African American History and Culture: Recommended Websites

These articles, videos, podcasts and websites from the Smithsonian chronicle the history of anti-black violence and inequality in the United States June 4, 2020

July 19, 2023

A searchable database

September 29, 2020

A searchable database of small Black newspapers.

Pew Research Center explores the complex and diverse attitudes and experiences of Black people in America through in-depth surveys, demographic studies and other research. Our work focuses on the themes of Black identity, the economic and social mobility of Black people in America, and Black representation in American political and social life. This work is part of our wider race and ethnicity research portfolio about the political, economic and cultural experiences of members of U.S. racial and ethnic groups.

The struggle over voting rights in the United States dates all the way back to the founding of the nation. The original U.S. Constitution did not define voting rights for citizens, and until 1870, only white men were allowed to vote. Two constitutional amendments changed that. The Fifteenth Amendment (ratified in 1870) extended voting rights to men of all races. However, this amendment was not enough because African Americans were still denied the right to vote by state constitutions and laws, poll taxes, literacy tests, the “grandfather clause,” and outright intimidation. The Twenty-fourth Amendment (ratified in 1964) partly addressed this injustice by prohibiting the use of poll taxes in federal elections. In addition to these constitutional amendments, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 secured voting rights for adult citizens of all races and genders in the form of federal laws that enforced the amendments.

The Black Banjo Reclamation Project is a vehicle to return instruments of African origin to the descendants of their original makers.

It wasn’t all young men and guns: the Black Panther Party’s programs fed more hungry kids than the state of California

Capital B is a Black-led, nonprofit local and national news organization reporting for Black communities across the country.

The Cartoonists of Color, Queer Cartoonists, and Disabled Cartoonists databases were created and are maintained by cartoonist MariNaomi as a way to spotlight marginalized comics creators. The databases are used by booksellers, librarians, academics, editors, book publishers, event organizers, readers, and more.

February 12, 2021

August 11. 2023

The Library of Congress has digitized the works of Omar ibn Said in both Arabic and English.

January 27, 2020

Freedom Narratives focuses on the enforced migration of enslaved Africans in the Atlantic world during the era of the slave trade from the 16th to the 19th century. The biographical accounts included here include the testimonies and stories of individuals born in West Africa whose voices have long been silenced. This digital repository of autobiographical testimonies and biographical data establishes where people came from, why they were enslaved, whether or not they freed themselves, and what happened to them

July 24, 2020

Between 1910 and 1930, the African-American population of Philadelphia skyrocketed, from around 85,000 to nearly 220,000 in the early years of the Great Depression. This massive influx of southern newcomers had a deep and enduring impact on the city. The stories of the individuals—those who left lives behind in the South and ventured north in search of opportunity and equality, pushed out by the increasingly hostile environment of Jim Crow racism—reveal the true impact of this Great Migration north.

February 17, 2021

Link should open as a PDF January 26, 2021

Hip hop is more than music; it’s a cultural movement that incorporates different elements of art. Four foundational elements characterize hip hop culture. The original four main pillars of hip hop include DJing/turntablism, MCing/rapping, B-boying/breaking, and visual/graffiti art. These forms of expression have also developed into further subcultures with lasting legacies. January 26, 2021

This guide provides a list of historical African American Newspapers available online as part of digitization projects at libraries and historical societies as well as digitization projects done by Google. The content is available for free, though it is at the discretion of the institution providing the content.

January 28, 2021

February 1, 2021

October 25, 2019

Bernard Taper in the New Yorker March 9, 1956

The founders of Black American museums in the post-World War II era were all shaped by Carter G. Woodson’s “Negro Canon” of history and art.

August 17, 2018

1872 Congressional inquiry into the Klu Klux Klan

Our Roots Beyond Race project is the most comprehensive portrait of Americans’ identity available anywhere. Typically, discussions of race and ethnicity show U.S. residents in five or six broad categories. This project goes beyond basic race groups to reveal our incredibly varied “roots”—our family histories, including immigration patterns across generations and up to the present.

Roots Beyond Race contains data on 198 heritage groups and demonstrates the complex, overlapping, and fascinating origins of those who live in the United States. These data are self-reported and therefore reveal Americans’ own construction of identity. Multi-racial and multi-origin people appear in all race and heritage groups they reported to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Video here: https://youtu.be/HYKwQG9TS74
July 30, 2020

January 22, 2024

February 16, 2017

The 100 greatest books ever written by African American women January 7, 2020

Library of Congress

The Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment was the first military unit consisting of black soldiers to be raised in the North during the Civil War.

