African-Americans & the Black Experience: Websites

African Americans in Motion Pictures Bibliography.  The subject of African-Americans in Motion Pictures provides some of the most interesting studies along with the many controversial interpretations of the roles as actors they played on the silver screen. As far back as the silent films era, African-Americans have been featured in motion pictures playing roles depicting some aspect of acting and being purveyors of a black image. The messages or themes of these movies have over the years presented a mixture of images based upon what was thought to please the viewers of each particular film. Unfortunately, many of those films showed black characters in negative stereotypical roles which the average African-Americans would never truly identify as being like themselves. Since many of our American icons and heroes have come from our motion picture stars, we need to understand what this narrow view presented and compare it with what we presently see at our local cinema today.

African Americans in the Twentieth Century (EH.net) : Economic History Net.

African Diaspora, Ph.D. : highlights scholarship and scholars in the field of African diaspora history.

African Origins.  African Origins contains information about the migration histories of Africans forcibly carried on slave ships into the Atlantic. Using detailed information on 9,453 Africans liberated by Courts of Mixed Commission, this resource presents geographic, ethnic, and linguistic data on peoples captured in Africa and pulled into the slave trade. Through contributions to this website by Africans, members of the African Diaspora, and others, we hope to realize the history of the millions of Africans captured and sold into slavery during suppression of transatlantic slave trading in the 19th century.  View video describing project.  Courtesy of Emory University.

Africans in America / PBS.  America's journey through slavery is presented in four parts. For each era, you'll find a historical Narrative, a Resource Bank of images, documents, stories, biographies, and commentaries, and a Teacher's Guide for using the content of the Web site and television series in U.S. history courses. 

• Part One : The Terrible Transformation (1450-1750) tells of the largest forced migration in recorded history and how this mass movement of people was instrumental in the creation of the British North American colonies. After establishing settlements in North America, England joins Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands in the international trade in human beings. Millions of Africans are abducted from the homelands to labor in the North American colonies. So horrific is their "middle passage" across the Atlantic that almost a quarter of them die during the crossing. In the American colonies, Europeans rely on Africans' skills and labor to transform vast lands into agricultural profits. But European masters fear this growing population of Africans upon whom they now depend. Slavery's inhumane codes and punishments spur African resistance and escape, bringing more brutality from the slaveholders. In the colonists' worst nightmare, Africans shouting, "Liberty, liberty, liberty!" rise up in Stono, South Carolina and kill twenty-five whites. More than fifty slaves suspected of leading the rebellion are executed, their heads placed on posts as a warning. The nightmare has begun in the colonies. Colonists have found profits and permanence in their New World, but at what cost?
• Part Two : Revolution (1750-1805) is the story of the American Revolution. While the American colonies challenge Britain for independence, American slavery is challenged from within, as men and women fight to define what the country will be. In the upheaval of war, up to 100,000 black people escape their bondage and threaten the institution of slavery as never before. Initially, Colonial Commander George Washington refuses to allow black volunteers into his army. But when Lord Dunmore, the British Governor of Virginia, promises freedom to slaves and indentured servants who will fight against their colonial masters for England, the American high command is forced to reconsider. Black people, both slave and free, seize on the language of natural rights and equality that is rising throughout the land. But after the War of Independence is won, the nation's Constitution codifies slavery and oppression as a way of life. As the 18th century comes to a close, it is clear that America hopes to walk a dangerous tightrope between property rights and human rights, between slavery and freedom.
• Part Three : Brotherly Love (1791-1831) examines the first forty years of the new nation, primarily through the fortunes of Philadelphia's unique free black community. As free black people and fugitive slaves seek full participation in American democracy, a new leadership emerges, centered in the black church in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston -- abolitionist and entrepreneur James Forten, preacher Jarena Lee, and Bishop Richard Allen, a former slave and founder of the first black Christian denomination. Black churches indeed become the fulcrum of the community, providing schools, aiding their poor and agitating for the repeal of slave laws. Meanwhile, the invention of the cotton gin propels slavery into the western frontier, while the success of a slave rebellion in Haiti provides a counterpoint to the efforts of free blacks to establish their own autonomous communities. Haiti inspires slave rebellions in the South as well. These threats, and the surplus of slaves in the east, lead to the rise of a colonization movement. This movement is fostered by leading white intellectuals, who hope to send free black people, the main voices agitating for the abolition of slavery, to Africa, and it creates a volatile debate within the black community. But despite intensified brutality in the South and a new popular culture based on blackface minstrelsy in the North, African Americans resoundingly vote against colonization -- to stay and fight for freedom.
• Part Four : Judgment Day (1831-1865) tells of the years that lead up to the Civil War, as America is challenged as never before to end slavery. As the nation expands west, so does slavery. Black abolitionists like Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth agitate against southern slavery and northern racism. Seeing their way of life continually under attack, southern states angrily threaten to leave the union. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, a last attempt at political compromise, trades away black rights to keep the nation united. Even so, fighting breaks out in Kansas, and in 1857, the Supreme Court formally obliterates black rights with the Dred Scott decision. Slaveholders call for reopening the Atlantic slave trade and abolitionists mount new tactics against slavecatchers as the country moves toward civil war. John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry seems the final blow, and before long, the Union is dissolved. In the turmoil of the Civil War, slavery in the United States is finally abolished.

The Afrigeneas List of Links: African American Geneaological Resources on the Internet: AfriGeneas is a site devoted to African American genealogy, to researching African Ancestry in the Americas in particular and to genealogical research and resources in general.

The Afro-American's World War II Correspondents: Feuilletonism as Social Action. This study examines the World War II correspondence published by the Baltimore Afro-American, concentrating principally on Ollie Stewart. We argue these wartime dispatches constitute a style of social action and narrative journalism best understood through the lens of feuilletonism. hese works featured the correspondent as the reader’s “tour guide” of the war, wandering about and reporting what he saw and heard from black troops of their wartime experiences. Within the context of the Double V campaign, this body of work provided evidence for the Afro’s argument that blacks were loyal and heroic citizens who deserved equal rights in the postwar world. Published alongside provocatively worded articles on racial and civil unrest in the United States, these works provided an undemanding style of reading that depicted soldiers as fulfilling—and exceeding—the expectations of a country dependent on their support to win the war. Antero Pietila, Baltimore, Maryland, United States; Stacy Spaulding, Towson University, United States

Afro-Louisiana History and Genealogy, 1719-1820.  Data documenting "slave names, genders, ages, occupations, illnesses, family relationships, ethnicity, places of origin, prices paid by slave owners, and slaves' testimony and emancipations" on over 100,000 slaves in Louisiana during the 18th and 19th centuries.

Amazing Grace : William Wilberforce had the evidence, alright. But Britain's slave trade was legal, so the crimes weren't crimes and the wrongs weren't punishable. As one hundred thousand Africans were wrenched from their homes every year - to become "owned" by foreigners - people in the slave-trading business could ignore their plight because Parliament allowed it. With extraordinary dedication, however, the Cambridge University essayist (Clarkson) and Parliament's youngest member (Wilberforce) staked out a new path. Their journey, to illegalize Britain's slave trade, would take twenty years. Courtesy of Carole Box and AmazingStories.com

American Bandstand, Rock ‘n’ Roll, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in 1950s Philadelphia (University of California Press, American Crossroads series, Feb 2012) : Counter to host Dick Clark’s claims that he integrated American Bandstand, this project reveals how the first national television program directed at teens discriminated against black youth during its early years and how black teens and civil rights advocates protested this discrimination. The project also brings to light the civil rights activism of black deejays like Georgie Woods and Mitch Thomas, whose locally televised teen dance show debuted fifteen years before “Soul Train” and influenced the dance styles on “American Bandstand.”  View "The Nicest Kids in Town" digital project.

America's Black Holocaust Museum.  ABHM’s mission is to increase the public’s awareness and understanding of the magnitude of the Black Holocaust, its ongoing impact on American society, and what we can do about it.  A few of the things you can do here:

• Visit the Galleries to learn about little-known parts of African American History.
• Watch a video about the last known survivor of a lynching.
• Catch up on what’s happening today in the ongoing struggle for rights and respect for African Americans.

Amistad Digital Resource.  A learning module developed by Columbia University about the struggle for freedom by African Americans.

Amistad Incident.  The Amistad incident set all the slavery-bound captives aboard the ship free and pushed America closer to civil war. The stories of slaves prove what the human spirit can overcome, despite the odds. Of course, not all resistors did survive but even their actions contributed to the conditions of equality that now exist. Courtesy of Awesome Stories.

Anacostia Community Museum Library.  The Anacostia Community Museum Library is a resource supporting work on all aspects of the history and culture of the African diaspora in the Western hemisphere. One of 20 branch libraries in the Smithsonian Institution Libraries (SIL) system, this branch supports the research, exhibitions, and public programs of the Anacostia Museum, the Center for African American History and Culture and other museums and offices.  Checkout the selected internet resources if nothing else.

Angela Davis Resource Guide.  Courtesy of Cornell University Library.

Antislavery Collection, 1725-1911. Pamphlets and books pertaining to slavery and antislavery in New England, 1725-1911, including speeches, sermons, proceedings and other publications of organizations such as the American Anti-Slavery Society and the American Colonization Society, and a small number of pro-slavery tracts. From Special Collections & Archives of the University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries.

Antislavery Literature Project. Established in 2003, it encompasses slave narratives, lectures, travel accounts, political tracts, prose fiction, poetry, drama, religious and philosophical literature, compendia, journals, manifestoes and children's literature. The Project is based in the Arizona State University’s English department and works in cooperation with the EServer, located at Iowa State University

Articles by Malcolm X from LA Herald-Dispatch (1957-1958) from WikiSource.

The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas : A Visual Record.  Jerome S. Handler and Michael L. Tuite Jr.  The approximately 1,235 images in this collection have been selected from a wide range of sources, most of them dating from the period of slavery. This collection is envisioned as a tool and a resource that can be used by teachers, researchers, students, and the general public - in brief, anyone interested in the experiences of Africans who were enslaved and transported to the Americas and the lives of their descendants in the slave societies of the New World.  Provided by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and University of Virginia.  Also posted under Images.

Captive Passage: The Transatlantic Slave Trade and the Making of the Americas  : Between 1441 and 1888, Europeans and their descendants in the Americas enslaved many millions of Africans. Torn from their homeland, men, women, and children were shipped to the Americas and forced into slavery. The transatlantic slave trade was a highly profitable maritime business. Without African slaves, the potential economic value of the Americas could never have been realized. Slaves made possible the taming of the wilderness, construction of cities, excavation of mines, and the establishment of powerful plantation economies. This online exhibition examines the transatlantic slave trade and seeks to increase understanding of this maritime epic and its legacies in the modern world.  Brought to you by the Mariner's Museum and the National Endowment for the Humanities.  Note: Captive Passage : The Transatlantic Slave Trade the Making of the Americas, a Smithsonian Institution book compiled to accompany the exhibition, is also available in the MSU Libraries.

Celebrating Black History : 50 Cultural Icons.  Courtesy of Time.com

Celia, A Slave by Melton A. McLaurin.  Melton Alonza McLaurin has written a definitive account of Celia, and what happened to her (both before, and after, the murder of Robert Newsom). In 1855 Celia, a slave, is hanged for murder for accidently killing her rapist and owner, Robert Newsom, while defending herself. The Missouri laws, in the 1850s, forbid rape and allow a woman to protect herself from rape even if it means committing murder. Laws which protect white people, however, do not apply to slaves. Celia’s actions are not considered self-defense because slave owners have the right to do whatever they want with their property, including rape. Even with the end of slavery, blacks were still treated as inferior to whites. Courtesy of Awesome Stories.

Charleston Syllabus.  Excellent compilation of readings about the Charleston, S.C. massacre at the Emanuel AME Church and related topics.

Charleston Syllabus Readings via Goodreads.

