Resources for studying African-American Heritage at the CT State Library

For additional print resources, please see a librarian or search our catalog.

• Baaki, Brian. “Circulating the Black Rapist: Sketches of the Life of Joseph Mountain and Early American Networks of Print.” The New England Quarterly 90, no. 1 (March 2017): 36-68. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26405832. 

• Bickford, Christopher P. “The Lost Connecticut Census of 1762 Found.” The Connecticut Historical Society Bulletin 44, no. 2 (1979): 33-43. [CSL call number F 91 .C67].

• Crone-Morange, Paulette and Lavin, Lucianne. “The Schaghticoke Tribe and English Law: A Study of Community Survival.” Connecticut History Review 43, no. 2 (2004): 132-162. https://doi.org/10.2307/44369645.

• Feinberg, Harvey M. “Black New Haven Residents During the Nineteenth Century: Resources Located in the Whitney Library, New Haven Museum and Historical Society.” Connecticut History Review 57, no. 2 (2018): 197. https://doi.org/10.5406/connhistrevi.57.2.0197. 

• Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, & Abolition. “The Emergence of Free Black Communities in Connecticut, 1800-1830.” Citizens ALL: African Americans in Connecticut 1700-1850. 2007. https://doczz.net/doc/8751632/1-module-iii--the-emergence-of-free-black-communities-in.

• Hilleary, Cecily. “Enslaved Native Americans Played Central Role in 1600s New England Households.” VOA. January 27, 2021. https://www.voanews.com/usa/enslaved-native-americans-played-central-role-1600s-new-england-households. 

• Lavin, Lucianne. “Connecticut Connections: The Places That Teach Us About Historical Archaeology.” Connecticut History Review 46, no. 2 (2007): 294-308. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44369786. 

• Mancini, Jason R. “Beyond Reservation: Indians, Maritime Labor, and Communities of Color from Eastern Long Island Sound, 1713-1861.” Connecticut History Review 54, no. 1 (2015): 143-163. https://doi.org/10.2307/44370383.

• Mancini, Jason. “‘In Contempt and Oblivion’: Censuses, Ethnogeography, and Hidden Indian Histories in Eighteenth-Century Southern New England.” Ethnohistory 62, no. 1 (2015): 61-94. https://doi.org/10.1215/00141801-2821683.

• Menschel, David. “Abolition Without Deliverance: The Law of Connecticut Slavery 1784-1848.” The Yale Law Journal 111, no. 1 (2001): 183-222. https://doi.org/10.2307/797518.

• Naumec, David J. “Connecticut Indians in the War of Independence.” Connecticut History Review 47, no. 2 2008 (Fall 2008): 181-218. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44369867.

• Nowatzki, Robert. “From Datum to Databases: Digital Humanities, Slavery, and Archival Reparations.” The American Archivist 83, no. 2 (2020): 429-448. https://doi.org/10.17723/0360-9081-83.2.429. 

• Tonat, Ian Edward. “‘Thus Did God Break the Head of that Leviathan’: Performative Violence and Judicial Beheadings of Native Americans in Seventeenth-Century New England” (2014). Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. William & Mary. Paper 1539626765. https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21220/s2-ycqh-3b72. 

General Research Guides

Research guides compiled by the Connecticut State Library and other organizations.

Conscientious Description

Resources to find culturally sensitive terminology and descriptions of ancestral, racial, ethnic, and gender identity.

Emancipation and Freedom

Information about emancipation and freedom in Connecticut and New England, as well as the emergence of free Black communities.

Laws

Information about various laws in colonial and early American Connecticut, including laws regarding free and enslaved African, Black, and Indigenous persons.

Slavery and Servitude

Information about slavery and servitude in Connecticut and New England, as well as the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Additional People and Subjects of Interest

Genealogy

Laws

Excerpts from The Public Statute Laws of the State of Connecticut, Book 1, Published by Authority of the General Assembly (1808) at the HeinOnline database.