The bulk of this collection consists of correspondence related to George T. Downing (1819-1903). He was a civil rights leader and successful businessman. Letters included in the collection are ones to Downing from William Lloyd Garrison, Charles A. Sumner, and Ambrose E. Burnside.

An Exploration of Advertising in Colonial America 250 Years Ago This Week

The African American Trail Project is a collaborative public history initiative housed at Tufts University. Originally inspired by the scholarship of Tufts Professor Gerald R. Gill (1948-2007) and driven by faculty and student research, this project maps African American and African-descended public history sites across greater Boston, and throughout Massachusetts. The African American Trail Project aims to develop African American historical memory and intergenerational community, placing present-day struggles for racial justice in the context of greater Boston’s historic African American, Black Native, and diasporic communities.

The African American Trail Project is a collaborative public history initiative housed at Tufts University. Originally inspired by the scholarship of Tufts Professor Gerald R. Gill (1948-2007) and driven by faculty and student research, this project maps African American and African-descended public history sites across greater Boston, and throughout Massachusetts. The African American Trail Project aims to develop African American historical memory and intergenerational community, placing present-day struggles for racial justice in the context of greater Boston’s historic African American, Black Native, and diasporic communities.

We represent Black Boston, centrally Roxbury, Dorchester, Mattapan but really all through the other burroughs and suburbs to wherever Black people are found in our extended midst. Our definition of Black is very inclusive, in Boston we have a lot of Brothers and Sisters from all over the Globe…Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, Cape Verde, Africa, Trinidad, wherever…. in our eyes you are all Black People and we are family here in Boston aka The Bean.

Boston African American National Historic Site is located in historic Beacon Hill in downtown Boston. Take the Black Heritage Trail® and explore the rich history of the African American community that lived here in the 19th century. (U. S. national Park Service)

June 28, 2021

June 8, 2021

February 26, 1638

Louis Masur talks about the legacy of The Soiling of Old Glory, a picture that shocked the nation.

The Free Soil Arts Collective’s mission is to create opportunities for BIPOC artists in the Merrimack Valley to invest in their craft, develop new work, and share with the public in the place they call home

The organizational history of the Royall House and Slave Quarters goes back to the establishment of the Royall House Association in 1906 to purchase and preserve the property. Today the work of the museum depends on the efforts of scores of members and volunteers, led by an active Board of Directors with counsel from a distinguished Academic Advisory Committee

Founded in 1925 and named a National Historic Landmark in 2017, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is one of the world’s leading cultural institutions devoted to the research, preservation, and exhibition of materials focused on African American, African Diaspora, and African experiences. As a research division of The New York Public Library, the Schomburg Center features diverse programming and collections spanning over 11 million items that illuminate the richness of global black history, arts, and culture.

Link to the Library of Congress and a digital collection of the Brownies' Book at the end of the piece.

Massachusetts Bay Colony was the first slave-holding colony in New England. The first slaves were brought to the colony in the early 17th century.

The 1901 assassination of US President William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo revealed the abysmal state of race relations in America.

Harvard College 1890 "The Constitutionality of the Kansas-Nebraska Act"

February 22, 2021

January 14, 2010

January 22, 2024

February 16, 2023

September 15, 2021

We looked at 19 years of covers to find how Vogue represents women of all shades

December 15, 2020

An effort to document missing black women.

She didn’t go far from Boston, but a keen-eyed historian glimpsed her in the archive—and that find opens up a door to both the poet’s marriage and the final years of slavery in Massachusetts

Note the link to Ms. Parks' papers at the Library of Congress.

May 11, 2022

October 6, 2021

September 1, 2020

A new study — "Who’s At The PrimeTime Table" — reveals that Black women — especially older Black women — are sorely underrepresented as hosts, contributors and experts during the coveted primetime hours at the three major cable news networks.

April 26, 2023

June 26, 2020

February 2, 2021

Library login is required.

