This website contains approximately 1,600 documents focused on six different phases of Black Freedom: 1. Slavery and the Abolitionist Movement (1790-1860) -- 2. The Civil War and the Reconstruction Era (1861-1877) -- 3. Jim Crow Era from 1878 to the Great Depression (1878-1932) -- 4. The New Deal and World War II (1933-1945) -- 5. The Civil Rights and Black Power Movements (1946-1975) -- 6. The Contemporary Era (1976-2000). The documents presented here represent a selection of primary sources available in several ProQuest databases. The databases represented in this website include American Periodicals, Black Abolitionist Papers, ProQuest History Vault, ProQuest Congressional, Supreme Court Insight and Alexander Street's Black Thought and Culture.

Northwestern University Library's subscription covers NAACP Papers: Branch Department, Branch Files, and Youth Department Files; NAACP Papers: Special Subjects; NAACP Papers: The NAACP's Major Campaigns--Scottsboro, Anti-Lynching, Criminal Justice, Peonage, Labor, and Segregation and Discrimination Complaints and Responses.

John L. LeFlore (1903–1976) was the most significant figure in the struggle for black equality in Mobile, Alabama, throughout southern Alabama and Mississippi, and along the Florida Gulf Coast. Materials in the collection document LeFlore's prolific work in both public and private life. LeFlore was the first African American appointed to the Housing Board and, with J. Gary Cooper, was the first African American elected to the state legislature from Mobile since Reconstruction. / The Non-Partisan Voters League was organized in Mobile, Alabama. The exact date of its origin is unknown but it is believed to be before 1956, the year the attorney general of the state of Alabama and the state court system forced the NAACP to cease all operations in the state. The bulk of the materials date between 1961 and 1975. - Publisher