African American Newspapers, Series 1, African American Newspapers, Series 2, Ethnic American Newspapers (Balch), 1799-1971; Joint Publications Research Service Reports (JPRS), 1957-1995; Sowetan Collection; Financial Mail Collection, Sunday Times Collection; Business Day Collection
World Newspaper Archive This link opens in a new window
The World Newspaper Archive offers a search of diverse titles from Africa, Latin America, and South Asia across a broad range of academic disciplines. The database includes 19th and 20th-century newspapers.

Academic Journals

The Black Scholar
Founded in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1969 by Robert Chrisman and Nathan Hare, THE BLACK SCHOLAR (TBS) is the first modern Black studies and research journal and is currently the leading such journal in the United States.
The International Journal of Africana Studies
The International Journal of Africana Studies is published Biannually by the National Council for Black Studies in Cooperation with Alabama State University.
The Journal of African American History
Founded in 1916 as The Journal of Negro History by Dr. Carter G. Woodson, The Journal of African American History (JAAH) is the leading scholarly publication in the field of African American history.
Proudflesh: New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics, & Consciousness
ProudFlesh: New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics, and Consciousness [PROUDFLESH], is a peer-reviewed journal, a terrain for promoting exchange, thinking, for igniting the common impulse to create, to perform, to interrogate in spite of the odds fuelled by repression and rootlessness.
Small Axe: A Journal of Criticism
Small Axe focuses on publishing critical work that examines the ideas that guided the formation of Caribbean modernities.
Transition: The Magazine of Africa and the Diaspora
Born in Africa and bred in the Diaspora, Transition is a unique forum for the freshest, most compelling, most curious ideas from and about the Black world.