Charleston Syllabus via Twitter.

Chicago and the Great Migration.  James Grossmann, excerpt from Illinois Periodicals Online digitized by the Northern Illinois University Libraries.

The Church in the Southern Black Community.  A collection of  autobiographies, biographies, church documents, sermons, histories, encyclopedias, and other published materials. These texts present a collected history of the way Southern African Americans experienced and transformed Protestant Christianity into the central institution of community life. Coverage begins with white churches' conversion efforts, especially in the post-Revolutionary period, and depicts the tensions and contradictions between the egalitarian potential of evangelical Christianity and the realities of slavery. It focuses, through slave narratives and observations by other African American authors, on how the black community adapted evangelical Christianity, making it a metaphor for freedom, community, and personal survival.  Courtesy of Documenting the American South by the University of North Carolina.

Citizen King.  "The story begins on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in August 1963, when a 34-year-old preacher galvanized millions with his dream for an America free of racism. It comes to a bloody end almost five years later on a motel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee."  This companion site to a PBS program provides a synopsis and transcript of the film, articles on the life and work of Dr. King, and more.  PBS.

Citizens All : African Americans in Connecticutt, 1750-1850.   Follow the African American journey to citizenship and uncover paths that lead to current global issues and hometown stories of yesteryear. Sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, a part of the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale, is dedicated to the investigation and dissemination of knowledge concerning all aspects of chattel slavery and its destruction.

Civil Rights Digital Library : Documenting America's Struggle for Racial Equality.  The struggle for racial equality in the 1950s and 1960s is among the most far-reaching social movements in the nation's history, and it represents a crucial step in the evolution of American democracy. The Civil Rights Digital Library promotes an enhanced understanding of the Movement by helping users discover primary sources and other educational materials from libraries, archives, museums, public broadcasters, and others on a national scale. The CRDL features a collection of unedited news film from the WSB (Atlanta) and WALB (Albany, Ga.) television archives held by the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia Libraries. The CRDL provides educator resources and contextual materials, including Freedom on Film, relating instructive stories and discussion questions from the Civil Rights Movement in Georgia, and the New Georgia Encyclopedia, delivering engaging online articles and multimedia.  Courtesy of the University of Georgia.

Civil Rights Era in the U.S. News and World Report Photographs Collection.  Selected images from the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Reading Room.  Also listed under Images.

Civil Rights Greensboro.  Greensboro is widely cited as the birthplace of the sit-in movement in America, due to the action of four North Carolina A&T College students at the Woolworth's lunch counter on February 1, 1960. The city was also the scene of several other history-making events in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, as well as lesser known activities and issues in the struggle for social justice and equal treatment in public accommodations, schools, housing, politics, and employment. Civil Rights Greensboro documents many of these through historical materials such as such as correspondence, reports, speeches, photographs, newspaper clippings, and oral histories held at five cultural heritage institutions in North Carolina.

Civil Rights in America : Connections to a Movement.  Courtesy of USA Today.

Civil Rights Movement Veterans.  This website is of, by, and for Veterans of the Southern Freedom Movement during the years 1951-1968. It is where we tell it like it was, the way we lived it.  The mass media called it the "Civil Rights Movement," but many of us who were involved in it prefer the term "Freedom Movement" because it was about so much more than just civil rights. Today, from what you see in the mass media and read in textbooks and websites, you would think that the Freedom Movement only existed in a few states of the deep South, — but that is not so. The Freedom Movement lived and fought in every state and every city of America, North, South, East, and West. There were some differences between the Southern and Northern wings of the Movement, but those differences were minor compared to the Movement's essence. North or South, it was the same movement everywhere.  However, this web site focuses on the Southern Freedom Movement.

Civil Rights Movement, Women.  Courtesy of the Cornell University Library.

Civil Rights Teaching Resources.

A Colored Man's Reminiscences of James Madison. Believed to be the first White House memoir, "A Colored Man's Reminiscences of James Madison," published 1865, is now available for the world to read. Paul Jennings, born a slave in 1799 at the home of the fourth U.S. President, penned the thin volume after purchasing his own freedom in 1847. Jennings went on to purchase his own home, get a federal job in the pension office and raise a family in Washington, D.C. He was one of the Montpelier slaves who moved to the Nation's Capital with James and Dolley Madison during Madison's presidential years (1809-1817).

Commemorating Courage : Nine Who Made A Difference (Little Rock High School).   "Welcome to the Electronic Field Trip 'Commemorating Courage: The Nine Who Made A Difference.' This field trip looks at the historic desegregation crisis that took place at Central High School in Little Rock, AR, in 1957."   National Park Service.

The Confessions of Nat Turner, the Leader of the Late Insurrection in Southampton, Va. Baltimore: T. R. Gray, 1831.  Thomas R. Gray  spoke with Nat Turner after he was arrested for the 1831 revolt against slavery.  Courtesy of the University of North Carolina's digital collection Documenting the American South.

Cornell University John Henrik Clarke Africana Library.  A special collection focusing on the history and culture of people of Africana ancestry.

Crossroads to Freedom.  Crossroads to Freedom connects the world with Memphis history during the Civil Rights era through an archive of documents, newspapers, images and oral histories. Our goal is to empower Memphians to tell the stories of our city and region as a vital aspect of participation in the future of our community.

H-Afro-Am.  Welcome to H-Afro-Am, a member of H-Net Humanities & Social Sciences OnLine. The main mission of H-Afro-Am is to provide an exchange of information for professionals, faculty and advanced students, in the field of African American Studies (also called Afrocentricity, Africology, Africana Studies, Afro-American Studies, Black Studies, and Pan-African Studies).

H-Slavery.  H-Slavery, another part of the a member of H-Net Humanities & Social Sciences OnLine family, seeks to promote interaction and exchange among scholars engaged in research on slavery, the slave trade, abolition, and emancipation. It is dedicated to the dissemination of information about the history of slavery and antislavery in all time periods and parts of the world.

Harlem Talking,  a production of We Care Media Arts Inc., is an introduction to some of the remarkable men and women — from ordinary citizens to famous personalities — who have lived and worked in Harlem, New York City.

Harold Washingon : Black Research Center on the First Black Mayor of Chicago.

Harriet Tubman / Black Culture Connection (PBS).

Harriet Tubman Wikipedia entry.

Harriet Tubman Biography.  Created by Kate Clifford Larson, the author of Bound For the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero

Harry Heywood Archive. : A member of the Communist Party of the United States, serving on the Central Committee from 1927 to 1938 and on the Politburo from 1931 until 1938. After the CP’s turn towards revisionism Haywood helped to found the New Communist Movement. He is best known as the main theorist of the African American National Question. Specifically, Haywood developed the theory that African Americans make up an oppressed nation in the Black Belt region of the South where they have the right to self-determination, up to and including the right to independence.

The Help : Trouble had started in Jackson, Mississippi long before Hilly Holbrook launched her "Home Help Sanitation Initiative."   Although both Hilly and her proposed law are fictional components of The Help, they could easily be real. Consider this.  When the "Civil Rights Bill" became law, in 1964, the owner of the Robert E. Lee Hotel - where key parts of The Help story take place - closed down his beautiful Jackson-based establishment just to keep-out black patrons.  Flying a Confederate battle flag, Stewart Gammill, Jr. posted this sign: CLOSED IN DESPAIR.  CIVIL RIGHTS BILL UNCONSTITUTIONAL. (Quoted in The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission: Civil Rights and States' Rights, by Yasuhiro Katagiri, page 168.) Two days later he declared that henceforth the hotel would be a private club, open only to members.  Why would he do such a thing? Courtesy of Carole D. Bos and AwesomeStories.com

Hiram Rhodes Revels - First African-American in Congress.  Courtesy of Awesome Stories.

Historian John Hope Franklin On the 1898 Wilmington Riots

The History Makers : The HistoryMakers, headquartered in Chicago, is an archive of African American oral history in both audio and video formats.  The web site provides brief biographies for Artmakers, Businessmakers, Civicmakers, Educationmakers, Entertainmentmakers, Lawmakers, Mediamakers, Medicalmakers, Militarymakers, Musicmakers, Politicalmakers, Religionmakers, Sciencemakers, Sportsmakers, and Stylemakers.

The History of Jim Crow. Explore the complex African-American experience of segregation from the 1870s to the 1950s.  Teacher's companion site to the PBS documentary, "The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow," includes photographs, personal narratives, essays and lesson plans.

A House Divided: America in the Age of Lincoln.  This digital history project looks at the decades leading up the American Civil War, with slavery as central to the culture and politics of the time. The site includes many images, and narration, in collaboration of historians, contextualizes them.

I Am A Man : The Memphis Sanitation Worker's Strike.  An online exhibition sponsored by the Wayne State University Reuther Library.

"I Will Be Heard!" : Abolitionism in America.  Inspired by conscience and guided by principle, abolitionists took a moral stand against slavery that produced one of America’s greatest victories for democracy. Through decades of strife, and often at the risk of their lives, anti-slavery activists remained steadfast in the face of powerful opposition. Their efforts would ultimately force the issue of slavery to the forefront of national politics, and fuel the split between North and South that would lead the country into civil war.  On display from June 5 through September 27, 2003, “Abolitionism in America” documents our country’s intellectual, moral, and political struggle to achieve freedom for all Americans. Featuring rare books, manuscripts, letters, photographs, and other materials from Cornell’s pre-eminent anti-slavery and Civil War collections, the exhibition explores the complex history of slavery, resistance, and abolition from the 1700s through 1865. The exhibition offers a rare opportunity to view some of Cornell Library’s greatest treasures, including a manuscript copy of the Gettysburg Address written by Abraham Lincoln, a manuscript copy of the Emancipation Proclamation, and a copy of the 13th Amendment signed by Lincoln and members of Congress.  Courtesy of the Cornell University Libraries, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections.

Ida Wells-Barnett Confronts Race and Gender Discrimination.  Illinois History Teacher, 1996.

Illinois Black Codes.  Roger D. Bridges, excerpt from Illinois Periodicals Online digitized by Northern Illinois University Libraries.

In Motion: The African American Migration Experience  Produced by the Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture and the New York Public Library, this website presents information and resources on thirteen important migrations, showing their importance to the history and culture of African Americans in the United States. Browse by geography, time period, type of source, educational materials, or by migration (e.g., the Transatlantic Slave Trade, the Great Migration), or search across categories. Includes images, maps, essays, primary sources, glossary, bibliographies, website links, and lengthy narratives describing each migration.

Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies in the U.S.  A 25th anniversary retrospective of Ford Foundation grant making 1982-2007.

Integrating Central High : the Melba Pattillo Story.  In September 1957, Melba Pattillo and eight other teenagers became the first African-American students to attend Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Read about Melba's historic and often terrifying experience.  Scholastic Inc.

Integrating Ole Miss : A Civil Rights Milestone.   JFK Library.  In the fall of 1962 the college town of Oxford, Mississippi, erupted in violence. At the center of the controversy stood James Meredith, an African American who was attempting to register at the all-white University of Mississippi, known as "Ole Miss." Meredith had the support of the federal government, which insisted that Mississippi honor the rights of all its citizens, regardless of race....Mississippi's refusal led to a showdown between state and federal authorities and the storming of the campus by a segregationist mob. Two people died and dozens were injured. In the end, Ole Miss, the state of Mississippi, and the nation were forever changed....This site lets visitors witness the events firsthand through the actual letters, recorded telephone conversations, and images of those who made history.

Isabel Wilkerson's Facebook Page.  Publitzer winner and author of The Warmth of Other Suns shares postings about her journeys and about African American milestones.

