For information on Gainesville, Alachua County and Marion County, see the section called "History of Places" below. You can also visit the online version of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program to find transcripts of interviews with African American residents across Florida, including. Go to the search box at Oral History and type the designation that was used for this oral history project: "Florida Blacks". This search will create a list of all 113 interviews. To see interviews with Gainesville residents only (51 interviews), type "Florida Blacks Gainesville".

To do general searches on topics of African American history, race relations, etc, you can try different searches in the library catalog. For example, search the UF Library Catalog using "Title" from the drop down menu and then type in one of the following:
Black studies research sources
Research collections in labor studies
Research collections in womens studies
Papers of the NAACP

The search results will list the titles of major microfilm collections UF holds in these areas. Two other important collections for race relations in the late 19th century are Records of the Assistant Commissioner, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, 1865-1870 (National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.) and Freedmen's Aid Society Records, 1866-1932 (Wilmington, Del.). There are two copies of the former (one in Florida history and the other in the main library) and one copy of the latter, with a printed guide, in Florida history.