History and Genealogy – African American

 

African American History Archives

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/index.html 

Primary documents for cultural, economic, political, labor, and social history.

 

African American Holocaust

http://www.maafa.org/index.html 

A graphic exhibit of the violence wrought by the Ku Klux Klan.

 

African American Journey

http://www.tinyurl.com/35wuxt 

From the slave trade through the Civil Rights Movement.

 

African American Mosaic

http://lcweb.loc.gov/exhibits/african/intro.html 

Richly illustrated and documented survey from the Library of Congress. 

 

The African American Registry

http://www.aaregistry.com/categories.php 

Search by category (e.g., arts, business, education, sports, religion) and learn about people and events which changed the world.  You can also discover significant issues for any date, such as what occurred on your birthday.

 

African American Warriors

http://www.aawar.net 

Information about Black soldiers throughout the history of the United States.

 

African Diaspora

http://web.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/hum211/linksdiaspora.htm 

Although some sections of this webliography are not updated, the rich detail about the culture, particularly religious life, that Africans left behind or hid from Western eyes is brilliant.

 

Africans in America:  Historical Documents

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/rb_index_hd.html 

This large compendium of primary sources encompasses famous documents, such as “Am I Not a Man and a Brother,” “Benjamin Banneker’s Almanac,” and “Angelina Grimke Weld’s Speech at Pennsylvania Hall”; it also includes other significant but less well known materials.

 

Africans in America:  People and Events

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/rb_index_pe.html 

Fine discussions of topics, like the Middle Passage and the Raid on Harper’s Ferry, accompany biographical information about significant figures, like Olaudah Equino and Sara Allen.

 

Afrigeneas

http://www.afrigeneas.com 

"African Ancestored Genealogy": a how-to guide, state listings, surnames, information about slaves and slavery, etc.

 

Afro-American History: The Record of a Race of Indomitable People Surviving the Diaspora

http://www.aawc.com/aah.html 

African American genealogy, holidays, and the Tuskegee Airmen are among the covered subjects. 

 

Amistad Home Page

http://www.law.cornell.edu/background/amistad 

"This site explores the historical and legal issues and characters involved in the two disputes arising out of the Amistad revolt." 

 

Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas:  Image Search

http://hitchcock.itc.virginia.edu/Slavery/search.html 

Maps and pictures show trade routes, trading posts, slave ships, plantation scenes, domestic servants, recreational activities, family life, military activities, punishment, emancipation, portraits, etc.

 

Beyond Face Value: Depictions of Slavery in Confederate Currency

www.cwc.lsu.edu/cwc/BeyondFaceValue/beyondfacevalue.htm

"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." An online exhibit from the U.S. Civil War Center.

 

Black History Month: Timeline

http://gale.cengage.com/free_resources/bhm/timeline/index.htm 

Selected dates, from 1600 through the twentieth century, with some links to further information.

 

A Black Panther Party Chronology

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/pacificapanthers.html 

Events of 1960-2002, with links to transcripts and sound files.

 

Brown v. Board of Education

http://americanhistory.si.edu/brown

An online companion to a Smithsonian National Museum of American History exhibition commemorating the 50th anniversary (May 17, 2004) of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision. The site traces the history of segregation, the battle for education, and the events leading to the historic decision. Includes an annotated bibliography, a teacher's guide, and a timeline of events leading up to the decision.

 

Buffalo Soldiers & Indian Wars

http://www.buffalosoldier.net 

Illustrated with photographs, this site reveals the hardships and heroism of both sides, offering overviews of battles and notable Buffalo Soldiers' biographies.

 

Civil Rights Digital Library

http://crdl.usg.edu/

This University of Georgia resource delivers 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."  Look here for events, places, people, and a wide range of topics, such as boycotts, community organizing, school desegregation, and voting rights.

 

Dred Scott Case

http://library.wustl.edu/vlib/dredscott 

"In 1846, Dred Scott and his wife Harriet filed suit for their freedom in the St. Louis Circuit Court. This suit began an eleven-year legal fight that ended in the U.S. Supreme Court, which issued a landmark decision declaring that Scott remain a slave....The records displayed in this exhibit document the Scotts' early struggle to gain their freedom through litigation and are the only extant records of this significant case as it was heard in the St. Louis Circuit Court."

 

Finding Records of Your African American Ancestors - 1870 to Present

http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Search/RG/guide/36367_AfricanAmer2.asp 

This web site explains how to find records of African American family members who died after 1870. Instructions are provided for finding names, birth dates, and birth places of your ancestor's family members; and full names and marriage information of your ancestor's parents.

 

Guide to African American Documentary Resources

http://historicaltextarchive.com/links.php?op=viewslink&sid=0&cid=4 

“Many information centers are beginning to reveal and promote materials relating to African American history that are housed in their respective facilities. In hopes of enhancing access, dozens of institutions are digitizing such materials. This website reviews several existing websites and digitization projects and lists noteworthy digitization projects that are forthcoming.”  A majority, but not all, of the resources are currently freely available on the Internet.

