Black History Month Resources

First be sure and check online databases such as Gale Virtual Library, NOVELny, World Book and Britannica. These sources have excellent materials covering African American History.

General History

African voices http://www.mnh.si.edu/africanvoices/ Site maintained by the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. Examines the influence of Africa’s people and culture.

The African American Mosaic http://www.loc.gov Type in African American in Search box.

Exhibit and resources guide that to materials available at the Library of Congress. Includes both images and texts.

National Urban League http://www.nul.org/index.html

Africans in America http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/home.html PBS overview of African American history which includes excerpts from many primary sources.

African American History Through the Arts Project http://cghs.dade.k12.fl.us/african-american

Black History Hotlist http://www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/BHM/bh_hotlist.html

A wonderful site with many, many additional links to African American History Sites.

CNN:Black History Month 1999 http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/1999/blackhistory

Internet African American Black History Challenge http://www.brightmoments.com/blackhistory.

National Civil Rights Museum http://www.civilrightsmuseum.org

AFRICAN AMERICAN PRIMARY SOURCES

Gateway to African American History http://amlife.america.gov/amlife/diversity/index.html

African American Writers: On-line E-Texts http://falcon.jmu.edu/~ramseyil/afroonline.htm

Africans in America (PBS) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia

African American Women Writers of the 19^th Century http://digital.nypl.org/schomburg/writers_aa19/toc.html

Salute to Pioneering Cartoonists of Color http://www.clstoons.com/paoc/paocopen.htm

Art of the Harlem Renaissance http://www.iniva.org/harlem/index2.html

Images of African Americans from the 19^th Century http://digital.nypl.org/schomburg/images_aa19

CIVIL WAR & SLAVERY

Born In Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writer’s Project, 1936-1938

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/snhome.html

From Slavery to Freedom: The African-American Pamphlet Collection, 1824-1909

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/aap/aaphome.html

Afro-Louisiana History and Genealogy http://www.ibiblio.org/laslave

This site documents over 100,000 slaves in Louisiana during the 18^th and 19^th century.

Includes slave names, genders, ages, occupations, places of origin, prices that were paid for slaves, et.

Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in America: A Visual Record

http:Hitchcock.itc.viriginia.edu/Slavery/index/php

Hundreds of images that depict slavery and the slave trade, including maps, illustrations and photographs.

Through History with Amistad http://www.undergroundrailroad.org. Type in Amistad

Black History at HarpWeek.com http://blackhistory.harpweek.com

Full page images of selected Harper’s Weekly articles on African Americans published between 1857-1878.

Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project 1936-1938

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/snhome.html

This is the American Memory collection of more than 2,300 first person accounts of slavery plus 500 photographs. Also you can listen to interviews of 23 former slaves in the American Memory Collection, voices from the Days of Slavery: Former Slaves Tell Their Stories.

Death or Liberty Exhibition http://www.lva.lib.va.us/whoweare/exhibits/DeathLiberty/index.htm

Exhibition at the Library of Virginia covering Nat Turner’s Rebellion of 1831 and the Harpers Ferry raid of 1859. Includes a selection of transcribed and digitalized documents.

Prehistory of the Underground Railroad www.cr.nps.gov/nr/travel/underground/slvtrade.htm

Underground Railroad http://www.nationalgeographic.com/railroad

National Geographic Presents Underground railroad—an interactive journey

What was the Underground Railroad? http://education.ucdavis.edu/NEW/STC/lesson/socstud/railroad/whatis.htm

Underground Railroad in Franklin country http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/vshadow2/UGRR/underground.html

Underground Railroad in Rochester New York http://www.history.rochester.edu/class/ugrr/home.html

Underground Railroad—Routes to Freedom http://www.nationalgeographic.com/features/99/railroad/map.html

The Dred Scott Case http://library.wustl.edu/vlib/dredscott This is a collection of St. Louis Court recoreds that document the Scotts’ early struggle to gain their freedom through legal litigation.

Freedom’s Journal http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/libraryarchives/aanp/freedom/ This is a project by the Wisconsin Historical Society to digitize all 103 issues of the first African-American owned and operated newspaper published in the United States (1827-1829).

Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection http://dlxs.library.cornell.edu/m/mayantislavery/

This is a digitalized collection of thousands of anti-slavery and abolitionist material from Cornell University.

Slavery in New York http://www.slaveryinnewyork.org/index.html

Exhibition by the NY Historical Society includes narratives and images.

Slaves and the Courts http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/sthtml This collection contains over a hundred pamphlets and books which were published between 1772 and 1889 which concerned the difficult and troubling experiences of African and African-American slaves in the American colonies and the United States.