Islam and African Americans [Proquest Black Studies Center].  The author traces the history of Islam and African Americans in the US from the forcible transport of West African Muslim slaves across the Atlantic before the Civil War, highlighting practicing Muslim slaves and slave communities in the South Carolina and Georgia Sea Islands and elsewhere. By the Civil War era, the Sunni Islam of  the West African Muslim slaves and their immediate descendants were obsolete in the United States because their communities were overwhelmed by the widespread Christianization of black America, and they were unable to develop Islamic institutions in the nineteenth century, Turner notes. Edward Wilmot Blyden (1832-1912) a Caribbean clergyman who was based in Liberia, developed important linkages between Islam and Pan-Africanism in the late nineteenth century that contributed to the religion's political and spiritual appeal for black Americans in the twentieth century. The author surveys early 20th century communities, such as Noble Drew Ali and the Moorish Science Temple; the Ishmaelites of Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois; and the Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam established in the US by Indian missionary Mufti Muhammad Sadiq in 1920. Turner profiles and reviews scholarship on the origins, development, message, and current status of the Nation of Islam from 1930, as well as the biographies and leadership of W. Fard Muhammad, Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, and Louis Farrakhan. African Americans who are Sunni Muslim can trace their origins to several twentieth-century communities in which there were important interactions between black American and immigrant Muslims in the United States, Turner says. Following the essay, a bibliography of recommended reading, a chronology of events from 1492 to 2003, and a glossary are presented.  Available to the MSU commuity and other subscribers.

Jackie Robinson and Other Baseball Highlights, 1860s-1960s.  When Jackie Robinson took the field as a Brooklyn Dodger in 1947, he became the first African American to play major league baseball in the twentieth century. Materials that tell his story, and the history of baseball in general, are located throughout the Library of Congress. The first online special presentation of these materials highlights Baseball, the Color Line, and Jackie Robinson, 1860s-1960s. The timeline draws on approximately thirty items--manuscripts, books, photographs, and ephemera--from many parts of the Library. The first three sections of the presentation describe the color line that segregated baseball for many years, the Negro Leagues, and Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson--two men who played key roles in integrating the sport. The last two sections of the presentation explore Robinson's career as a Dodger and his civil rights activities. The second presentation called Early Baseball Pictures, 1860s-1920s features 34 intriguing photographs and prints arranged in the following categories: Baseball Beginnings, Game Day in the Majors, Players, Non-Major League Baseball, Major League Teams and Games.

Jefferson-Hemings Controversy.  History on Trial.  The Jefferson-Hemings Controversy project was developed in collaboration with students in four courses at Lehigh University during the years 2009-2012. Playing off the provocative description by prominent Jefferson scholar Joseph J. Ellis, the core of JHC is a sixteen-part "miniseries," framed by a prologue and epilogue, that follows the controversy chronologically from its inception by James Thomson Callender in 1802 to the at-present climactic work on the Hemings family by Annette Gordon-Reed in 2008. The other major part of JHC is a corollary section called "Jefferson on Race and Slavery" that contains both primary and secondary works on this subject as a valuable point of reference for the significant issues raised by the controversy.

Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia .  A real place and a virtual site. The actual museum is located on the campus of Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Michigan. Dr. John Thorp, is the curator for the museum.  The web site provides images of racist objects, images and cartoons along with essays.

Jubilee Singers : Sacrifice and Glory.  A website created to accompany the PBS documentary.

Jupiter Hammon - First Published Afro-American Poet.

King's Last March.  Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968. Four decades later, King remains one of the most vivid symbols of hope for racial unity in America. But that's not the way he was viewed in the last year of his life.  Courtesy of American RadioWorks,  March 2008.

Ku Klux Klan.  A collection of digital items from the MSU Libraries Special Collections unit.

Race, Respectability, and Jim Crow: African American Uplift in Grand Rapids, Michigan

Red Tails via Awesome Stories

Rediscovering Michigan's Rural African Americans.   Found Michigan, June 21, 2012

Remembering Jim Crow

Remembering Lena Horne.   A beautiful African-American songstress who played a critical role in breaking Hollywood's color barrier.   Courtesy of Time Magazine.

Rep. John Lewis, Civil Rights Icon, on the Struggle to Win, and Now Protect, Voting Rights in U.S. Video and transcript of Democracy Now session with Congressman John Lewis, December 24, 2012.  As 2013 approaches, marking the 50th anniversary of the historic 1963 March on Washington, we spend the hour with one of the last surviving speakers from that day: Civil rights icon, now 13-term Georgia Congressmember, John Lewis. During the 1960s, Rep. Lewis was arrested more than 40 times and beaten almost to death as he served as chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, marched side by side with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., helped organize the Freedom Rides, and campaigned for Robert Kennedy’s presidential bid....We look at the bloody struggle to obtain — and protect — voting rights in the United States with Rep. Lewis, as he reflects on the ongoing struggle for voting rights today, when 16 states have passed restrictive voting laws that critics say target people of color. "It is so important for people to understand, to know that people suffered, struggled," Lewis says. "Some people bled, and some died, for the right to participate. The vote is the most powerful nonviolent tool that we have in a democratic society. It’s precious. It’s almost sacred. We have to use it. If not, we will lose it."

Reparations Chronicles.  This award-winning blog, written by historian, writer, and curator Susan D. Anderson, invites a broad and provocative discussion of reparations, racism, culture, and politics. No longer maintained but still thought provoking.

Right to Fight: African-American Marines in World War II. Still available thanks to the Internet Archive.

Rights Given, Rights Removed : Impact of Reconstruction on African-Americans.  Courtesy of Awesome Stories.

The Rise of Jim Crow. Explore the complex African-American experience of segregation from the 1870s to the 1950s.  Teacher's companion site to the PBS documentary, "The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow", includes photographs, personal narratives, essays and lesson plans.

Roanoke Island Freedmen's Colony. Welcome to the site dedicated to the Roanoke Island Freedmen’s Colony. During the Civil War, Union-occupied Roanoke Island, which lies between the North Carolina mainland and the barrier islands known as the Outer Banks, became home to thousands of former slaves. Initially these refugees settled near the Union headquarters, creating a community that included churches and a school. In the spring of 1863, this camp evolved into a government-sanctioned colony. Major General John G. Foster, Commander of the 18th Army Corps, ordered Horace James, a Congregational minister from New England who was serving as a chaplain in the Union army, to establish a colony of former slaves on the island. Although the Roanoke Island freedmen’s colony was an experiment of national significance, few people are aware of its history. This site presents an introduction to the colony and the colonial experiment that was conducted there. It also features some primary sources, maps, and projects for students. This site was created by Patricia C. Click, associate professor of Science, Technology, and Society in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Virginia, and author of Time Full of Trial: The Roanoke Island Freedmen’s Colony, 1862-1867 (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2001).

TheRoot.com.   Provides an unflinching examination of political and cultural news through insightful debate and commentary from both established and emerging black thought-leaders. The Root features unvarnished analysis of important issues in the black community and engages anyone looking for diverse viewpoints that are provocative, savvy and smart.  Also provides a Facebook page.

Rosa Parks Biography : A new educational website and teaching resource that traces Rosa Parks' "life history of being rebellious" and challenges the idea of Rosa Parks as an 'accidental' or 'tired' or 'meek' woman who just one day made a stand. Drawn from Jeanne Theoharis’ The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks and various archival sources including Rosa Parks' newly-opened papers at the Library of Congress, this project traces the expanse of Rosa Parks’ political work  and the breadth of the Black freedom struggle across the 20th century. The website features a timeline, narrative of her life of activism, primary sources to use in class, and teaching guides. Focusing on her history through criminal justice, it shows the significant connections and overlap between the civil rights movement and where we are today in this country.  Supported by the Mellon Seminar for Public Engagement and Collaborative Research  at the Center for the Humanities, CUNY Graduate Center.

Rosa Parks Papers Collection at Library of Congress.  The collection, which contains approximately 7,500 manuscripts and 2,500 photographs, is on loan to the Library for 10 years from the Howard G. Buffett Foundation. The Library received the materials in late 2014, formally opened them to researchers in the Library’s reading rooms in February 2015 and now has digitized them for optimal access by the public. Parks became an iconic figure in history on Dec. 1, 1955, when she refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama.  Her arrest sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a seminal event in the Civil Rights Movement.  Parks died at age 92 in 2005. The collection reveals many details of Parks’ life and personality, from her experiences as a young girl in the segregated South to her difficulties in finding work after the Montgomery Bus Boycott; from her love for her husband to her activism on civil rights issues. Included in the collection are personal correspondence, family photographs, letters from presidents, fragmentary drafts of some of her writings from the time of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, her Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal, additional honors and awards, presentation albums, drawings sent to her by schoolchildren and hundreds of greeting cards from individuals thanking her for her impact on civil rights.  The vast majority of these items may be viewed online.  Other material is available to researchers through the Manuscript and Prints and Photographs reading rooms.

Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection.  Numbering over 10,000 titles, May's pamphlets and leaflets document the anti-slavery struggle at the local, regional, and national levels. Much of the May Anti-Slavery Collection was considered ephemeral or fugitive, and today many of these pamphlets are scarce. Sermons, position papers, offprints, local Anti-Slavery Society newsletters, poetry anthologies, freedmen's testimonies, broadsides, and Anti-Slavery Fair keepsakes all document the social and political implications of the abolitionist movement.  Courtesy of the Cornell University Library, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections.  Browse the collection.

Say her name : resisting police brutality against Black women. Kimberlé Crenshaw; Andrea J Ritchie; Rachel Anspach; Rachel Gilmer. Online resource.  : To continue to call attention to police violence against Black women in the U.S., the African American Policy Forum, the Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies at Columbia Law School, and Andrea Ritchie, Soros Justice Fellow and expert on policing of women and LGBT people of color, have updated a report first issued in May, 2015, “Say Her Name: Resisting Police Brutality Against Black Women.” The document is intended to serve as a resource for the media, organizers, researchers, policy makers, and other stakeholders to better understand and address Black women’s experiences of profiling and policing.  In addition to stories of Black women who have been killed by police and who have experienced gender-specific forms of police violence, Say Her Name provides some analytical frames for understanding their experiences and broadens dominant conceptions of who experiences state violence and what it looks like. Say Her Name responds to increasing calls for attention to police violence against Black women by offering a resource to help ensure that Black women’s stories are integrated into demands for justice, policy responses to police violence, and media representations of victims and survivors of police brutality.

Say It Plain, Say It Loud : A Century of Great African American Speeches.  Public speech making has played a powerful role in the long struggle by African Americans for equal rights. This collection, for the ear and the eye, highlights speeches by an eclectic mix of black leaders. Their impassioned, eloquent words continue to affect the ideas of a nation and the direction of history  Courtesy of American RadioWorks, January 2011.

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture: A division of the New York Public Library Research, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is dedicated "to collecting, preserving and providing access to resources documenting the history and experiences of peoples of African descent throughout the world." Of particular interest is Digital Schomburg, Relying on the expertise of distinguished curators and scholars, Digital Schomburg provides access to trusted information, interpretation, and scholarship on the global black experience 24/7. Users worldwide can find, in this virtual Schomburg Center, exhibitions, books, articles, photographs, prints, audio and video streams, and selected external links for research in the history and cultures of the peoples of Africa and the African Diaspora.

Scott's Official History of the American Negro in the World War (1919).  Internet Archive.

Scottsboro Boys : Some digitized materials from the MSU Libraries Special Collections.

Seattle Black Panther Party History and Memory Project : The Black Panther Party for Self Defense established its Seattle chapter in the spring of 1968. It was one of the first to be created outside of California. The Seattle chapter also lasted longer than most, surviving until 1978. Although the membership was never large, the organization made a major impact on the region. With their black berets and leather jackets and their commitment to armed self defense, the Panthers became role models to some while scaring others. Either way, the organization showed Seattle that its struggles for racial justice had moved beyond persuasion and nonviolent protest.

