Documenting the American South--The Church in the Southern Black Community
Documenting the American South is a digital library that offers online access to books, memoirs, images, songs, artifacts, diaries and more. The collection's emphasis is on the South's cultural, literary, and historic legacy, from its beginnings though the early 20th century.
According to the DocSouth website, "'The Church in the Southern Black Community' collects autobiographies, biographies, church documents, sermons, histories, encyclopedias, and other published materials. These texts present a collected history of the way Southern African Americans experienced and transformed Protestant Christianity into the central institution of community life. Coverage begins with white churches' conversion efforts, especially in the post-Revolutionary period, and depicts the tensions and contradictions between the egalitarian potential of evangelical Christianity and the realities of slavery. It focuses, through slave narratives and observations by other African American authors, on how the black community adapted evangelical Christianity, making it a metaphor for freedom, community, and personal survival."
The following are examples of the digitized texts included in the project:
- History of African Methodism in Virginia, or Four Decades in the Old Dominion
Butt, Israel L. (Israel La Fayette), b. 1848
Hampton, Va.: Hampton Institute Press, 1908. 253 p. - Afro-American Encyclopaedia
Haley, James T.
Nashville, Tenn.: Haley & Florida, 1895. xiv, 639 p. - Recollections of Seventy Years
Payne, Daniel Alexander, 1811-1893
Nashville: A. M. E. Sunday School Union, 1888. 335 p.
--Monique Prince, Undergraduate Services Librarian.