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Here you will find links to the best resources on African American history, arts, literature and culture. This site is intended for anyone with an interest in black culture in the United States, from before the Revolution to the present day. It will be continually updated, so bookmark this page and come back and visit often.
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General Books on Black History
From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans
Amazon Price: (as of 12/05/2008) 
The Atlas of African-American History and Politics: From the Slave Trade to Modern Times
Amazon Price: $19.57 (as of 12/05/2008)
Struggle for Freedom: A History of African Americans, The, Penguin Academic Series, Concise Edition, Combined Volume (Penguin Academics)
Amazon Price: $58.80 (as of 12/05/2008)
Creating Black Americans: African-American History and Its Meanings, 1619 to the Present
Amazon Price: $35.95 (as of 12/05/2008)
General Resources on African American History
- Time Line of African American History, 1881-1900
- African-American Odyssey
- This Library of Congress exhibition, The African-American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship, showcases the Library's incomparable African American collections. The special presentation is not only a highlight of what is on view in this major black history exhibition, but also a glimpse into the Library's vast African-American collections. Both include a wide array of important and rare books, government documents, manuscripts, maps, musical scores, plays, films, and recordings.
- The African American Migration Experience
- The African-American Migration Experience
New societies, new peoples, and new communities usually originate in acts of migration. Someone or ones decide to move from one place to another. They choose a new destination and sever their ties with their traditional community or society as they set out in search of new opportunities, new challenges, new lives, and new life worlds. Most societies in human history have a migration narrative in their stories of origin. All communities in American society trace their origins in the United States to one or more migration experiences. America, after all, is "a nation of immigrants."
But until recently, people of African descent have not been counted as part of America's migratory tradition. The transatlantic slave trade has created an enduring image of black men and women as transported commodities, and is usually considered the most defining element in the construction of the African Diaspora, but it is centuries of additional movements that have given shape to the nation we know today. This is the story that has not been told. - The African Presence in the Americas: 1492-1992
- The African Presence in the Americas is designed to introduce you to the dynamics and dimensions of the 500 year history of African people in the Americas. Four broad themes have been selected for exploration: Migration, Work, Culture, and Resistance. These themes cut across time and geography, illuminating the commonalties and differences in background, culture, color, gender and social status of these African Americans.
- African American World . History | PBS
- It's a story of indomitable courage against formidable odds. From the struggles of the civil rights movement to the injustices of the Jim Crow era, each moment in African American history has shaped the face of modern America. "We are made by history," Martin Luther King, Jr. once proclaimed. Black or white, Americans today can only agree.
- Anacosti Museum Online Academy Series in Black History and Material Culture
- The Academy features a series of people offering their expertise and sharing their insights on different subjects within the field of material culture. Collectors, preservers, scholars, and educators conduct virtual lectures, workshops, and demonstrations for your enjoyment and education. We want you to use the information presented here along with the database of artifacts in the museum's permanent collection to think about what role material culture plays in helping us to come to a better understanding of the African American historical and cultural experience.
African Americans In The Colonial Era
American Slavery, American Freedom
Amazon Price: $12.21 (as of 12/05/2008)
Epic Journeys of Freedom: Runaway Slaves of the American Revolution and Their Global Quest for Liberty
Amazon Price: $21.56 (as of 12/05/2008)
Strange New Land: Africans in Colonial America
Amazon Price: $11.86 (as of 12/05/2008)
The Forgotten Fifth: African Americans in the Age of Revolution (The Nathan I. Huggins Lectures)
Amazon Price: $15.56 (as of 12/05/2008)
Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 Through the Stono Rebellion (Norton Library)
Amazon Price: $12.21 (as of 12/05/2008)
Links to Resources on African Americans in the Colonial Era
- Africans in America | Part 1: The Terrible Transformation (1450-1750)
- "Perhaps in the middle of the 17th century, if you were one of several thousand Africans living in Virginia you certainly knew that your children would be free -- you might have that expectation. To suddenly find themselves involved in lifelong servitude, and then to realize that in fact their children might inherit the same status, that was a terrible blow, that was a terrible transformation."
- Peter Wood, historian - Chronology on the History of Slavery 1619 to 1789
Links to Resources on African Americans in the Revolutionary Era
- Africans in America | Part 2: Revolution (1750-1805)
- "The Declaration of Independence, I think, is one of the most remarkable documents in the world. . . 'Inalienable rights.'. . 'Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness'. . . 'We hold these truths to be self-evident.'. . . [But] it didn't apply to black folks. Thomas Jefferson kept slaves. But Thomas Jefferson nevertheless wrote these marvelous words, and he understood the inconsistency. . . ."
- General Colin Powell, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Slavery
The best general books on the history of slavery in the United States.
Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World
Amazon Price: $18.00 (as of 12/05/2008)
Slavery and the Making of America
Amazon Price: $20.23 (as of 12/05/2008)
Voices from Slavery: 100 Authentic Slave Narratives
Amazon Price: $10.17 (as of 12/05/2008)
The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750-1925
Amazon Price: (as of 12/05/2008)
The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South
Amazon Price: $35.53 (as of 12/05/2008)
Links to References on Slavery
- Africans in America | Part 3: Brotherly Love (1791-1831)
- "What's blooming now is... in many ways [a] golden age of American optimism... It's a remarkably optimistic age that could give birth to an Emerson or a Whitman, and even to the slave narratives themselves, which are, in their own way, very optimistic narratives of ascension, or coming from slavery to freedom.
But at the same time there's all of this optimism, this faith in progress in America, there is beginning to be a real fear that what's spreading across this continent is a problem that some day the country's got to face: that some day there has to be a solution to this contradiction of slavery in a land of liberty and freedom."
- David Blight, historian - Africans in America | Part 4: Judgment Day (1831-1865)
- "[W]hat northerners were saying now is they didn't want slavery to be part of the future in the West, because slavery would threaten their values, their sense of a work ethic. They were especially concerned that wherever slavery went it tended to degrade the meaning of labor. It tended to degrade the meaning of liberty itself.... Was a civil war inevitable over slavery in America? No. A war was not necessarily inevitable over slavery in America, but a deep conflict over slavery was. Any nation ... that founds itself on the creeds of life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, the right of revolution, the doctrine of consent and the doctrine of equality, and yet develops one of the largest systems of human bondage in the world, is living a national life of contradiction."
- David Blight, historian - Been Here So Long: Selections from the WPA American Slave Narratives
- Journalists and other writers employed by the Federal Writers Project, part of the New Deal's Works Progress Administration (WPA), gathered the American Slave Narratives during 1936-1938. Over 2,000 interviews with ex-slaves were collected during these years of the Great Depression and eventually compiled by George P. Rawick in The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography, 1979.
- Chronology On The History Of Slavery And Racism: 1790 - 1829
- Chronology On the History of Slavery and Racism 1830 - The End
- Juneteenth and Emancipation Day Celebrations: USF Africana Heritage Project
- Emancipation throughout the Diaspora was achieved, as well as celebrated, in diverse ways. Joyce Reese McCollum examines the history of Juneteenth and Emancipation Day celebrations.
Reconstruction to the Progressive Era
Post-Civil War through the 1920s.
Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880
Amazon Price: $19.95 (as of 12/05/2008)
Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877
Amazon Price: $17.49 (as of 12/05/2008)
Rehearsal for Reconstruction: The Port Royal Experiment (Brown Thrasher Books)
Amazon Price: $24.95 (as of 12/05/2008)
Black Georgia in the Progressive Era, 1900-1920 (Blacks in the New World)
Amazon Price: $21.00 (as of 12/05/2008)
The Social Gospel in Black and White: American Racial Reform, 1885-1912 (Studies in Religion)
Amazon Price: $27.50 (as of 12/05/2008)
Links to Resources from Reconstruction to the Progressive Era
- Frederick Douglass (American Memory, Library of Congress)
- The papers of Frederick Douglass span the years 1841 to 1964, with the bulk of the material concentrated in the period 1862-95. The collection consists of correspondence, speeches and articles by Douglass and his contemporaries, a draft of
his autobiography, financial and legal papers, and miscellaneous items. These papers reveal Douglass' interest in diverse subjects such as politics, emancipation, racial prejudice, women's suffrage, and prison reform. Included is correspondence with many prominent civil rights reformers of his day, including Susan B. Anthony, William Lloyd Garrison, Gerrit Smith, Horace Greeley, and Russell Lant, and political leaders such as Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison. Scrapbooks document Douglass' role as minister to Haiti and the controversy surrounding his interracial second marriage. - Atlanta Race Riot of 1906
- During the summer of 1906, white fears of African Americans' increasing economic and social power, sensationalized rhetoric from white politicians, and unsubstantiated news stories about a black crime wave created a powder keg of racial tension in Atlanta. The powder keg exploded on the night of September 22nd in what became known as the Atlanta Race Riot. By the time the riot ended on September 25th, at least 25 blacks and two whites lay dead.
Over the years, the collective public memory of this act of terrorism has faded, but fears that arose from that violence have continued and have fed the racial attitudes that segregate our city. Coalition sponsored activities meant to restore the memory and move toward reconciliation include: an exhibit at the MLK Historic Site gallery, curriculum material about the riot in area schools, artistic expressions and a community-centered symposium sponsored by local colleges and universities.