Segregation from Jim Crow to Linda Brown.  The era of legal segregation in America, from Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) to Brown v. The Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas (1954), is seldom fully explored by students of American history and government. At most, these studies are sidebar discussions of isolated people or events. It is important for students to develop an understanding of the complex themes and concepts of African American life in the first half of the 20th century to provide a foundation for a more meaningful understanding of the modern Civil Rights Movement. The following mini-unit will allow students to explore to what extent the African American experience was "separate but equal."  Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Segregation Showdown at Little Rock.  Stories and audio courtesy of NPR.

Selected Online Works by Civil War Era African American Women. This document compiles the historic full text of works, now available in digital format and free, written by and about African American women who lived during the U.S. Civil War. Multiple full text versions are provided to allow users to choose the version that best displays on their electronic device. The selected works were digitized primarily from the collections of the Library of Congress, the Schomburg Center for Black Studies New York Public Library and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The document is arranged by type of work and includes autobiographies, biographies, children’s books, novels, poetry, speeches and more. Reprint editions frequently contain additional information about the authors and the works. Multiple Library of Congress reprint catalog records are listed to maximum the potential for additional information. Images of the authors also are listed, when available. Created by Lavonda Kay Broadnax, Digital Reference Specialist

Selma-to-Montgomery:  Bloody Sunday. A civil rights march turns violent on March 7, 1965. Courtesy of Awesome Stories.

Separate Is Not Equal : Brown vs. Board of Education : This special exhibition marks the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that helped to end public school segregation.  If you click on the Resources tab, you will find electronic field trips --  two 50 minute broadcasts, one for middle school students and one for high school students that were broadcast on the Internet on May 19, 2004. The archived field trips include a special tour of the Separate Is Not Equal: Brown v. Board of Education exhibition by curators Alonzo Smith and Harry Rubenstein, film footage from the exhibition, and a live Q&A session between the Brown v. Board curators, NMAH Curator of African American History, Fath Ruffins, and school children from around the country. Dr. Lee Thorton, professor of journalism at the University of Maryland, moderated the two sessions.
Courtesy of the Encyclopedia Smithsonian.

Separate is Not Equal : Brown vs. Board of Education. Smithsonian Institution.

Signal of Liberty (1841-1848) : Theodore Foster and Rev. Guy Beckley of Ann Arbor, Michigan, launched the Signal of Liberty in April 1841 and managed to go to press nearly every week. Foster and Beckley were strong abolitionists who wrote in the Signal of Liberty of helping people escaping from slavery. The editors interviewed self-emancipated men and women, hoping to arouse sympathy for abolitionism. The events and movements described in the Signal of Liberty help us understand the issues that led people to resist slavery, change their churches and political parties, and fight for freedom.  Explore this web site to find additional information about the Underground Railroad in Michigan.  Digitized by the Ann Arbor District Library.

Slave Biographies : The Atlantic Database Network is an open access repository of information on the identities of enslaved people in the Atlantic World. It includes the names, ethnicities, skills, occupations, and illnesses of individual slaves involved in the Atlantic slave trade. It also connects slaves to family members creating a complex web of social and kinship networks. In this way Slave Biographies reveals much about slave life in the New World and about African slaves' lives in parts of the Old World....Slave Biographies also provides a platform for researchers of African slavery to contribute, analyze, visualize, utilize, and collaborate on data they have collected. The repository combines multiple, individual datasets in a way that is complimentary and creates a resource for quantitative data analysis and data visualizations about the Atlantic slave trade.

Slave Narratives. Original entry by Diane Trap, University of Georgia Libraries,  September 12, 2007 appearing in the New Georgia Encyclopedia.

Slave Route : Features a series of resources on slave trade, including the transatlantic route, Indian Ocean slave trade, slave trade in the Arab-Muslim world, resistances and abolitions, and modern forms of slavery.  From UNESCO.

Slavery & Abolition in the US. Collection about slavery in the U.S. in the 19th century reflecting arguments on both sides of the debate and include first person narratives, legal proceedings and decisions, anti-slavery tracts, religious sermons, and early secondary works. From Millersville University Library and Dickinson College Library, the collection includes more than 24,000 pages of printed text.

Slavery Is Detroit's Big, Bad Secret. Why Don't We Know Anything About It. Article by Bill McGraw appearing in Deadline Detroit, August 27, 2012. Also see Kathy Warnes, "Slavery in Detroit and Downriver", Meandering Michigan History.

Slavery in New York : An online exhibition on slavery in New York City from the 1600s to 1827, when it was abolished in the state. Includes maps, images and narratives about lives of black slaves in early New York City.

Slavery on Trial, the Long Road to Freedom.  An online exhibit by the Gerald Ford Museum in Grand Rapids.

Slavery to Freedom : Learn more about Ontario's Black history.

Slaves and the Courts, 1740-1860.  Contains just over a hundred pamphlets and books (published between 1772 and 1889) concerning the difficult and troubling experiences of African and African-American slaves in the American colonies and the United States. The documents, most from the Law Library and the Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress, comprise an assortment of trials and cases, reports, arguments, accounts, examinations of cases and decisions, proceedings, journals, a letter, and other works of historical importance. Of the cases presented here, most took place in America and a few in Great Britain. Among the voices heard are those of some of the defendants and plaintiffs themselves as well as those of abolitionists, presidents, politicians, slave owners, fugitive and free territory slaves, lawyers and judges, and justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. Significant names include John Quincy Adams, Roger B. Taney, John C. Calhoun, Salmon P. Chase, Dred Scott, William H. Seward, Prudence Crandall, Theodore Parker, Jonathan Walker, Daniel Drayton, Castner Hanway, Francis Scott Key, William L. Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Denmark Vesey, and John Brown.  Slaves and the Courts was made possible by a generous gift from the Citigroup Foundation.  Part of the Library of Congress, American Memory Project.

Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture.  The Museum on the Web is the online experience of the new National Museum of African American History and Culture. to bring the stories of African American History to a global audience. Conceived from the very beginning as a fully virtual precursor to the museum to be built on the Washington Mall, this is the first time a major museum is opening its doors on the Web prior to its physical existence. The centerpiece of the NMAAHC Museum on the Web are the collected reminiscences of ordinary Americans. These stories, called "memories" are collected as text, images, and audio uploads in the virtual Memory Book where website visitors are encouraged to submit their own histories, traditions, thoughts and ideas. Memories are then associated visually with other aspects of the museum's holdings and scholarship, such as photographic portraits from the Let Your Motto Be Resistance traveling exhibit or the Save Our African American Treasures program. Memory Book contributions may also be associated with offerings from other visitors, enabling the creation of a dynamic social network for the NMAAHC.

SNCC Movement Posters.

Southwest Michigan Black Heritage Society.

State of Black America 2012 by the National Urban League

State of Siege : Mississippi Whites and the Civil Rights Movement.  Mississippi led the South in an extraordinary battle to maintain racial segregation. Whites set up powerful citizens groups and state agencies to fight the civil rights movement. Their tactics were fierce and, for a time, very effective.  Courtesy of American RadioWorks.  January 2011.

Stone Center Library for Black Culture and History's Guide to the Web. This guide to the web was launched in April 2005 and is based at the library of the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History, which is part of the University Library and the Sonja Haynes Stone Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The guide is a valuable resource for scholars and other researchers interested in African, African American, and African Diaspora history and culture. Over 1,000 sites are available in the searchable guide which is also browseable by subjects. The topics covered range from the underground railroad to hip hop music. The sites included in the guide were reviewed and annotated by Graduate Research Assistants: Sarah Everhart, Shanita Jones, Eben Lehman, Raina Leon, Amy Roberson, and Gene Springs.

A Struggle from the Start : Hartford Black History Project.  Presents a virtual exhibit of the history of Hartford, Connecticut's African-American community from 1638 to the present.

Swag Diplomacy : Black Travel Memoirs.  Maps locations of 200 African American autobiographers who wrote international travel memoirs. By viewing the searchable, expandable map, students can identify authors who wrote in autobiographies about visiting various countries. Users can search by traveler, location, or even year. In addition to location, links are provided to online biographies from African American Registry, Black Past, Wikipedia, and the History Channel's Bio.com. Order information for autobiographies and links to a picture are also provided.  Courtesy of Dr. Stephanie Evans, Clark Atlanta University.

Virginia Emigrants to Liberia.  Between 1820 and 1865 more than 3700 African Americans from Virginia emigrated to Liberia. Some went eagerly, others left reluctantly in exchange for their freedom. In 1847, they helped establish the first African republic. Their stories illustrate meanings of race, citizenship, and nationhood in the early American republic that still resonate today. This web site, courtesy of the University of Virginia, provides a searchable database of nearly 3700 Virginia emigrants to Liberia" plus relevant documents and timeline.

A Vision for Black Lives: Policy Demands for Black Power, Freedom & Justice. Policy agenda and platform of the Movement for Black Lives, a collective of organizations. Over 30 policies, with policy briefs, are presented as a visionary agenda with resources, released 8/1/11

Voices of Civil Rights.  The exhibition Voices of Civil Rights documents events during the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. This exhibition draws from the thousands of personal stories, oral histories, and photographs collected by the "Voices of Civil Rights" project, a collaborative effort of AARP, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), and the Library of Congress, and marks the arrival of these materials in the Library's collection.

Volunteering for Risk: Black Women Overseas during the Wars in Korean and Vietnam, linked from African-Americans in the US Army, part of Army Center for Military History.

Voyage of the Slave Ship Sally, 1764-1765.  In 1764, a one-hundred ton brigantine called the Sally embarked from Providence, Rhode Island, to West Africa on a slaving voyage. The ship was owned by Nicholas Brown and Company, a Providence merchant firm run by four brothers – Nicholas, John, Joseph, and Moses Brown. The Sally's voyage was one of roughly a thousand transatlantic slaving ventures launched by Rhode Islanders in the colonial and early national period, and one of the deadliest. Of the 196 Africans acquired by the ship's master, Esek Hopkins, at least 109 perished, some in a failed insurrection, others by suicide, starvation, and disease....Records of the Sally venture are preserved in the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University, as well as in the archives of the Rhode Island Historical Society. All known records are displayed on this website, offering a unique opportunity to retrace the journey of a single slave ship, from its initial preparation through the long months on the African coast, to the auctioning of surviving captives on the West Indian island of Antigua.

Voyages : Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database.  Provides information on about 35,000 slaving voyages that forcibly embarked over 10 million Africans for transport to the Americas between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.  It offers researchers, students, and the general public a chance to rediscover the reality of one of the largest forced movements of peoples in world history.

W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research (Harvard University). Named after the first African American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard University (1895), the idea for the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research was proposed in the Report of the Faculty Committee on African and Afro-American Studies dated 20 January 1969. In May of 1975 in its progress report to President Derek C. Bok, the Institute's Advisory Board announced the establishment of four fellowships for the 1975-1976 academic year. The fellowships were intended to "facilitate the writing of doctoral dissertations in areas related to Afro-American studies." As such, the Du Bois Institute is the nation's oldest research center dedicated to the study of the history, culture, and social institutions of Africans and African Americans.  Today, the Institute awards up to twenty fellowships annually to scholars at various stages in their careers in the fields of African and African American studies, broadly defined to cover the expanse of the African diaspora. The Du Bois Institute's Fellows Program forms the vital nucleus around which a stimulating array of lecture series, readings, colloquia, conferences, and forums, as well as research, archival, and publication projects revolve.

We Shall Overcome: Historic Places of the Civil Rights Movement. This site created by the National Park Service tells the history of the civil rights movement, against a backdrop of black and white photos depicting powerful images of the March on Washington and Martin Luther King Jr. in a Birmingham, Ala. jail. Click on a map of the U.S. to view the churches, schools, homes, and neighborhoods where many important civil rights events occurred.