 

In Motion: The African American Migration Experience

http://inmotionaame.org/home.cfm 

Created by New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and featuring more than 16,500 pages of essays, books, articles, and manuscripts; 8,300 illustrations; 60 maps and more—this site teaches us about the slave trade, the Great Migration, and other journeys, including those of new immigrants from Caribbean (including Haitian) and African regions.

 

Internet Resources for Students of African American History

http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/rul/rr_gateway/research_guides/history/afrores.shtml 

Especially valuable for its primary documents, this website points to a multitude of web pages.  From Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.

 

Juneteenth

http://www.juneteenth.com 

A description and history of Juneteenth, a celebration of the emancipation of slaves in this nation.

 

National Civil Rights Museum

http://www.civilrightsmuseum.org/permexhibits.htm 

A survey of the history of the ongoing struggles for civil rights.

 

National Underground Railroad Freedom Center

http://www.freedomcenter.org 

The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center honors both the original conductors like Harriet Tubman and twentieth century leaders like Rosa Parks. See especially the Scholar's Corner.

 

Other Great Migrations: African Americans in the West

http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/westweb/pages/black.html 

Biographies, cowboy history, primary and secondary texts for migrations from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

 

Powerful Days: Civil Rights Photography of Charles Moore 

http://www.kodak.com/US/en/corp/features/moore/mooreIndex.shtml 

The fight against segregation and lack of access to the voting booth by freedom fighters, with images of the Ku Klux Klan, Freedom Riders, Martin Luther King, and others.

 

Reconstruction and Its Aftermath

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/aaohtml/exhibit/aopart5.html 

"Even after the Emancipation Proclamation, two more years of war, service by African American troops, and the defeat of the Confederacy, the nation was still unprepared to deal with the question of full citizenship for its newly freed Black population. The Reconstruction implemented by Congress, which lasted from 1866 to 1877, was aimed at reorganizing the Southern states after the Civil War, providing the means for readmitting them into the Union, and defining the means by which whites and blacks could live together in a nonslave society."  This Library of Congress exhibit illustrates the struggle.

 

The Revolution's Black Soldiers

http://americanrevolution.org/blk.html 

A lengthy essay, with links and a bibliography, about the contributions of African Americans to our country's independence from Britain.

 

The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/about.html 

With essays and images, this PBS documentary explores segregation in our nation.  Among the featured topics are the influences of Reconstruction, Plessy v. Ferguson, the Niagara Movement and the NAACP, the film “Birth of a Nation,” and Jackie Robinson. 

 

Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection

http://dlxs.library.cornell.edu/m/mayantislavery 

These pamphlets, collected at Cornell University, are available for browsing and for searching.  The arguments presented are powerful and have applications today, when civil rights goals have yet to be realized. 

 

Say It Plain: A Century of Great African American Speeches

http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/sayitplain

A collection of the audio and transcripts of speeches by famous African Americans. Features speeches by Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, Mary McLeod Bethune, Dick Gregory, Fannie Lou Hamer, Stokely Carmichael, Martin Luther King Jr., Shirley Chisholm, Barbara Jordan, Jesse Jackson, Clarence Thomas, and Barack Obama. From American RadioWorks.

 

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

http://www.nypl.org/research/sc/sc.html 

Online exhibitions look at Harlem's African American community from 1900 to 1940 and the legacy of the Schomburg Center itself. Digitized collections of images of African Americans from the nineteenth century and of nineteenth century African American women's writings are also on exhibit. 

 

SNCC 1960-1966

http://www.ibiblio.org/sncc 

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee concerned itself with issues of violence, the conflict in Vietnam, white liberalism, Black power, and feminism.  Learn here about its illustrious early years. 

 

Through the Lens of Time

http://dig.library.vcu.edu/cdm4/index_cook.php?CISOROOT=/cook 

Photographs of African American life, largely in Virginia, during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, classified by topics, encompassing agriculture, domestic work, education, recreation, religion, urban life, and more.

 

Timelines: Toward Racial Equality

http://blackhistory.harpweek.com/8Timelines/TimelinesLevelOne.htm 

Chronologies of slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction; from Harper's Weekly. 

 

Today in Black History

http://www.africa.upenn.edu/K-12/Today_B_History.html 

Day by day calendar of events in African American history.

 

Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

http://www.cambridge.org/us/features/0521629101/default.htm 

This site "documents the forced migration of an estimated 12 million Africans," 1519-1867. 

 

Tulsa Race Riot

http://www.okhistory.org/trrc/freport.htm 

The official report of the destruction of a thriving African American community prepared by the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921.

 

USA Slavery

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAslavery.htm 

Slave accounts, daily life, the slave system, uprisings and other events, abolition efforts, and related material are discussed in thorough detail.

 

 

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