The Great Depression
A New Deal for Blacks: The Emergence of Civil Rights As a National Issue: The Depression Decade
Amazon Price: $34.95 (as of 12/05/2008)
Growing Up Jim Crow: The Racial Socialization of Black and White Southern Children, 1890-1940
Amazon Price: $17.95 (as of 12/05/2008)
Black Politics in New Deal Atlanta (The John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture)
Amazon Price: $65.00 (as of 12/05/2008)
Communists in Harlem during the Depression
Amazon Price: $25.00 (as of 12/05/2008)
The Cry Was Unity: Communists and African Americans, 1917-1936
Amazon Price: $30.00 (as of 12/05/2008)
Links to Resources on Black History in the Depression
- WPA: The African-American Mosaic (Library of Congress Exhibition)
- When Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office in 1933, he promptly set about to deliver on his presidential campaign promise of a "new deal" for everyone. In 1935 Roosevelt formed the Works Progress Administration (later renamed the Work Projects Administration--WPA) to create jobs that would allow individuals to maintain their sense of self-esteem. Even though inequities existed under the New Deal programs, they included ethnic and marginal groups, the financially and politically disenfranchised, the geographically dispersed, and women and children. In particular, many blacks found new employment opportunities, and special programs focused on three centuries of cultural accomplishments of African-Americans, as well as European contributions to national development.
During its brief existence, the WPA generated numerous documents consisting of written histories, oral histories, guidebooks, fine prints, plays, posters, photographs, and architectural histories, many of them relating to African- American history. Many black participants whose talent was nurtured by the WPA continued to make significant contributions to American culture after they left the WPA. Many of these individuals are represented in the collections of the Library of Congress.
The Harlem Rennaissance
The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader (African American History (Penguin))
Amazon Price: $12.24 (as of 12/05/2008)
Harlem Renaissance: Art of Black America
Amazon Price: (as of 12/05/2008)
Harlem Stomp! A Cultural History of the Harlem Renaissance
Amazon Price: $12.91 (as of 12/05/2008)
Voices from the Harlem Renaissance
Amazon Price: $22.49 (as of 12/05/2008)
Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance
Amazon Price: $13.50 (as of 12/05/2008)
World War II
Divided Arsenal: Race and the American State During World War II
Amazon Price: $66.00 (as of 12/05/2008)
Foxholes and Color Lines: Desegregating the U.S. Armed Forces (Rand Book)
Amazon Price: $25.00 (as of 12/05/2008)
Buffalo Soldiers in Italy: Black Americans in World War II
Amazon Price: $31.50 (as of 12/05/2008)
Taps For A Jim Crow Army: Letters from Black Soldiers in World War II
Amazon Price: $25.00 (as of 12/05/2008)
Red-Tail Angels: The Story of the Tuskegee Airmen of World War II
Amazon Price: (as of 12/05/2008)
Civil Rights Movement
Origins of the Civil Rights Movements
Amazon Price: $18.00 (as of 12/05/2008)
Voices of Freedom: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement from the 1950s Through the 1980s
Amazon Price: $16.32 (as of 12/05/2008)
Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965 (African American History (Penguin))
Amazon Price: $13.60 (as of 12/05/2008)
Women in the Civil Rights Movement: Trailblazers and Torchbearers, 1941-1965 (Blacks in the Diaspora)
Amazon Price: $17.95 (as of 12/05/2008)
Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision
Amazon Price: $36.00 (as of 12/05/2008)
Voices and Songs of the Civil Rights Movement
Sing For Freedom: The Story Of The Civil Rights Movement Through Its Songs
Amazon Price: $16.98 (as of 12/05/2008)
Voices Of The Civil Rights Movement: Black American Freedom Songs 1960-1966
Amazon Price: $14.99 (as of 12/05/2008)
MLK:MARTIN LUTHER KING TAPES
Amazon Price: $17.98 (as of 12/05/2008)
![In Search Of Freedom: Excerpts From His Most Memorable Speeches [Spoken Word]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41TKXWMA0TL._SL75_.jpg)
In Search Of Freedom: Excerpts From His Most Memorable Speeches [Spoken Word]
Amazon Price: $6.98 (as of 12/05/2008)
Links to Resources on the Civil Rights Movement
- Voices of Civil Rights :: Home
- The Voices of Civil Rights, a joint effort of AARP, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), and the Library of Congress collects and preserves untold accounts of the Civil Rights Movement.
- LPB Presents: American Apartheid
- Award-winning journalists John Camp and Bob Courtney examine the 45-year-old East Baton Rouge Parish desegregation lawsuit in a documentary called American Apartheid. Since the original desegregation lawsuit was filed in 1956 on behalf of 37 North Baton Rouge students, the East Baton Rouge Parish school system has spent millions of dollars in court costs, gone through seven superintendents and the case has been handled by numerous federal judges, most notably Federal Judge John Parker, who quit the case recently after 22 years. It is the longest running school desegregation suit in America.
