Primary sources can be documents, images, or artifacts that provide firsthand testimony or direct evidence on an historical topic. This can include original documents created or experienced contemporaneously with the event being researched. Primary sources enable researchers to get as close as possible to an actual historical event or time period. Secondary sources differ in that they are works that interpret or analyze an historical event or period after it has occurred--with the help of primary sources.
A good example of a primary source would be a diary of a Civil War solider or the letters between the soldier and his wife. A book written many years after that analyzes those writings would be a secondary source.
Civil Rights History Project | Library of Congress - A collection of videos, photographs, and interview transcripts of activists from the American Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 - A collection of videos, photographs, and interview transcripts of activists from the American Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
Colored Conventions Project - A crowd-sourced project to transcribe for the web the printed proceedings of 19th century mass meetings held by African Americans for the purpose of creating institutions to advance communal life and advocate for social justice
Documenting the American South - Primary sources including "texts, images, and audio files related to southern history, literature, and culture." Free online resource.
Umbra - A freely available search hub for digital materials (still and moving images, sound, text) in African American history and culture. Searches materials from a wide variety of cultural institutions across the United States.