African American History Month | Teachinghistory.org

Resources for African American History Month Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 01/09/2012 - 07:57

Date Published

Wed, 02/01/2012 - 19:00

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In 1925, historian Carter G. Woodson established Negro History Week. Growing in recognition over the following decades, the week became a month in 1976, when the U.S. celebrated African American History Month for the first time. This February, African American History Month reminds us to teach, learn, and remember the men and women who have contributed to U.S. history from its very beginning.

Looking for resources on African American history? Our African American History Month spotlight page brings together website links and reviews, examples of historical thinking, lesson plans, teaching strategies, quizzes, and more. Browse the spotlight to find materials for teaching pre-colonial history to the present day.

Other organizations and websites also round up teacher resources for African American History Month. Check out these examples:

Browse front pages from the Civil Rights Movement, as well as lesson plans for African American history month, courtesy of the New York Times.
Watch video clips, find recommended readings, and learn about key Civil Rights Movement leaders on the American Federation of Teachers' Black History Month page.
Interact with history with publisher Scholastic's Teaching Activities including web features on famous African Americans, the Underground Railroad, and more.
Draw on EDSITEment's rich collection of lesson plans and links to resources throughout the web.
Watch and listen at HISTORY.com, with video clips, speeches, photo galleries, and an interactive timeline of African American history milestones.
Find your way through the Library of Congress's massive collection of primary sources and teacher materials with its African American History Month guide.
Sift through documents and photographs related to slavery, abolition, Reconstruction, segregation and migration, civil rights, and more at the National Archives.
Uncover reading lists, online exhibitions, lesson plans, and more from the Smithsonian Center for Education and Museum Studies.
Scroll through back issues of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History's online journal History Now for lesson plans, historical essays, and interactives on topics including the Civil Rights Movement, abolition, slavery, and reform.
Refresh your knowledge of famous African Americans in history with Bio.com's videos, study guides, photos, timeline, and lists of firsts and achievements.

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Civil Rights Movement Veterans

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This site celebrates the commitment and efforts of veterans of the Civil Rights Movement. Introduction provides an overview of the website and the Movement.

Veterans Roll Call provides biographies (in some cases, autobiographies) of more than 500 veterans. It includes dates of activity, organizational affiliation, states they worked in, home states, contact information, and personal essays (of lengths ranging from one sentence to full essays). In Memory records the names of men, women, and children killed during the Civil Rights Movement, as well as names of veterans who have died. The Speakers List lists men and women who are available to speak or answer email inquiries.

Photo Album features more than 15 photo essays on subjects including sit-ins, the Freedom Riders, and the March on Washington. Photo annotations link to more information on the events depicted. Other resources including Civil Rights Movement posters, album covers, and pins, as well as photographs organized by photographer.

History & Timeline lists events by year, from 1951 to 1968. Some events include short descriptions; all include recommendations for print and online resources on the events.

Articles gathers together more than 50 documents by Civil Rights Movement veterans, some contemporary to events and some written later. Visitors can also download samples of literacy tests from Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana and view segregation laws. Documents archives contemporary documents created by CORE, NAACP, SCLC, SNCC, SSOC, and other organizations. Documents include newsletters, maps, plans, reports, minutes, government reports, and more. Also see Letters from the Field for more than 40 letters by Civil Rights Movement participants.

Our Stories includes interviews, stories, and other recollections from more than 80 veterans, while Our Thoughts includes more than 40 retrospective articles by veterans. Discussions preserves more than 20 online and transcribed discussions looking back on the Civil Rights Movement (most are modern, but they also include a 1956 discussion with Rosa Parks).

In addition, the website includes poetry by veterans, related links organized by topic, and a bibliography featuring age-specific book lists.

With the interviews, autobiographies, photos, documents, and discussions, the site includes a wealth of primary sources, and would be invaluable for any student researching the human side of the Civil Rights Movement.

Oral History

Photographs

Civil Rights Movement

Text

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Postwar US, 1945-Early 1970s

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African-American Perspectives: Pamphlets from 1818-1907 Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/14/2008 - 11:31

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Nineteenth-century African American pamphlets and documents, most produced between 1875 and 1900, are presented on this website. These 350 works include sermons, organization reports, college catalogs, graduation orations, slave narratives, Congressional speeches, poetry, and play scripts.

Topics cover segregation, civil rights, violence against African Americans, and the African colonization movement. Authors include Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Benjamin W. Arnett, Alexander Crummel, and Emanuel Love. Publication information and short content descriptions accompany each pamphlet.

The site also offers a timeline of African American history from 1852 to 1925 and reproductions of original documents and illustrations. A special presentation "The Progress of a People," recreates a meeting of the National Afro-American Council in December 1898. This is a rich resource for studying 19th- and early 20th-century African American leaders and representatives of African American religious, civic, and social organizations.

Booker T.; Wells-Barnett

Douglass

Emanuel; civil rights

Frederick; Washington

African American History Month

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Expansion & Reform, 1801-1861

Civil War & Reconstruction, 1850-1877

Devel. of the Industrial US, 1870-1900

Emergence of Modern US, 1890-1930

International Relations

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Africans in America Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/14/2008 - 11:31

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Created as a companion to the PBS series of the same name, this well-produced site traces the history of Africans in America through Reconstruction in four chronological parts. The site provides 245 documents, images, and maps linked to a narrative essay.