Extension of Slavery in New Nation (10 1819) http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/H/1994ch5_p2.htm

History of Africans in America (1791-1831) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/narrative.html

History of Africans in America (1831-1865) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/narrative.html

History of Slavery Chronology (1830-end) http://innercity.org/holt/chron_1830_end.html

Taking the Train to Freedom http://www.nps.gov/undergroundrr/contents.htm

Great discussion of the Underground Railroad

CIVIL RIGHTS

Brown v. Board of Education Digital Archive http://www.lib.umich.edu/exhibits/brownarchive/index.html This site contains documents and images which chronicle events surrounding this case.

Civil Rights Documentation Project http://www.congresslink.org/civilrights/index.htm

Emphasizes civil rights legislation from 1963-1965—has many primary sources and a good timeline.

Civil Rights Special Collection http://www.teachersdomain.org/exhibits/civil/index.html

Collection of primary sources, media, interviews and lesson plans.

History of Jim Crow http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/home.htm

This is the teacher’s companion site to the PBS documentary, “The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow”.(Which the library owns). The site includes photographs, personal narratives, essays and lesson plans.

Milburn (Mississippi Burning) Investigation http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/miburn.htm

This site contains 948 pages of FBI documents concerning the murder of 3 civil rights workers in Milburn Mississippi in 1964.

We Shall Overcome: Historic Places of the Civil Rights Movement

http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/travel/civilrights/

Race and Place: An African-American Community in the Jim Crow South: Charlottesville, VA. http://www.vcdh.virginia.edu/afam/raceandplace/index.html

This is an archive about the racial segregation laws or what is better known as the ‘Jim Crow” laws. Includes newspaper articles and photographs.

Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/

This site contains stream-video oral histories, hundreds of rare photographs, documents, movement histories and personal biographies.

Trials of the Scottsboro Boys http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/FTrials/scottsboro/scottsb.htm

Site documenting the 1930’s trials of the Scottsboro boys including excerpts from court documents, contemporary newspaper accounts, letters, photographs and biographies. This site is part of the Famous trial site.

Voices of Civil Rights

http://www.voicesofcivilrights.org/index.html This is a large collection of “thousands of personal stories, oral histories, and personal artifacts of the Civil Rights Movement” collected by the Library of Congress.

ACTS OF CONGRESS

Act prohibiting Slave Trade From US to Foreign Lands (1794) http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/statutes/slavery/sl001.htm

Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery (1790)—Pennsylvania http://elsinore.cis.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/states/statutes/pennst01.htm

Compromise of 1850 & Fugitive Slave Act http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2951.html

Emancipation Proclamation (1863) Africans in America http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h1549t.html

Library of Congress’ Emancipation Proclamation Site http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/index.html

Emancipation Proclamation: NARA Exhibit http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/emancipation_proclamation/index.html

Kansas-Nebraska Act 1854 http://www.historyplace.com/lincoln/kansas.htm

RACIAL SEGREGATION

History of Jim Crow http://www.jimcrowhistory.org

Plessy V. Ferguson http://findlaw.com Click on Search Cases and Codes.

Enter Search term--Plessy v Ferguson

Introduction to the Court Opinion on Plessy V. Ferguson

http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/facts/democrac/33.htm

History of Integration—Introduction http://www.watson.org/~lisa/blackhistory/school-integration/index.html (Be sure and view table of contents).

George Wallace & Segregation http://www.cnn.com/US/9809/14/wallace.obit/wallace.bio.html

Little Rock Nine

http://www.centralhigh57.org/The_Little_Rock_Nine.html#LR9

Little Rock Central High 40^th Anniversary http://www.centralhigh57.org

This site has photos and stories surrounding the Little Rock Nine. These were nine African-American students who participated in desegregation during the late 1950’s.

Brown v Board of Education (1951-1954) http://www.watson.org/~lisa/blackhistory/early-civilrights/brown.html A large site with many links.

Brown v. Board of Education: An Overview http://www.pbs.org/jefferson/enlight/brown.htm

Racial Segregation in the U.S. Public Schools http://www.ncs.pvt.k12.va.us/ryerbury/govweb2/govweb2.htm

SITES ARRANGED CHRONOLOGICALLY OR WITH TIMELINES

Tangled Roots http://www.yale.edu/glc/tangledroots

This project is produced by the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition. It is a collection of primary documents from the 17^th century to the present about how African Americans and Irish Americans share history. The center’s archive also has more than 200 digitized items which deal with African American history.

The African-American Migration Experience http://www.inmotionaame.org/home.cfm?bhcp=1 This site was created by the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black culture. It makes available to the public more than 16,500 pages of essays, books, articles, and manuscripts, 8,300 illustrations, 100 lesson plans and 60 maps that will help users understand the peoples, places and the events that have shaped African America’s migration traditions of the past four hundred years.

The Church in the Southern Black Community http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/index.html

Collection of publications beginning with the Revolutionary period and ending in the early 20^th century.

