The Georgia Room has an extensive collection of historical and genealogical materials on Marietta, Cobb County, Georgia, and over half of the rest of the fifty states. Most of the materials in the Georgia Room collection are in book form, although other formats are included, such as photos, maps, and microform.

The Georgia Room has a wealth of resources for individuals looking for information about their family’s history. The Georgia Room does not purchase individual family histories, but does accept them as donations. Our knowledgeable staff members are available to help you with your genealogy research, and while Georgia Room staff do not conduct genealogical research for individuals, they do assist in research projects.

Any outside research requests should be directed to georgiac@cobbcat.org. Because of limited staff, Georgia Room employees will spend no longer than one hour on any single mail, fax, electronic, or telephone request. These requests should generally be restricted to straightforward reference (obituary requests, etc.). Requests will not be researched over the phone, they will be written down along with the name, phone number, and email of the researcher. Requests will be handled as soon as possible in the order in which they were received.

This catalog will be updated periodically as it expands and is properly formatted.

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The Georgia Room’s African American Collection is a collection of materials highlighting the historical and cultural contributions of African Americans in Marietta and Cobb County as well as throughout the southeastern United States. The collection contains materials highlighting the historical, social, civic, religious, economic, and cultural lives of people within the African diaspora living in the South.

The primary part of the African American collection is shelved separately and contains guides for conducting African American genealogy, biographies of notable individuals from Georgia, and those who have shaped the history of local communities. The collection also contains unique resources, such as books and photographs, as well as original documents and newspaper clippings in our vertical file collection.

These materials do not circulate and are not available through Interlibrary Loan.

Collection Highlights

• African American Biographies
• African American National Biography Series
• African American Genealogy Books/Guides
• Cobb County African American Vertical Files
• Cobb County Oral History Series
• Cobb NAACP/Civil Rights Interviews

 Recommended Websites and Databases

• African American Funeral Programs
• African American Gateway
• African American Research
• African Americans in Science (via the American Chemical Society)
• African American Studies Center
  • The Oxford African American Studies Center combines the authority of carefully edited reference works with sophisticated technology to create the most comprehensive collection of scholarship available online to focus on the lives and events which have shaped African American and African history and culture. The Oxford African American Studies Center includes a vast amount of reference articles and scholarly works alongside a carefully selected editorial program of supplementary material made up of more than 400 primary source documents with commentaries, over 2,500 searchable images and multimedia resources, as well as hundreds of charts, tables and graphs, maps, timelines, and learning resources for students and teachers. This rich, dynamic resource is edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr., Director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research at Harvard University. The Oxford African American Studies Center provides students, professors, and researchers with more than 10,000 articles by top scholars in the field. At the heart of this unparalleled resource is the 8 volume African American National Biography with online-only articles added throughout the year, the 5 volume Africana, as well as the Encyclopedia of African American History 1619-1895, the Encyclopedia of African American History 1896-the Present, and Black Women in America (2nd Edition), and more.
• AfriGeneas
• Afro American Historical and Genealogical Society
• American Slave Narratives
• Black Freedom Struggle in the US
• Black Life in America
• Civil Rights Digital Library
• Freedman’s Bank Records (through HeritageQuest)
• Freedom on the Move
  • An online interactive database listing thousands of fugitive slave advertisements in North America. An account is necessary to use the database, but access to the project is free.
• Georgia Archives
• Lemon Street Schools Oral History Collection KSU
• Library of Congress: Slaves and the Courts, 1740 – 1860
• National Civil Rights Museum
• Vanishing Georgia
  • Selected black history photographs pertaining to Cobb County
• Voyages: Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database 

 African American Authors of Georgia

Cobb County Public Library has compiled a list of African American authors who were born in Georgia or have lived in Georgia for at least five years. If you know of an author that needs to be added, please let us know! Call (770) 528-2333 or email us at georgiac@cobbcat.org.