- Atlanta in the Civil Rights Movement
- As home to many key leaders and organizations of the civil rights movement ? and as a site for many of the movement's grassroots activities ? Atlanta played a critical role in this period of American history.
To help keep alive both the lessons of the movement and the legacy of Atlanta's role in it, the Atlanta Regional Council for Higher Education (ARCHE) is undertaking a civil rights project in three phases.
This site represents the first phase of the project. It highlights Atlanta's role in the movement from 1940 to 1970, provides a timeline of key events, and offers information on other civil rights printed and online resources. Uniquely, this site provides a first-ever searchable inventory of special collections containing materials on the movement found at ARCHE's member institution and affiliated libraries/archives. - Beyond Brown : Pursuing the Promise | PBS
- On May 17, 1954, in its decision in Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S.
Supreme Court struck down the doctrine of ?separate but equal,? ending legal segregation in American education. Fifty years later, how close is America to
fulfilling the promise of Brown? - With an Even Hand: Brown v. Board at Fifty (Library of Congress Exhibition)
- On May 17, l954, the Supreme Court issued a decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, declaring that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." This decision was pivotal to the struggle for racial desegregation in the United States. This exhibition commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of this landmark judicial case.
- Brown v. Board of Education Online Archive
- The University of Michigan Library's Brown v. Board of Education Digital Archive. This archive contains documents and images which chronicle events surrounding this historically significant case up to the present.
- Brown versus Board of Education / Brown Foundation for Educational Equity, Excellence and Research
- On May 17, 1954, the United States Supreme Court announced its decision that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." The decision effectively denied the legal basis for segregation in Kansas and 20 other states with segregated classrooms and would forever change race relations in the United States. This site is a resource for information and source material about Brown v. Board of Education.
Black Liberation, the Sixties and the Seventies
From Civil Rights to Black Liberation: Malcom X and the Organization of Afro-America Unity
Amazon Price: $13.30 (as of 12/05/2008)
Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America
Amazon Price: $20.90 (as of 12/05/2008)
Liberation, Imagination, and the Black Panther Party: A New Look at the Panthers and Their Legacy
Amazon Price: $35.05 (as of 12/05/2008)
New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement and American Culture, 1965-1975
Amazon Price: $19.80 (as of 12/05/2008)
Black Liberation and Socialism
Amazon Price: $10.40 (as of 12/05/2008)
Resources on the Black Power Movement
- Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation: Resources on the Black Panther Party
- The Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation is a community-based, non-profit research, education, and advocacy center dedicated to fostering progressive social change. By preserving the history of multicultural activism and community self-determination, by educationg the public about this history's continued relevance, and by creating a crucible for practicing ongoing progressive change, guided by the writings and teachings of Huey P. Newton, the Foundation seeks to empower all people, but especially urban youth, to be builders of a true global community.
The Eighties and the Nineties
Into the Fire: African Americans Since 1970 (Young Oxford History of African Americans, V. 10)
Amazon Price: (as of 12/05/2008)
Countervailing Forces in African-American Civic Activism, 1973-1994
Amazon Price: $54.02 (as of 12/05/2008)
Double Trouble: Black Mayors, Black Communities, and the Call for a Deep Democracy (Transgressing Boundaries: Studies in Black Politics and Black Communities)
Amazon Price: $40.00 (as of 12/05/2008)
The New Black Renaissance: The Souls Anthology of Critical African American Studies
Amazon Price: $29.95 (as of 12/05/2008)
"Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?": A Psychologist Explains the Development of Racial Identity
Amazon Price: $10.85 (as of 12/05/2008)
African American Women
Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow
Amazon Price: $10.20 (as of 12/05/2008)
But Some Of Us Are Brave: All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men: Black Women's Studies
Amazon Price: $19.95 (as of 12/05/2008)
Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (Revised 10th Anniv 2nd Edition)
Amazon Price: $26.95 (as of 12/05/2008)
Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired: Black Women's Health Activism in America, 1890-1950 (Studies in Health, Illness, and Caregiving)
Amazon Price: $24.75 (as of 12/05/2008)
Too Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defense of Themselves : 1894-1994
Amazon Price: $15.25 (as of 12/05/2008)
Black and Queer
Get By: A Survival Guide for Black Gay Youth
Amazon Price: $14.99 (as of 12/05/2008)
Freedom in this Village: Twenty-Five Years of Black Gay Men's Writing
Amazon Price: $12.76 (as of 12/05/2008)
Their Own Receive Them Not: African American Lesbians And Gays in Black Churches
Amazon Price: $24.00 (as of 12/05/2008)
The Greatest Taboo: Homosexuality in Black Communities
Amazon Price: (as of 12/05/2008)