December 18, 2020

August 21, 2021

January 12, 2021

May 25, 2021

September 2, 2021

June 24, 2021

March 8, 2022

March 30, 2021

January 30, 2023

Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration honoring the end of slavery in the United States.
On June 19, 1865, Union General Gordon Granger led thousands of federal troops to Galveston, Texas to announce that the Civil War had ended, and slaves had been freed. Approximately 250,000 Texan slaves had no idea that their freedom had been secured by the government.

One hundred fifty years ago today, the U.S. Army took possession of Galveston Island, a barrier island just off the Texas coast that guards the entrance to Galveston Bay, and began a late-arriving, long-lasting war against slavery in Texas. This little-known battle would endure for months after the end of what we normally think of as the Civil War. This struggle, pitting Texas freedpeople and loyalists and the U.S. Army against stubborn defenders of slavery, would become the basis for the increasingly popular celebrations of Juneteenth, a predominantly African-American holiday celebrating emancipation on or about June 19th every year.

The emancipation of enslaved people in the U.S. took place over a protracted period. The articles in this curated list dig into the complicated history.

Signed into law June 17, 2021

June 17, 2021

The handwritten document informed the enslaved in Texas they were free on June 19, 1865

The Slavery Adverts 250 Project chronicles the role of newspaper advertising in perpetuating slavery in the era of the American Revolution. The project seeks to reveal the ubiquity of slavery in eighteenth-century life from New England to Georgia by republishing advertisements about enslaved people – for sale as individuals or in groups, wanted to purchase or for hire for short periods, runaways who liberated themselves, and those who were subsequently captured and confined in jails and workhouses – in daily digests on this site as well as in real time via the @SlaveAdverts250 Twitter feed, utilizing twenty-first-century media to stand in for the print media of the eighteenth centur

An educational advocacy organization

At the AAAMC, you will find materials covering a range of African American musical idioms and cultural expressions primarily from the post-World War II era. Our collections highlight popular, religious, and classical music, with genres ranging from blues and gospel to R&B and contemporary hip hop. The AAAMC also houses extensive materials related to the documentation of black radio.

ASALH is itself part of African American treated, as Carter G. Woodson often said, as “a negligible factor” in American and world history. While he labored with a singularity of purpose, Woodson did not work alone. His co-workers at the Association were many, ranging from college presidents and government officials, to celebrated poets and philosophers, to everyday folks in rural hamlets. To explore the history of ASALH is to glimpse a people’s strivings, their institution building. To bring that history to life in one’s imagination is to walk with giants.

For far too long, Black communities have been left out of the conversation – often spoken about, and rarely listened to. But that ends now with the launch of our Black Census Project 2023 – the largest survey of Black people in the U.S. in 157 years.

Extensive collections via libraries, archives, and museums.

Black-owned social media and networking site.

Boston African American National Historic Site is located in historic Beacon Hill in downtown Boston. Take the Black Heritage Trail® and explore the rich history of the African American community that lived here in the 19th century. (U. S. National Park Service)

JStor editor's picks for 2024

The Center for Minority Veterans is the Department of Veterans Affairs model for inter-and intra-agency co-operation, to ensure all veterans receive equal service regardless of race, origin, religion, or gender. We are process improvement-oriented and both internal and external customer-centric. We assist VA in executing its mission in the most equitable, efficient and humane way possible. Dignity and an acceptable quality of life are the products we seek to deliver to ALL veterans no matter what their circumstance. We will grace our mission execution with gratitude to the men and women we now serve who in turn served our Nation so well. Meet the Center for Minority Veterans Staff.

Underwritten by a "We the People" grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, The Digital Library on American Slavery is a cooperative venture between the Race and Slavery Petitions Project and the Electronic Resources and Information Technology Department of University Libraries at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. The Digital Library offers a searchable database of detailed personal information about slaves, slaveholders, and free people of color. Designed as a tool for scholars, historians, teachers, students, genealogists, and interested citizens, the site provides access to information gathered and analyzed over an eighteen-year period from petitions to southern legislatures and country courts filed between 1775 and 1867 in the fifteen slaveholding states in the United States and the District of Columbia.

In honor of Black History Month, we have consolidated a list of varied resources available on the Artstor/JSTOR platforms, from licensed collections to freely available community generated collections.

The IVMF at Syracuse University is higher education’s first interdisciplinary academic institute, singularly focused on advancing the post-service lives of the nation’s military veterans and their families to serve those who have served.

The Equal Justice Initiative is committed to ending mass incarceration and excessive punishment in the United States, to challenging racial and economic injustice, and to protecting basic human rights for the most vulnerable people in American society.

