African American Resources

Teaching Resources: lesson plans, primary source activities & more

Primary source sets with teacher guides

• Baseball: Across a Divided Society
• Harlem Renaissance
• Jim Crow in America
• The NAACP: A Century in the Fight for Freedom

Curated sets of primary sources & secondary too

• Individuals
  • Marian Anderson
  • James Baldwin
  • Mathematician & Astronomer Benjamin Banneker
  • Mary McLeod Bethune
  • Bill “Bojangles” Robinson & Tap Dancing
  • Gwendolyn Brooks
  • Ralph Bunche
  • George Washington Carver & Tuskegee Institute
  • Shirley Chisholm
  • Henry Creamer & Turner Layton
  • Paul Laurence Dunbar
  • Katherine Dunham
  • James Reese Europe
  • Ella Fitzgerald
  • Althea Gibson & Tennis
  • Dizzy Gillespie
  • W.C. Handy & the Blues
  • Billie Holiday
  • Langston Hughes
  • Zora Neale Hurston
  • Mahalia Jackson
  • Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • John Lewis
  • Thurgood Marshall
  • Toni Morrison
  • Barack Obama
  • Satchel Paige
  • Rosa Parks Arrested
  • Gordon Parks
  • Harriet Powers & Quilting
  • Leontyne Price
  • A. Philip Randolph
  • Jackie Robinson
  • Patricia Smith
  • Tracy K. Smith
  • Mary Church Terrell
  • Natasha Trethewey
  • Sojourner Truth
  • Harriet Tubman
  • Booker T. Washington
  • Ida B. Wells
  • Phyllis Wheatley
• Groups
  • 25th Infantry Bicycle Corps
  • Black Women’s Clubs
  • Harlem Hellfighters
  • Little Rock Nine
  • Tuskegee Airmen
• Topics
  • Abolition
  • Abolition in D.C.
  • Civil Rights
  • Orson Welles’ First Macbeth
  • First March from Selma
  • Fisk University
  • Fugitive Slave Law
  • Great Migration
  • Harlem Renaissance
  • Juneteenth
  • Howard University
  • Liberia
  • Lynching
  • NAACP
  • Plessy v. Ferguson
  • Race Riots/Protests
  • Slave Auction
  • Slavery (U.S.)
  • The Stono Rebellion
  • Voting Rights Act of 1965
  • Works by Civil War Era African American Women

African American Studies Research Guides Offer a Gateway to Primary and Secondary Sources

Library collections

• African-American Band Music & Recordings 1883 to 1923
• African American Perspectives: Materials Selected from the Rare Book Collection 1822-1909
• African American Photographs Assembled for 1900 Paris Exposition
• Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project 1936-1938
• Collection Spotlight: All American News 1942-45
• Collection Spotlight: Civil Rights History Project
• The Frederick Douglass Papers 1862-1895
• William A. Gladstone Afro-American Military Collection
• The Zora Neale Hurston Plays 1925-1944
• Maps of Liberia 1830-1870
• Now What a Time: Blues, Gospel, and the Fort Valley Music Festivals 1938 to 1943
• By Popular Demand: Jackie Robinson and Other Baseball Highlights 1860s-1960s
• Slaves and the Court 1740-1860
• Voices from the Days of Slavery: Former Slaves Tell Their Stories 1932-1975

Additional collections outside the Library

• African-American Experience in Ohio 1850-1920 Ohio History Connection
• African-American Sheet Music 1850-1920 Brown University Center for Digital Scholarship
• The Church in the Southern Black Community Documenting the American South, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• First-Person Narratives of the American South Documenting the American South, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Online exhibitions

• The African-American Mosaic: African-American Culture and History
• The African American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship
• With an Even Hand: Brown v. Board at Fifty
• Creative Space: Fifty Years of Robert Blackburn’s Printmaking Workshop
• Voices of Civil Rights

Veterans History Project

• African Americans: The Next Generation
• African American Pioneers
• African-Americans at War: Fighting Two Battles
• Buffalo Soldiers: The 92nd in Italy
• Veterans’ Stories: Struggles for Participation

Spotlights, features & special presentations

• African American History and Culture
• African-American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship
• Brown v. Board of Education timeline & related materials
• Faces and Voices of Slavery
• From Slavery to Civil Rights
• Susie King Taylor: The Courage of an African American Nurse and Teacher

Image Sets

• African American images across the Library
• American Cartoon Prints, 1766-1876: African Americans
• Civil War Photographs: African Americans
• Civil War Documentary Drawings: African Americans
• Detroit Publishing Company, 1885-1930: African Americans
• Farm Security Administration (daily life 1939-1944, color): African Americans
• Farm Security Administration (daily life 1935-1944, black and white): African Americans
• Featured Image: Frederick Douglass lithograph
• Images of African-American Slavery and Freedom
• Minstrel Show Posters
• Performing Arts Poster Collection: African Americans
• Photographs from the Golden Age of Jazz
• Work Projects Administration Posters: African Americans

Historic African-American newspapers

• Searching African American Newspapers in Chronicling America

Music & Dance resources

• Article: African American Song
• African American Band Music & Recordings 1883-1923
• Blues music primary sources
• Blues music  (streaming audio)
• Jazz Music
• Ragtime (sheet music, audio, video)
• Ragtime & jazz songs (streaming audio)
• Aubrey Ghent & Friends: Sacred Lap Steel Guitar (webcast)
• Now What a Time: Blues, Gospel, and the Fort Valley Music Festivals, 1938-1943 (sound recordings)
• William P. Gottlieb: Photographs from the Golden Age of Jazz 1938-1948 (images)
• Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater: 50 Years Cultural Ambassador to the World (multiformat)
• Bill “Bojangles” Robinson & Tap Dancing
• Katherine Dunham Selections

Recorded webcast videos

• Early African American Life
• Ethel Payne, First Lady of the Black Press
• Federal Discrimination & the Decline of National Black Politics in the Early 20th Century
• A Matter of Law: A Memoir of Struggle in the Cause of Equal Rights
• Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr. & Laws That Changed America
• The Autobiography of John Hope Franklin
• The NAACP: Reflections on the First 100 Years
• Breaking the Color Barrier: The U.S. Naval Academy’s First Black Midshipmen and the Struggle for Racial Equality
• A New Challenge to the Congressional Black Caucus
• Literature to Life: Zora! (Zora Neale Hurston)
• Langston Hughes and His Poetry
• Michael Harper Reads His Poetry
• Shelia Moses: Poet, Author, Playwright
• Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey
• John Lewis: Civil Rights Activist, Author, U.S. Congressman
• Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Brothers in Arms
• Kevin Clash: My Life as a Furry Red Monster

Congressional activity

• Apologizing to Lynching Victims and Their Descendants Senate 2004-09-29
• Justice for Victims of Lynching Act of 2019 Senate 2019-03-22
• Is Racism Alive House 615, Feb. 27, 2002 (p. 53)
• Recognizing the African American Spiritual as a National Treasure Senate 2007-02-17
• Honoring the Tuskegee Airmen for their bravery in fighting for our freedom in World War II, and for their contribution in creating an integrated United States Air Force H.Con.Res.26 2005
• Celebrating Black History Month Congressional Record Vol. 165, No. 18, January 29, 2019