From Slavery to Freedom: The African-American Pamphlet Collection 1824-1909 http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/aapchtml/aapchome.html

This is a collection of 397 pamphlets published from 1824 through 1909 by African American authors and others who wrote about slavery, African colonization, Emancipation, Reconstruction and related topics. Part of American memory.

African-American Pamphlets http://rs6.loc.gov/ammem/aap/aaphome.html

This is the Daniel a. P. Murray Pamphlet Collection which presents a review of African-American history and culture from the early 19^th century through the early 20^th century. This is also a part of American memory.

Black Archives of America http://www.blackarchives.org/

Images are drawn from Black Archives of Mid-America collections. Materials selected include photographs, manuscripts, local written histories, African American newspapers, and pamphlets. Focus is on African Americans in Missouri.

Harlem History http://www.columbia.edu/cu/iraas/harlem/index.html

“Harlem History presents a wealth of archival treasures and scholarship from Columbia about the history of one of the world’s most famous and influential neighborhoods.

About.com Civil rights http://afroamhistory.about.com/cs/civilrights

Historical Text Archive http://historicaltextarchive.com/

Psychedelic 60s: The Civil Rights Movement http://www.lib.virginia.edu/small/exhibits/sixties/civil.html

Speeches

http://www.nps.gov/archive/malu/documents/speeches_toc.htm

This site has the full text of speeches that supported the civil rights movement from 1849 to the present.

BIOGRAPHIES

Angelou: Brief Overview http://www.greatwomen.org/women.php?actionviewone

The Frederick Douglass Papers

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/doughtml/ The first release of this Library of Congress collection contains over 2000 items and “contains the writings of Douglass and such contemporaries in the abolitionist and early women’s rights movements as Henry Ward Beecher, Ida B. Wells, Gerrit Smith, Horace Greeley, and others. Part of American Memory

Speech by Carmichael http://courses.washington.edu/spcmu/carmichael

Frederick Douglas—Abolitionist/Editor: A Biography

http://www.history.rochester.edu/class/DOUGLASS/home.html

Covers Douglass’ years as a slave, his beginnings as an abolitionist, Rochester years, Civil War years, Life after the 13^th amendment.

The Color Line—Frederick Douglas http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/subjects/African-American.html This is part of a collection of several of Frederick Douglas’ works.

Medgar Evers-Life Overview (The African American Journey)

http://olemiss.edu/depts/english/ms-writers/dir/evers_medgar/index.html

The Faces of Science: African Americans in the Sciences https://webfiles.uci.edu/mcbrown/display/faces.html An extensive collection of biographies of African American scientists. There is usually a photograph.

Marcus Garvey & UNIA Papers Project http://www.international.ucla.edu/africa/mgpp/

“Born in the Wake of Freedom” John Mitchell, Jr. and the Richmond Planet. http://www.lva.lib.va.us/whoweare/exhibits/mitchell/index.htm This is the history of the oldest African American newspaper and it’s most famous editor. This exhibit was created by the Virginia Newspaper Project.

James Farmer: Oral Histories http://www.lva.lib.va.us/whoweare/exhibits/mitchell/index.htm

Harriet Tubman

Biography-Women of the Hall http://www.greatwomen.org/women.php?actionviewon

Jesse Jackson—An interview with Andrew Young

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/jesse/interviews/young.html

Malcolm X: A Research Site http://www.brothermalcolm.net/mxcontent.html

This site is designed to be a resource for scholarship. Includes an extensive chronology and some audio clips.

Martin Luther King Jr. project http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/

Sponsored by Stanford University and the MLK Center for Nonviolent Social Change. Includes a brief, selected documents, and a searchable database of transcriptions of MLK papers and secondary works.

Reflections of Black History http://www.freepress.org/fleming/fleming.html

Memoir of Thomas C. Fleming, black journalist and co-founder of the Sun-Reporter,--covers most of the 20^th century.

Booker T. Washington Papers http://www.historycooperative.org/btw/index.html

Is a completely free and searchable web site designed to provide researchers worldwide with full access to the thousands of pages comprising this 14 volume printed work, originally published by the University of Illinois Press.

Thurgood Marshall http://members.aol.com/klove01/marshall.htm

Colin Powell: Bush’s Trump Card (2000) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1073212.stm

Collin Powell on the Gulf War

The Rosa Parks Portal http://www.e-portals.org/Parks/

Comprehensive site with various links to resources

Rosa Parks (Time Magazine) http://www.time.com/time/time100/heroes/profile/parks01.html

Soldiers Without Swords http://www.pbs.org/blackpress/film Tells the story of the pioneering men who helped give the Black American a voice in the press.

Beyond the Playing Field: Jackie Robinson, Civil Rights Advocate http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/jackie-robinson/