The African American experience contains primary documents, including slave narratives, speeches, court cases, quotations, advertisements, statistics, and other documentation, as well as peer-reviewed scholarly essays plus photographs, maps, and other images covering history, biographies, literature, arts, music, popular culture, folklore, business, slavery, the struggle for civil rights, politics, sports, education, science, and other themes.

Edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the Oxford African American Studies Center provides articles from Oxfords key African American studies reference works, primary sources with specially written commentaries, images, maps, charts, tables, and timelines.

Black Studies Center is a fully cross-searchable gateway to Black Studies including scholarly essays, recent periodicals, historical newspaper articles, reference books, and much more. It combines essential resources for research and teaching in Black Studies, including The Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience, Index to Black Periodicals Full Text, Black Literature Index, and the Chicago Defender historical newspaper.