Whispers of Angels : A Story of the Underground Railroad. : Defiant, brave and free, the great abolitionists Thomas Garrett, William Still and Harriet Tubman, along with hundreds of lesser known and nameless opponents of slavery, formed a Corridor of Courage stretching from Maryland's eastern shore through the length of Delaware to Philadelphia and beyond -- making the Underground Railroad a real route to freedom for enslaved Americans before the Civil War. This website features supplementary materials related to the documentary film which is available in the MSU Digital and Multimedia Center.

William and Mary Government Information : African American Resources.  A collection of government documents relating to African Americans.

Women's  History Month : 10 Recommended History Books on Black Women.  Keisha Blain, Huffington Post, March 14, 2016.

Zinn Education Project . Teaching a People's History

Zinn Education Project on Facebook

Bass Reeves :Deputy U.S. Marshall.  The closest real person to resemble the fictional Lone Ranger on the American western frontier of the nineteenth century (Black Gun, Silver Star).  Courtesy of Awesome Stories.

Because of You : A Movement Emerges in Nashville. When President Barack Obama took the oath of office for the first time four years ago, Congressman John Lewis sat in the VIP seats, not far from where the president raised his right hand and became the nation’s first African-American president. On a commemorative envelope he signed for Lewis that day, Obama wrote “Because of you, John.” That’s because Lewis, as a young man, was part of a unique group of Nashville college students who set out to change the world. They succeeded because they had right on their side, and also because they had the courage it took to stay the course even when their lives were on the line. A series of articles by the Tennessean commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights movement in Nashville.

Better than Good By Mark Harvey, Archives of Michigan, February 16, 2010

Businesses were difficult to start and maintain in nineteenth century Michigan, especially if you were black. No matter the barriers, Willaim and Wallace Goodridge thrived under the pressure and created the state’s first minority owned photography business.

 Beyond Face Value : Depictions of Slavery in Confederate Currency.  A project of the Civil War Center.  Many Southern notes did not feature images of slavery; this exhibit focuses on the ones that did. This collection features notes issued and circulated in the South during the Antebellum, Civil War, and Reconstruction Eras. Notes were issued by various entities, including the Confederate government, state governments, merchants, and railroad companies.  Provides jointly by the Louisiana State University Libraries and the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities.  Also posted under Images.

Binding Wounds, Pushing Boundaries: African Americans in Civil War Medicine looks at the men and women who served as surgeons and nurses and how their work as medical providers challenged the prescribed notions of race and gender.

Birmingham News (Alabama) Unseen / Unforgotten Photo Collection. Images of the Civil Rights Movement in Birmingham.  Also posted under Images.

Black Abolitionist Archive.  From the 1820s to the Civil War, African Americans assumed prominent roles in the transatlantic struggle to abolish slavery. In contrast to the popular belief that the abolitionist crusade was driven by wealthy whites, some 300 black abolitionists were regularly involved in the antislavery movement, heightening its credibility and broadening its agenda. The Black Abolitionist Digital Archive is a collection of over 800 speeches by antebellum blacks and approximately 1,000 editorials from the period. These important documents provide a portrait of black involvement in the anti-slavery movement; scans of these documents are provided as images and PDF files. If you have questions or comments on the collection, please contact Pat Higo at: higopa@udmercy.edu. Courtesy of the University of Detroit Mercy Library Special Collections Unit.

Black American Feminisms : An Annotated Bibliography.  "The multidisciplinary subject bibliography of black American feminist writings that follows is an effort to combat the erasure of black feminist subjectivity and thought through the promotion and use of the literature for the general public, students, scholars and life-long learners seeking information on African American feminism and African American feminist interpretations of a broad range of issues. The bibliography documents and validates an intellectual tradition that is continuously ghettoized within black studies, women's studies and society as a whole. Moreover, the bibliography serves to ensure a place for black American feminist thought in the social change discourse, ensuring that black women's contributions in art, politics and society are preserved and perpetuated."

Black Arts Movement. "Both inherently and overtly political in content, the Black Arts movement was the only American literary movement to advance "social engagement" as a sine qua non of its aesthetic. The movement broke from the immediate past of protest and petition (civil rights) literature and dashed forward toward an alternative that initially seemed unthinkable and unobtainable: Black Power."

Black Culture Connection from PBS.  Currently labeled Beta, this web site promises to provide access to numerous documentaries and telecasts from the PBS Library for free during 2013.

Black Diversity in Metropolitan America.  The black population is becoming increasingly diverse as a result of continued immigration from the Caribbean and Africa. The newer groups face similar levels of segregation from whites as do African Americans, despite very different social backgrounds. Report by the Lewis Mumford Center, February 17, 2003.

Black Fire at UVA.  Professors Kevin Jerome Everson and Claudrena Harold, of the University of Virginia (UVA), have launched a multimedia website exploring the struggle for social justice and racial equality at UVA. For anyone interested in Black history on American college campuses, the history of Black Studies or African American history in the south, this site is pretty interesting. The site includes videos, archival documents, audio files, and more. I think it offers another example of how we can document the history of Black Studies and make it publicly accessible.

#BlackGirlsMatter courtesy of the African American Policy Forum.   

Black girls matter : pushed out, overpoliced, and underprotected . Kimberlé Crenshaw;  Priscilla Ocen;  Jyoti Nanda.  online resource (52 pp.). "Girls of color face much harsher school discipline than their white peers but are excluded from current efforts to address the school-to-prison pipeline... Crenshaw, a leading authority in how law and society are shaped by race and gender, argues that an intersectional approach encompassing how related identity categories such as race, gender, and class overlap to create inequality on multiple levels is necessary to address the issue of school discipline and the school-to-prison pipeline....

Black Gotham Archive.  The goal of The Black Gotham Digital Archive is to link an interactive web site with the geographical spaces of Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn to create a deeper understanding of black life in nineteenth-century New York City. The project is an extension of Carla Peterson’s  book, Black Gotham: A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City (Yale UP, 2011), as I develop new media forms that allow greater flexibility, interactivity, and the potential for reaching a broader audience. Eventually the site will allow users to access information about designated Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn sites via their smartphones....

Black History 101 Mobile Museum.  For the past 20 years, the Black History 101 Mobile Museum has acquired thousands of original artifacts of Black memorabilia that date from slavery to Hip Hop culture.  The Black History 101 Mobile Museum travels to colleges, universities, K-12 schools, conferences, and cultural events across the country. On January 13, 2012 the Black History 101 Mobile Museum visited the Capital Area District Library Lansing Headquarters.

Black History Milestones from the History Channel.

Black History Resources from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. Michigan history includes a rich African American heritage. Check out the following links from the Michigan Historical Center to explore black history before, during and after Black History Month.  Still available thanks to the Internet Archives.

Black History Teaching Resources.  Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution.

Black in America.  CNN Special Web Page

Black Inventor Online Museum.  Provides an alphabetical list of over 50 important black American inventors. The entries provide short biographies describing their inventions.

Black Left Unity : Analyzing/Discussing the Burning Issues of the Movement for Racial Equality.

Black Lives Matter, see separate tab.

Black Panther Chronology.  A browsable chronology of the militant African American self-defense group formed in Oakland, California, from its origins in 1960 to the present (featuring updates on prominent members Bobby Seale, H. Rap Brown, Stokely Carmichael, and Huey Newton). Includes audio, video, transcripts of speeches, and a bibliography.  UC Berkeley Library.

Black Panther Party Legacy and Alumni (It's About Time)

Black Panthers.  A collection of some digitized publications from the MSU Libraries Special Collections.

The Black Past : Remembered and Reclaimed.  Welcome to the BlackPast.org website. This 3,000 page reference center is dedicated to providing information to the general public on African American history in the United States and on the history of the more than one billion people of African ancestry around the world. It includes an online encyclopedia of hundreds of famous and lesser known figures in African American history, Global African history and specifically the history of African Americans in the West. BlackPast.org also has full text primary documents and major speeches of black activists and leaders from the 18th Century to the present. There are links to hundreds of websites that address the global history of people of African ancestry including major black museums and archival research centers in the United States and Canada. Other features are listed in the left column. Click African American History, African American History in the West, or Global African History to explore our comprehensive resources and knowledge base.

Black Politics on the Web

The Black Press.  Ann Arbor, Mich. : ProQuest Information and Learning, 2006.  : The author discusses the history development of the African American press, arguing that the black press emerged as a response to a series of events and injustices that compelled freeborn post-Revolutionary African Americans to give collective voice to their grievances and aspirations. Wilson traces the history of the African American press, from its roots in the freedom struggles of the late 18th century; the rise of newspapers in the early 19th century and the publication of the first African American newspaper in 1827; the slow growth of the black press prior to the Civil War; the emergence of black newspapers in the South and black women journalists following the Civil War; the role of the black press in shaping opinion about the Great Migration and World War I; the flowering of the Harlem Renaissance through World War II; the Civil Rights era from 1945 to 1979; and trends from the 1980s into the 21st century. Wilson explores the business challenges confronting African American newspapers from the 1970s to the present as daily white newspapers began to cover the civil rights movement and the issues of the African American community. In 2005 the NNPA reported approximately 200 dues-paying member newspapers in the US and the Virgin Islands. Following the essay, a bibliography of recommended reading, a chronology of events from 1787 to 2002, and a glossary are presented.  Courtesy of the Black Studies Center by the Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience.  Note : access restricted to the MSU community and other subscribers.

BlackPressUSA.com : BlackPressUSA.com is the joint web presence of America’s Black community newspapers and the NNPA News Service — the last national Black Press news wire. It is a project of the Black Press Institute, a partnership between the National Newspaper Publishers Association Foundation and Howard University. Features interesting breaking news as well as historical news.

Black Renaissance in Washington, D.C. (1920s and 1930s).  The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s was a period characterized by an outpouring of literature by African Americans. Although it was primarily a literary and intellectual movement, it is our hope to also explore the role of the visual arts, music and performing arts. This cultural renaissance was not limited to Harlem, but was evident in other cities across the country. According to Kellner in his Historical Dictionary of the Era:  “‘Harlem Renaissance’ is actually a misnomer, because the rich surge of black arts and letters during the 1920s was not limited to activity... in New York.”  This statement is the premise and motivating force behind the Washington, D.C. Library’s desire to create a web site on the Black Renaissance in Washington.

Black Voting Rights: The Creation of the 15th Amendment.  Contemporary articles from Harper's Weekly along with commentary, a timeline, and biographies offer insight into the historical context and debates surrounding this landmark legislation. Also available are sites on the Thirteenth Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment. From HarpWeek, publisher of digitized historical issues of Harper's Weekly.

"BLACK WOMEN, SLAVEY AND SILENCES OF THE PAST".   Article by Brandon Byrd, African American Intellectual History Society, September 28, 2016

Blacks in Western Art (YouTube)

Breaking the Silence : Learning About the Transatlantic Slave Trade.  This site aims to help teachers and educators to Break the Silence that continues to surround the story of the enslavement of Africa that began over 500 years ago. It is designed to provide teachers with a variety of resources and ideas about how to teach the subject holistically, accurately and truthfully. It aims to represent the voices that are not usually heard. It hopes to highlight the involvement of Africans in their own liberation and to show that the impact of enslavement of the African continent was so far reaching that the legacies remain with us today, perhaps more powerfully than ever. The Transatlantic Slave Trade, also referred to within this site as enslavement, or the African Holocaust, was not just a part of history that can be forgotten. It forcibly changed the fabric of societies worldwide, economically, politically, socially, culturally and spiritually. Its long lasting legacies are directly relevant to people all over the world today.  a joint initiative between UNESCO, Anti-Slavery International, the British Council and the Norwegian Agency for Development Co-operation (NORAD).

A Brief History of Jim Crow Laws

Britton Johnson : A Legendary Black Cowboy.  Johnson’s fascinating story was turned-into a novel by Alan LeMay in 1954. He called it The Searchers.  John Ford, a movie maker, then turned the novel into a film, starring John Wayne. It was also called “The Searchers.” A significant difference between the real story and the adapted stories was the color of the star. A black hero became a white hero in both the book and the film.  Courtesy of Awesome Stories.