Free access at Ancestry.com

Gordon Parks’ earliest work as a professional photographer was shooting fashion for a department store in St. Paul, Minnesota. It was this professional experience that made it possible for him to photograph for local newspapers, prompting Parks to explore and document Chicago’s impoverished South Side. This series of photographs would win him a Rosenwald Fund fellowship in photography, allowing him to work with Roy Stryker’s renowned Farm Security Administration (FSA) team of photographers. When the FSA was absorbed into the Office of War Information (OWI), Parks had the opportunity to photograph the legendary Tuskegee Airmen Fighter Pilots. The combination of Parks’ experience shooting fashion as well as documentary photography informed his style and made him an asset at Life magazine when he joined their staff in 1948. He would continue to work as both fashion photographer and photo documentarian for the rest of his tenure there through the early 1970s.

In 1838, Maryland's Jesuit priests sold hundreds of men, women, and children to Southern plantations to raise money for the construction of Georgetown University. Though they faced incredible hardship, most didn't perish. They married and raised children. Today, more than 8,000 of their descendants have been located through genealogical research. Use this site to search for an ancestor and to hear the stories of the descendants.

The Hutchins Center for African & African American Research supports research on the history and culture of people of African descent the world over and provides a forum for collaboration and the ongoing exchange of ideas. It seeks to stimulate scholarly engagement in African and African American studies both at Harvard and beyond, and to increase public awareness and understanding of this vital field of study. As the preeminent research center in the field, the Hutchins Center sponsors visiting fellows, art exhibitions, publications, research projects, archives, readings, conferences, and new media initiatives that respond to and inspire interest in established and emerging channels of inquiry in African and African American research.

Our journey will challenge, illuminate, inspire, and move people to action.

The John Hope Franklin Research Center is a repository for African and African-American studies documentation and an educational outreach division of the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University.

Building upon the achievements of Stanford University's Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project, the King Institute supports a broad range of educational activities illuminating Dr. King's life and the movements he inspired.

We are building an intersectional movement of minority veterans and allies. We advocate equity, respect, and justice for all veterans. We're creating community among our members and delivering culturally-informed programming.

The Museum of African American History is New England’s largest museum dedicated to preserving, conserving and interpreting the contributions of African Americans. In Boston and Nantucket, the Museum has preserved four historic sites and two Black Heritage Trails® that tell the story of organized black communities from the Colonial Period through the 19th century.
Exhibits, programs, and education activities at the Museum showcase the powerful stories of black families who worshipped, educated their children, debated the issues of the day, produced great art, organized politically and advanced the cause of freedom.

Welcome to the Searchable Museum

In the executive summary of “The State of Black America,” the National Urban League’s signature report of over forty years that was originally released in 1976 that reflects the issues facing black and brown communities. The usage of the Equality Index, an analytic tool that measures how black people are doing relative to whites in America, has helped the Urban League create this report since 2005. The Index measures data in economics, health, education, social justice, and civic engagement.

Founded in 1925 and named a National Historic Landmark in 2017, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is one of the world’s leading cultural institutions devoted to the research, preservation, and exhibition of materials focused on African American, African Diaspora, and African experiences. As a research division of The New York Public Library, the Schomburg Center features diverse programming and collections spanning over 11 million items that illuminate the richness of global black history, arts, and culture.

Requires a BPL account and login. You can create an account here https://www.bpl.org/ecard

This digital memorial raises questions about the largest slave trades in history and offers access to the documentation available to answer them. European colonizers turned to Africa for enslaved laborers to build the cities and extract the resources of the Americas. They forced millions of mostly unnamed Africans across the Atlantic to the Americas, and from one part of the Americas to another. Analyze these slave trades and view interactive maps, timelines, and animations to see the dispersal in action.

Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade - Database

The Slave Wrecks Project is an international network of researchers and institutions hosted by the Museum. The Slave Wrecks Project uses maritime archaeology, historical research and the study of sunken slave ships to take a distinct approach to the study of the transatlantic slave trade.

Why is there more than one version of Sojourner Truth’s famous 1851, “Ain’t I a Woman” speech?

August 28, 2018

February 4, 2020

May 28, 2019

November 24, 2019

February 22, 2021

Grinnell College

Opens a PDF

Access with a free account at the Internet Archive