Brown versus Board of Education.  The story of Brown v. Board of Education, which ended legal segregation in public schools, is one of hope and courage. When the people agreed to be plaintiffs in the case, they never knew they would change history. The people who make up this story were ordinary people. They were teachers, secretaries, welders, ministers and students who simply wanted to be treated equally.

Brown vs. Board of Education Archive. The University of Michigan Library has developed a Brown v. Board of Education Digital Archive, in recognition of the 50th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision. Targeted to teachers, students, and researchers, the archvie focuses primarily on three areas: associated Supreme Court cases; public school integration efforts in the city of Ann Arbor, Michigan and the state of Michigan; and recent re-segregation trends in American schools.

Building the First Slavery Museum in America.  Article by David Amsden appearing in New York Times Magazine, February 26, 2015.   On Dec. 7, the Whitney Plantation, in the town of Wallace, 35 miles west of New Orleans, celebrated its opening, and it was clear, based on the crowd entering the freshly painted gates, that the plantation intended to provide a different experience from those of its neighbors. Roughly half of the visitors were black, for starters, an anomaly on plantation tours in the Deep South. And while there were plenty of genteel New Orleanians eager for a peek at the antiques inside the property’s Creole mansion, they were outnumbered by professors, historians, preservationists, artists, graduate students, gospel singers and men and women from Senegal dressed in traditional West African garb: flowing boubous of intricate embroidery and bright, saturated colors. If opinions on the restoration varied, visitors were in agreement that they had never seen anything quite like it. Built largely in secret and under decidedly unorthodox circumstances, the Whitney had been turned into a museum dedicated to telling the story of slavery — the first of its kind in the United States.

Death or Liberty - Gabriel, Nat Turner and John Brown.  Between the Revolution and the Civil War, three dramatic events in Virginia focused America's attention on the problem of slavery. Gabriel's Conspiracy in 1800, Nat Turner's Rebellion in Southampton County in 1831, and John Brown's Raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859 deeply shocked white southerners and provided confirmation for those who argued that slavery was incompatible with American liberty. African American scholar and activist W.E.B. Du Bois once noted that the attitudes of an "imprisoned" group could take three forms: "a feeling of revolt and revenge; an attempt to adjust all thought and action to the will of the greater groups; or, finally, a determined attempt at self-development, self-realization, in spite of envisioning discouragements and prejudice." These attitudes ebbed and flowed with the "spirit of the age." The spirit of revolt exhibited by Gabriel in 1800 and Nat Turner in 1831 convinced John Brown in 1859 that the slaves across the South were ready and willing to emancipate themselves. All they needed, Brown concluded, was the moral and military guidance of an inspired leader. "Death or Liberty" examines these events and the debates about slavery, freedom, and sectional politics that raged in their wake. Finally the exhibition offers an overview of how the public memory of these events has changed.

Desegregation of the Armed Forces.  The Harry S. Truman Library and Museum provides a chronology, documents, photographs, oral histories, and lesson plans related to the desegregation of the Armed Forces, which occurred during his Presidency.

Detroit African-American History Project. Wayne State University's Education Technolgy Services/Computing and Information Services and the Walter P. Reuther Library/College of Urban, Labor and Metropolitan Affairs have collaborated on this Web site which is designed to provide high school and college students, as well as the general public with insights and facts regarding the rich history of African Americans in Detroit.

Detroit Black Churches : The Detroit Black Churches website is a student-based research project lead by faculty members from the MSU Department of History and students from the MSU Honors College. The digital archive will include photographs, audio, video, and documents that exemplifies African-American religious life in Detroit. A MSU Matrix Project.

Detroit Police Stoned By Mob Over A Killing, Chicago Tribune, July 16, 1963.

Drop Me Off In Harlem.  A multimedia exploration of the Harlem Renaissance (1920s-1930s). Students can hear Langston Hughes read his poems, listen to Duke Ellington direct his orchestra, or watch "Shorty" George Snowden dance the Lindy Hop. An interactive map displays important cultural, social, and political establishments. Lesson ideas and learning activities facilitate an arts-integrated approach to the study of key works and themes that emerged. (ArtsEdge, supported by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and other agencies)

Du Bois Central : Resources on the Life and Legacy of W.E.B. Du Bois.  James Aronson Collection of W.E.B. Du Bois, 1946-1983.  ((Be sure to check out the online resources)  Courtesy of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst Department of Special Collections.

DuBoisopedia.  A wiki-fueled exploration of the life and times of W.E.B. Du Bois.

eBlack Studies : Recording the History of African American Studies. 

eBlack Studies : Black Studies as Text.  Since 1967, Black Studies has published and not perished in all three of its stages: social movement, academic profession, and knowledge network. This ebook is a historical anthology of work produced by a network of activist intellectuals called Peoples College  under the leadership of Abdul Alkalimat (Gerald McWorter). This site contains full text files of 28 different publications as searchable PDF's.

Ella Josephine Baker. : In memory, Ella Baker (Dec. 13, 1903 - Dec. 13, 1986), one of the most important yet least known civil rights and human rights activists. Her work began in the 1930s and spanned five decades. She was instrumental in the launch of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

Encyclopaedia Britannica's Guide to Black History.  This portal is offered in celebration of President Barack Obama's inaugeration,  the achievements of many other individual Black Americans, and the many milestones of the African American experience.

Enterprising Images: The Goodridge Brothers, African American Photographers, 1847-1922. Still available thanks to the Internet Archives.

Era of Progress and Promise: Education and Religion in Post-Emancipation America.  Provides profiles of early African American schools, churches, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and other institutions. Written in 1910, this seminal book was referenced by key figures such as WEB Du Bois and Booker T. Washington.

Eric Garner Posts via Twitter.

Eyes on the Prize Profiles : America's Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1985.  Profiles.  Find out more about the People & Groups featured in Eyes on the Prize which is available in the MSU Library Digital and Multimedia Center.

The Faces of Science : African Americans in the Sciences. Profiled here are African American men and women who have contributed to the advancement of science and engineering. The accomplishments of the past and present can serve as pathfinders to present and future engineers and scientists. African American chemists, biologists, inventors, engineers, and mathematicians have contributed in both large and small ways that can be overlooked when chronicling the history of science. By describing the scientific history of selected African American men and women we can see how the efforts of individuals have advanced human understanding in the world around us.

Famous Race Trials.  Douglas O. Linder, University of Missouri Kansas City School of Law.;

Ferguson : Black Lives Matter Resource Guide from San Francisco Unified Schools.

Ferguson : Resources for Ferguson Library Guide from Michigan State University.

Ferguson Resources Library Guide from the University of Arizona.

Ferguson Syllabus via Twitter.

Fighting for Freedom: Susie King Taylor.  The majority of firsthand accounts of life in the colored regiments during the Civil War were written and published by the white officers who led them. Susie King Taylor’s memoir is a rare exception.  With the encouragement of a white officer, Taylor published an account of her time with the 33rd Regiment U.S.C.T.  This volume is the only Civil War memoir published by an African American woman.  Taylor was born a slave on Grest Farm near the coast of Georgia. She spent part of her childhood in Savannah, where she received a clandestine education. In 1862, she gained her freedom by escaping to St. Simons Island, Georgia, then a Union encampment. There she married Edward King, a sergeant in the 1st South Carolina Infantry Volunteers, later named the 33rd Regiment, United States Colored Troops. For approximately three years, Taylor served as cook, nurse, laundress, and teacher for the regiment. Her 1902 memoir, Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33rd United States Colored Troops, Late 1st S.C. Volunteers, provides a unique window into life in the U.S.C.T.  She wrote, “I now present these reminiscences to you, hoping they may prove of some interest, and show how much service and good we can do to each other, and what sacrifices we can make for our liberty and rights.”

Flight to Freedom. Interesting interactive "game" allows users to "experience" the escape from pre-Civil War slavery, through the online personal narratives of a number of escaped slaves and other prominent individuals. Developed by Bowdoin history professor Dr. Patrick Rael and the Bowdoin Educational Technology Center. An unusual and unique web-based teaching tool.

Flight to Freedom By Bob Garrett, Archives of Michigan, February 2, 2010.

Fugitive slaves Adam and Sarah Crosswhite seemed to have found sanctuary in Marshall, Michigan. Then, in January 1847, four slave catchers arrived from Kentucky

 

 

 

Fort Gadsden/Negor Fort, Florida. On July 27, 1816, at the culmination of an invasion of Spanish Florida, a pair of U.S. Navy gunboats attacked a powerfully-built fort  on the Apalachicola River. Built by the British during the War of 1812, the  post was called the "Negro Fort" by the U.S.  Government. Inside its walls were 300  African American men, women and children  and around 20 Choctaw warriors. Some  were free residents of Florida, but others had  escaped from slavery and came here to live in freedom.

Freddie Gray Posts via Twitter.

Frederick Douglass.  America's Story from America's Library.  "Born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey to a slave mother and a white father he never knew, Frederick Douglass grew up to become a leader in the abolitionist movement and the first black citizen to hold high rank (as U.S. minister and consul general to Haiti) in the U.S. government."   Library of Congress.

Frederick Douglass:  From Slave to Leader.  Courtesy of Awesome Stories.

Frederick Douglass Library Guide.  Courtesy of the Cornell University Library.

Freedom's Sisters.  Much of our national memory of the civil rights movement is embodied by male figureheads whose visibility in boycotts, legal proceedings, and mass demonstrations dominated newspaper and television coverage in the 1950s and 1960s. While less prominent in the media, a group of extraordinary women also shaped much of the spirit and substance of civil rights in America, just as their mothers and grandmothers had done for decades.

Freedom's Story, Teaching African American Literature and History.  A collection of essays, divided into the following periods : 1609-1865, 1865-1917, and 1917 to date. National Humanities Center, 2010.

From Canterbury to Little Rock : The Struggle for Educational Equality for African Americans.   "On the southwest corner of the main crossroads in the town of Canterbury, Connecticut, stands a gracious house. Although it resembles many other houses in the area...this house stands apart because of the unique role it played in promoting the educational opportunities of African Americans prior to the Civil War."   National Park Service

From Slavery to the Supreme Court.  Online exhibit sponsored by Just the Beginning Foundation.  "On the southwest corner of the main crossroads in the town of Canterbury, Connecticut, stands a gracious house. Although it resembles many other houses in the area...this house stands apart because of the unique role it played in promoting the educational opportunities of African Americans prior to the Civil War."   National Park Service.

Greensboro Sit-Ins : Launch of a Civil Rights Movement.  Presents audio clips, a photograph of young Black men sitting at that whites-only lunch counter at the Woolworth Store on South Elm Street, a timeline, and news articles.

Greensboro Four - Woolworth Lunch Counter.  Courtesy of Awesome Stories.

Guide to the Papers of African American Artists.   Among the papers in the Smithsonian Archives of American Art are more than 150 collections pertaining to African American painters, sculptors, and printmakers from the late 19th century to the present. Included are Horace Pippin's illustrated memoir of his military service in France in World War I, Palmer Hayden's sketchbooks of his studies abroad, William H. Johnson's scrapbook of clippings, photographs of Alma Thomas, and the correspondence and writings of Henry Ossawa Tanner, Romare Bearden, and Charles White.  The Archives also has numerous recorded oral history interviews, from 1964 to the present, with such artists as Sargent Johnson, Jacob Lawrence, Hughie Lee-Smith, Howardena Pindell, and Richard Hunt.  At the Archives of American Art the struggles, accomplishments, and contributions of African American artists are revealed in the records of galleries and organizations and in artists' papers. Such subjects as the expatriate experience, racial discrimination in the arts, the exploration of an ethnicity, mainstream success, and the impact of New Deal art patronage are well documented.  A version of this guide was initially created by the Archives in 1997; in 2006 it was updated and expanded with support from the Terra Foundation for American Art.

A Guide to Resources on African Americans, Native Americans, and Women in the Era of the Revolution.  Courtesy of the  E Pluribus Unum Project is funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. It is co-directed by Dr. John McClymer, Professor of History, Assumption College; Dr Lucia Knoles, Professor of English, Assumption College; and Dr. Arnold Pulda, Director of Gifted and Talented student programs for the public schools in Worcester, MA.

Land of Unequal Opportunity : Documenting the Civil Rights Struggle in Arkansas.  Arkansas has a long and remarkably complex civil rights history.  While the 1957 Little Rock Central High School integration crisis is well known nationally and even internationally, it is merely one of a myriad of historical events that touches on civil rights.  As early as 1868 Arkansas enacted a civil rights law, which African Americans later used in court.  Even before the Civil War, a few farsighted Arkansas leaders were calling for granting property rights to married women.  When a wave of segregation laws was enacted around 1900, black leaders demanded fair treatment, organized boycotts, and protested loudly. During World War II over 16,000 Japanese Americans, mostly citizens, were incarcerated in prison camps in Arkansas—which adds a unique aspect to our collective civil rights history. In more recent decades, Arkansas was the scene of a dramatic confrontation in the legislature over adoption of the proposed U.S. Equal Rights Amendment. Even more recently, the state has begun to grapple with recognizing the rights of homosexual Arkansans. Finally, in the last decade Arkansas has become a major attractant to Spanish-speaking immigrants—which brings a different set of civil rights issues....“Land of (Unequal) Opportunity: Documenting the Civil Rights Struggle in Arkansas” is an attempt to compile in one on-line resource a variety of records and photographs that document the history of civil rights in the state. A central focus of the project is to insure that both documents and illustrations were included, in the belief that photographs, cartoons, drawings, etc., are also important research tools....While the great bulk of the materials maintained on the civil rights website is held by the UA Libraries Special Collections Department, other institutions around the state also contributed materials—including the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies at the Central Arkansas Library System in Little Rock; the Riley-Hickingbotham Library at Ouachita Baptist University; Ottenheimer Library at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock; the Torreyson Library at the University of Central Arkansas; the Arkansas History Commission; and the Southwest Arkansas Regional Archives, Washington, Arkansas.

Legends of Tuskegee.  This three-part Web exhibit highlights the achievements of Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, and the Tuskegee Airmen. It features collections at Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site and Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site located in Tuskegee, Alabama, and selected items from the Booker T. Washington National Monument in Hardy, Virginia, and the George Washington Carver National Monument in Diamond, Missouri.

Let Your Motto Be Resistance.  African American Portraits is the National Museum of African American History and Culture's inaugural exhibition. The images were selected by guest curator Deborah Willis from the collection of the National Portrait Gallery. The theme, African American resistance across 150 years of U.S. history, was inspired by the words of Henry Highland Garnet, an abolitionist and clergyman. On August 16, 1843, Garnet spoke to a group of northern free blacks gathered to discuss the future prospects of black America. Frustrated at the lack of progress, he advocated action: Strike for your lives and liberties....Let your motto be Resistance! Resistance! RESISTANCE!....What kind of resistance you...make you must decide by the circumstances that surround you....Throughout American history, most black Americans embraced Garnet's plea. The photographs reveal and illuminate the variety of creative and courageous ways that African Americans resisted, redefined and accommodated in an America that needed but rarely accepted its black citizens. Some black Americans thought the lack of racial justice needed to be challenged by any means necessary, including violence. Other black Americans felt that the best form of resistance was to confront discrimination whenever possible. Many believed that resistance could be the highest form of patriotism. In their beauty and power, the featured portraits resist the stereotypic depictions that fueled racism in America.The exhibition was organized in collaboration with the National Portrait Gallery, and the International Center of Photography. The photographs offer all Americans an opportunity to embrace the rich heritage we share.

The Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African : Equiano's Narrative is usually regarded as the first "slave narrative," and the first book in English by an African. Later editions of his book were often bound with other literary works by African authors, such as the 1830 edition, which also contained the poems of Phillis Wheatley.

Long passage to Korea : Black sailors and the integration of the U.S. Navy / Bernard C. Nalty via HathiTrust.  This work documents the service of African-Americans in the US Navy from the time of the Revolution through the Korean War. It also covers the post World War II efforts to fully integrate them into Navy, ending policies of racial discrimination.The work contains a list of sources at the end. It also features sidebars and many photographs

Love, Peace, and Soul : RIP Don Cornelius,  James Poniewozik, Time Magazine, February 1, 2012.

Making Tracks : The African American Experience in the Auto Industry : Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History.

Malcolm's Lansing.  Malcolm's Lansing is the creation of Michigan State University's Residential College in the Arts and Humanities (RCAH) Fall 2015 class: RCAH 192: Proseminar: Malcolm X in Lansing. The 13 students worked to learn and apply research methodologies, and this is their creation.

Malcolm X : A Research Site : A web compilation by eBlack Studies.

The March on Milwaukee Civil Rights History Project.  University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. This digital collection presents primary sources from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries and the Wisconsin Historical Society that provide a window onto Milwaukee’s civil rights history. During the 1960s, community members waged protests, boycotts, and legislative battles against segregation and discriminatory practices in schools, housing, and social clubs. The efforts of these activists and their opponents are vividly documented in the primary sources found here, including photographs, unedited news film footage, text documents, and oral history interviews. This website also includes educational materials, including a bibliography and timeline, to enhance understanding of the primary sources. The March on Milwaukee Civil Rights History Project seeks to make Milwaukee’s place in the national struggle for racial equality more accessible, engaging, and interactive.

Marcus Garvey : American Experience.   Companion website for the PBS documentary.

The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers Project : Secondary sources on Marcus Garvey and primary documents written by Garvey during the period of the Harlem Renaissance.Provided by the UCLA African Studies Center.

Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement.  Courtesy of the Seattle Times.

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change (“The King Center”) : The archive features thousands of never-seen-before letters, transcripts and documents from King and other key figures in the civil rights movement -- all posted online for public perusal.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Historic Speeches and Interviews : This collection includes links to YouTube videos with speeches by and about Dr. King.  The website also contains a timeline, a brief biography of Dr. King, and links to other related websites.  All videos have been reviewed for relevancy to the topic.  This project was originally released in 2008by the Detroit Area Library Network.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In Michigan, 1945-1968.  An illustrated timeline prepared by Paul Lee for the Michigan Citizen, January 14-21, 2007.

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 1963 "Letter from Birmingham Jail" Remains Relevant Today.  Quartz.  January 19, 2015.  King’s famous 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” published in The Atlantic as “The Negro Is Your Brother,” was written in response to a public statement of concern and caution issued by eight white religious leaders of the South. It stands as one of the classic documents of the civil-rights movement.

The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute : The King Institute at Stanford University seeks to ensure that King's ideas and ideals will benefit future generations. The Institute's endowment supports research and educational programs that contribute to public understanding of King's life and of the movements inspired by his message of peace with social justice. The collection features audio and vidoe clips of many of King's sermons and speeches.

Mayme Clayton : Americans in Focus : 90 second video about the collector and founder of the Mayme Clayton Library and Museum in Culver City, CA.

Midnight Ramble: Oscar Micheaux and the Story of Race Movies.  Dedicated to Oscar Micheaux and the "Story of Race Movies," including information about the documentary "Midnight Ramble."

Mississippi Freedom Summer Digital Collection
Freedom Summer, or the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project, was a key part of the civil rights movement in 1964 when volunteers attempted to register as many African-American voters as possible in Mississippi, where they had been almost totally excluded. Available from the Miami University of Ohio Libraries, this digital collection contains letters and diaries of students and civil rights leaders as well as photographs, advertising tradecards, newspapers, manuscripts, and videos pertaining to Freedom Summer.

Montgomery Bus Boycott.  On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on an Alabama bus. She wasn’t the first to challenge segregation laws, but this time was different. Parks’ resistance spread through a community that was tired of enduring years of insult and humiliation. For more than a year, in the face of violence and intimidation, 50,000 black citizens forced a segregated bus system to open its doors to equality. The city of Montgomery gave birth to America’s modern civil rights era, and a young preacher emerged as a symbol of international significance. 381 Days: The Montgomery Bus Boycott Story offers a gripping account of the men and women whose non-violent approach to political and social change matured into a weapon of equality for all.

Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955-56.  Courtesy of Stanford University.

Montgomery Bus Boycott, They Changed the World.  When Rosa Parks refused on the afternoon of Dec. 1, 1955, to give up her bus seat so that a white man could sit, it is unlikely that she fully realized the forces she had set into motion and the controversy that would soon swirl around her.  Montgomery Advertiser.

Monticello Plantation Database.  This website contains information about people who lived in slavery on Thomas Jefferson's Virginia plantations.  It provides access to a database of information on over six hundred individuals--details of life span, family structure, occupation, and transactions like purchases and sales.  It is a work in progress, which will be expanded and revised throughout 2006 and beyond.  It is hoped that it will give voice to the men, women, and children whose labor sustained Jefferson's family and plantations but whose lives and contributions went unrecorded.  Jefferson lived all his life in a world made by slavery. From the age of fourteen, when he inherited Sawney from his father, until his death seventy years later, he had by Virginia law been the owner of more than six hundred people. Despite his lifelong belief that slavery was an "abominable crime" and his early efforts to end it, he did not free his own slaves, always owning about two hundred at any one time. He manumitted only two men in his lifetime and bequeathed freedom to five more in his will. And although he had "scruples" against selling slaves, he did sell more than 110, mainly for financial reasons, and he "alienated" 85 more by gift to family members. He favored a gradual plan for a general emancipation - to include expatriation of the freed slaves - but while slavery was the law of the land he abided by that law.

More Than A Seat on the bus.  Article by Danielle McGuire, We're History, December 1, 2015.  Today marks the 60th anniversary of the arrest of Mrs. Rosa Parks in Montgomery, Alabama. We all know the popular story of what happened on that cold December day in 1955. Indeed, it has become an American myth. A soft-spoken seamstress with tired feet refused to move to the back of the bus to make room for a white man. Her spontaneous action and subsequent arrest sparked a yearlong boycott of the city’s buses that brought down Jim Crow in the cradle of the Confederacy. And the path to black equality was cleared. But that story, of Rosa Parks tiptoeing into history, both oversimplifies the deep roots of the boycott and disregards the bold actions of the many black women who made the Montgomery movement about more than a seat on a bus. In truth, the Montgomery Bus Boycott was a protest against racial and sexual violence, and Rosa Parks’s arrest on December 1, 1955 was but one act in a life devoted to the protection and defense of black people generally, and black women specifically. Indeed, the bus boycott was, in many ways, the precursor to the #SayHerName twitter campaigns designed to remind us that the lives of black women matter.

Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Francisco.  Drawing from the collections of museums, institutes, organizations, universities and private citizens, MoAD is a collector of stories—a repository of information to be shared with all who wish to know about the African Diaspora.  Be sure to check out (1) Slave Narratives : stories of enduring courage from around the world; (2) Photographs from the African Diaspora : View thousands of images contributed from visitors all over the world; (3) I've Known Rivers : "first voice" narratives about people of African descent.

NAACP: A Century in the Fight for Freedom. The NAACP: A Century in the Fight for Freedom exhibition presents a retrospective of the major personalities, events, and achievements that shaped the NAACP’s history during its first 100 years. Currently, the site highlights 70 treasures and will eventually expand to feature more than 150 items.

Nat Turner Project. In the Nat Turner Project digital archive, you can read original documents related to the only large-scale slave revolt ever to occur in the United States. Explore newspaper articles, diary entries, letters, maps, trials transcripts, census records, pamphlets, petitions, and other types of sources created at the time the revolt occurred. The archive also contains later accounts of the revolt, including interviews with former slaves and memoirs of former slaveholders. In the Memory section, you will also find visual and fictional representations of Nat Turner and the revolt that were created long after the revolt was suppressed and the people involved were gone.  Sarah N. Roth, Widener University.

Negro Baseball Leagues. Like most organized sports in American society before the second World War, baseball was racially segregated. In special instances blacks participated as team players in the post-emancipation period, but to a large degree baseball remained segregated, especially in the period between 1900 and 1945. Like American society at large, Baseball was segregated primarily by custom, secondarily by law. If one wonders how significant baseball is to American culture one need only reflect on this: baseball was desegregated in 1947, the public education system in 1954. A history of African American baseball going back into the 1800's.

Negro League Baseball Dot Com

Negro Motorist Green Book. : The Negro Motorist Green Book was a publication released in 1936 that served as a guide for African-American travelers. Because of the racist conditions that existed from segregation, blacks needed a reference manual to guide them to integrated or black-friendly establishments....That's when they turned to "The Negro Motorist Green Book: An International Travel Guide by activist Victor Green and presented by the Esso Standard Oil Company. Originally provided to serve Metropolitan New York, the book received such an alarming response, it was spread throughout the country within one year. The catch phrase was Now we can travel without embarrassment....The Green Book often provided information on local tourist homes, which were private residences owned by blacks and open to travelers. It was especially helpful to blacks that traveled through sunset towns or towns that publicly stated that blacks had to leave the town by sundown or it would be cause for arrest. Also listed were hotels, barbershops, beauty salons, restaurants, garages, liquor stores, ball parks and taverns. It also provided a listing of the white-owned, black-friendly locations for accommodations and food....The publication was free, with a 10-cent cost of shipping. As interest grew, the Green Book solicited salespersons nationwide to build its ad sales....Inside the pages of the Green Book were action photos of the various locations, along with historical and background information for the readers' review. Within the pages of the introduction, the guide states, There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published. That is when we as a race will have equal opportunities and privileges in the United States ." The Green Book printed its last copy in 1964 after the passing of the Civil Rights Act. Here is the 1949 book in its entirety courtesy of the The Collections of the Henry Ford / University of Michigan.

Negro Periodicals in the United States, 1840-1950 : An Annotated Bibliography by Professor Melvin R. Sylvester.  Many of the documents and essays identified in this bibliography were written by Blacks, with others written by sympathizers of the causes for Blacks as they struggled and sought justice, freedom, and human dignity in America. The earliest volume in the series dates back to 1827, and the latest volume was published in 1960. Except for the Crisis, all of the other publications are no longer being printed. In the past, publications such as these were known only by a select group due to their limited circulation amongst a small audience. The black churches, colleges, and professional institutions were aware of these publications, but to many they were considered "unknowns." Because the majority of the information featured in each publication is not indexed in any guide or index, the entire series could act as a valuable resource with unique possibilities for the interested historian, student, scholar, and especially the African American history enthusiast

New America Media : The country's first and largest national collaboration and advocate of 2000 ethnic news organizations. Over 57 million ethnic adults connect to each other, to home countries and to America through 3000+ ethnic media, the fastest growing sector of American journalism....Founded by the nonprofit Pacific News Service in 1996, NAM is headquartered in California with offices in New York and Washington D.C., and partnerships with journalism schools to grow local associations of ethnic media.

New York Times Emancipation Proclamation articles.

Notable Washtenaw County (Michigan) figures. From an Underground Railroad contributor to Ann Arbor's first black firefighter, here's a list of historic African American figures from Washtenaw County, ranging from the early 1800s to the late-1900s.    Article by Kullen Logsdon appearing in MLive February 24, 2018.

Oakland Museum of California Political Poster Collection.  Includes numerous posters from the Black Power Movement.

Oh Freedom Over Me.  In the summer of 1964, about a thousand young Americans, black and white, came together in Mississippi for a peaceful assault on racism. It came to be known as Freedom Summer, one of the most remarkable chapters in the Civil Rights Movement.  American Radioworks, February 2001.

Paris 1900: The Exhibit of American Negroes. The Exhibit of American Negroes is a reconstruction of highlights from an exhibit of the same name put together by W. E. B. Du Bois, Thomas Calloway and the Historic Black Colleges for the Paris 1900 International Exposition. The original exhibit included thousands of photographs, as well as hundreds of books, pamphlets and assorted documents chronicling the experience of African Americans up to the year 1900.  

The Pennsylvania Grand Review (1865/2010) honors the memory of African American patriots who fought in the Civil War.

Pictures of African Americans During World War II

Tamir Rice Posts on Twitter.   Cleveland shooting, 2012.

Teaching a People's History (Zinn Education Project)  The Zinn Education Project promotes and supports the teaching of people’s history in middle and high school classrooms across the country.  Its goal is to introduce students to a more accurate, complex, and engaging understanding of United States history than is found in traditional textbooks and curricula. The empowering potential of studying U.S. history is often lost in a textbook-driven trivial pursuit of names and dates. People’s history materials and pedagogy emphasize the role of working people, women, people of color, and organized social movements in shaping history. Students learn that history is made not by a few heroic individuals, but instead by people’s choices and actions, thereby also learning that their own choices and actions matter.

Thurgood Marshall Before the Court.  In 1967, Thurgood Marshall became the first African American appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. But Marshall had already earned a place in history, as the leader of an extraordinary legal campaign against racial segregation in America.  American RadioWorks, May 2004.

Tim Wise (Anti racist essayist, author and educator) blog

Time Line of African American History, 1852-1925.  Courtesy of the Library of Michigan.

Time Line of Slavery, Resistance and Freedom (1501 - 1836) : From the beginning of African slavery in North America through Michigan's territorial era.  Courtesy of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.  Still available thanks to the Internet Archive.

Time Line of Slavery, Resistance and Freedom (1837 - 1893) : From Michigan statehood through the Emancipation Proclamation and to the close of the 19th century.  Courtesy of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.  Still available thanks to the Internet Archive.

Timeline of the NAACP 1909-1965

The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.  Schomberg Center for Research in Black Cultures.

The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. A review of the triangular trade with reference to maps and statistics by Alistair Boddy-Evans, About.com Guide.

Trayvon Martin Posts via Twitter.

Tuskegee Airmen Library Research Guide.  Courtesy of the University of Southern Alabama.

Tuskegee Airmen National Musuem.  The National Museum of the Tuskegee Airmen represents the culmination of the efforts of many individuals. It provides a place not only to record the contributions of Americans to the defense of our Nation during a period in our history when they were not thought of as the equal of other citizens, but a place where all of the youth of America may come to acquire inspiration, counseling and assistance in achieving excellence in their own educational and career pursuits.

Twelve Years A Slave.  12 Years a Slave is a 2013 movie and an adaptation of the 1853 memoir of the same name by Solomon Northup. This autobiographical story provides a rare and shocking historical account of life for both free blacks and slaves during the pre-Civil war era. In 12 Years a Slave, Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is an educated, free man living in New York State with his wife and three children when he is kidnapped and sold in Louisiana as a slave. Having only lived as a free man, Northup must learn how to act like a slave in order to survive to be reunited with his family. Northup soon learns slaves should not read or write, slaves should only speak when spoken to, and slaves are their masters’ property to do whatever they want with....During his twelve years as a slave working on Louisiana plantations, Northup endures the horrors of being a slave—beatings, unsanitary living conditions, physical and mental abuse, and unendurable working hours and conditions. Northup is an extraordinary man who overcomes cruelty, degradation, and despair to reunite with his family and then share his story with the world in his memoirs. Courtesy of Awesome Stories.

Two Nations of Black America.  Today, America has the largest black middle class in its history, yet half of all black children are born into poverty. Have the walls of segregation tumbled down, only to be replaced by walls of class? FRONTLINE correspondent and Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., grapples with the issues facing the 'two nations of black America' as he takes a personal journey that measures the distance between the beneficiaries of affirmative action and those they left behind.   Courtesy of PBS Frontline.

Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture. This website from the University of Virginia presents a vast multimedia archive of primary material, 1830 to 1930, organized around Harriet Beecher Stowe's seminal work. Educators should preview the material, particularly the various representations of race and slavery in the archive, to determine what is appropriate for use in their own classroom discussion.

Uncle Tom's Cabin Historic Site (Dresden, Ontario) : Learn about Josiah Henson, recognized for his contributions to the abolition movement and for his work in the Underground Railroad.

Underground Railroad.  This National Geographic Society website includes a simulation of the decision and consequences of choosing or not choosing to escape enslavement via the Underground Railroad.

Underground Railroad.  Carole D. Bos, Awesome Stories.

The Underground Railroad in Ann Arbor, by Grace Shackman (December 1998), from Ann Arbor Observer: Then & Now, maintained by the Ann Arbor District Library.

University of Detroit Mercy Black Abolitionist Archive.  From the 1820s to the Civil War, African Americans assumed prominent roles in the transatlantic struggle to abolish slavery. In contrast to the popular belief that the abolitionist crusade was driven by wealthy whites, some 300 black abolitionists were regularly involved in the antislavery movement, heightening its credibility and broadening its agenda. The Black Abolitionist Digital Archive is a collection of over 800 speeches by antebellum blacks and approximately 1,000 editorials from the period. These important documents provide a portrait of black involvement in the anti-slavery movement; scans of these documents are provided as images and PDF files. If you have questions or comments on the collection, please contact Pat Higo at: higopa@udmercy.edu.

University of Illinois African American Research Center.  The  African American Research Center of the History, Philosophy and Newspaper Library is responsible for building the University Library's African American Studies collection, which includes materials on the Black experience in the Americas and worldwide outside of Africa. Consisting of more than 100,000 volumes, the collection is distributed throughout the University's various libraries, with the largest number located in the Main Library book stacks.  Also, 500+ reference books are available to anyone looking for facts, books, articles, or other media, about the Black experience in the Americas and the African diaspora. 

University of North Carolina Sonja Haynes Stone Center Library for Black Culture and History Guide to the Web

Unwritten History : Alexander Gumby's African America. More than 150 scrapbooks comprise the core of the Alexander Gumby Collection of Negroiana, part of the Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Columbia University. Together, these volumes contain a diverse array of manuscripts, photographs, pamphlets, artwork, clippings, and ephemera primarily related to African-American history from the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. At the time of its creation from about 1900 to 1950, the collection's curator, L.S. Alexander Gumby, explained that this "History of the Negro in Scrapbook . . . could well be called 'The Unwritten History'" of the United States, due to the lack of general scholarly attention paid to African Americans by contemporary historians....This exhibition introduces visitors to the remarkable Gumby and situates his life and project in the context of the Harlem Renaissance--his acquaintances included luminaries such as Richard Bruce Nugent, Countee Cullen, and Langston Hughes--and in relation to other contemporary pioneers of African-American history such as Arthur Schomburg and Carter G. Woodson. Showcasing pages from nearly fifty of Gumby's scrapbooks, it highlights both the rare and the seemingly mundane items that Gumby argued could combine to document an otherwise forgotten history of the United States and its African American contributors.

U.S. Navy Ships Named in Honor of African Americans (Defense.gov)

The U.S. Postal Service Honors The 150th Anniversary of The Emancipation Proclamation. Article by Ann Brown, appearing in Black Noire, January 3, 2013.

U.S. Postal Service To Honor Civil Rights Icon Rosa Parks On 100th Birthday.  Article by Ann Brown, appearing in Black Noire, January 24, 2013.

African-American Odyssey. This Special Presentation of the Library of Congress exhibition, The African-American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship, showcases the Library's incomparable African-American collections. The presentation is a highlight of what is on view in this major black history exhibition and a glimpse into the Library's vast African-American collections.

Black is Beautiful. This exhibit from Duke University seeks to explore the ways in which the "Black is Beautiful" movement transformed the portrayal of African Americans in popular media.

HistoryMakers. An online video collection of oral history interviews with significant African Americans in the U.S.