"The Terrible Transformation" (14501750) deals with the beginning of the slave trade and slavery's growth. "Revolution" (17501805) discusses the justifications for slavery in the new nation. "Brotherly Love" (17911831) traces the development of the abolition movement. "Judgment Day" (18311865) describes debates over slavery, strengthening of sectionalism, and the Civil War. In addition to the documents, images, maps, and essay (approximately 1,500 words per section), the site presents 153 brief (150-word) descriptions by historians of specific aspects on the history of slavery, abolition, and war in America. The site provides a valuable introduction to the study of African-American history through the Civil War.

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Three Worlds Meet, Beginnings to 1620

Colonization & Settlement, 1585-1763

Revolution & New Nation, 1754-1820s

Expansion & Reform, 1801-1861

Civil War & Reconstruction, 1850-1877

International Relations

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Slavery

Question

What was it like to be a slave in 19th-century America?

Textbook Excerpt

Textbooks treat slavery as primarily an economic institution in which slaves were regarded by their owners as property yet insisted on their own humanity.

Source Excerpt

Taken in its entirety, the letter [from Rachel O’Connor to her sister Mary, January 11, 1836] reveals that hate and cruelty existed alongside love and affection in the slave South.

Historian Excerpt

Historians are less inclined to ask what it was like to be a slave in the abstract than to draw from the historical record to ask what it was like to be a particular enslaved person, say Frederick Douglass or Sally Hemings, to name two of the most famous.

Abstract

Two textbooks for high school students, Appleby et al’s The American Vision (AV) and Boorstin et al’s History of the United States (HUS) offer subtly contrasting answers to this important historical question, but both share a basic narrative voice, characteristic of textbooks, that limits their ability to highlight controversy, explore ambiguity and irony, or raise the problem of how we know what we think we know about slave life. This essay takes a close look at the textbooks’ interpretations of the law of slavery, the relationship between masters and slaves, and their use of primary sources, including the Confessions of Nat Turner.

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Slave Badges

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Question

I am attempting to make a lesson plan for 4th graders about slave badges. I was wondering how I could make this lesson tangible for this age group, and how to make the information come across clearly. What types of activities could I use? I also intend to compare slavery and indentured servitude. I would be using SC Standard 4.2 and indicator 42.6.

Answer

Slave badges, which served as a kind of work license for slaves in the Charleston area, are unique historical artifacts. As such, beginning a lesson with an image of the artifact—something that can be found with relative ease online—is a great way to raise historical questions.

So, beginning with an image, ask your students what they see. There is much to observe here: a date, a number, a year, a job description. It is made of copper and is 1.5 inches square; there is a hole at the top.

Once students have listed all of their observations, ask them what questions they have. Even 4th graders will likely ask some fundamentally historical questions, like “what was this used for?” or “where was it placed?”

Once students have compiled a list of questions, provide them with the materials that they need to find answers. Whether this means sending them to their textbooks or to excerpts of articles like this from the Smithsonian magazine, students will be motivated to piece together the historical puzzle you have presented.

Bringing them back together as a class, you might ask them to present their findings. If they already know about indentured servitude, this might be a good time to discuss the two systems of bondage in comparison with each other. There are several comparisons of slavery and indentured servitude on the web, including one from the Library of Congress and one from History Now.

You might also ask new questions as a class—“who benefitted from the use of slave badges”—that require a bit more coaching from an adult.

Good luck!

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Jim Crow Segregation: The Difficult and Anti-Democratic Work of White Supremacy

Question

How did segregation shape daily life for generations of African Americans and how do its legacies remain with us today?

Textbook Excerpt

Textbooks locate segregation’s origins in Southern disenfranchisement laws of the 1890s and highlight the Supreme Court's 1896 "separate but equal" ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson. New job opportunities during World War I and the Great Migration are briefly addressed along with "custom and tradition". Textbooks emphasize the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's legal challenges, and portray the 1954 Brown v. Board decision as the culmination of the fight. Thus, according to the textbooks, from the 1890s to the 1950s, African Americans endured as best they could.

Source Excerpt

Primary sources provide ample evidence of segregation's brutality. They demonstrate the kind of structural inequalities that white supremacist laws and practices institutionalized but also that African Americans embraced a variety of methods to combat Jim Crow's injustices, and that white allies occasionally joined them. Collectively, the primary sources included here reveal how geography, class, gender, and culture have influenced ongoing battles for justice, as have changing national and international contexts.

Historian Excerpt

Historians debate the origins of Jim Crow, but it is important to remember that slavery had mandated the use of laws and practices to govern interracial relations. Separation from whites by choice accompanied freed people's desire for independence from their former white owners even as they expected the full and equal citizenship guaranteed to them by the 14th Amendment.

Abstract

Segregation contradicts what most students have learned about American freedom and democracy. Textbooks discuss de jure [in law] segregation as a great inconvenience that began in the 1890s and soon spread to every aspect of Southern daily life. Most routinely ignore:

segregation's economic dimensions and long-term impact;
black community activism;
interracial efforts to contest the status quo; and
the violence and terrorism necessary to uphold it.

Textbooks that portray segregation as a prelude to a more celebratory narrative of the civil rights era collapse the history of earlier generations of African Americans into a monolithic victimhood.

While the South's vicious de jure system stands apart, the rest of the nation's reliance on both informal custom and formal policy means that segregation—as well as the white supremacy and federal complicity that sustained it—cannot be dismissed as a regional aberration in an otherwise democratic nation.

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Segregation contradicts what most students have learned about American freedom and democracy. Textbooks locate segregation's origins in southern disenfranchisement laws of the 1890s and highlight the Supreme Court's 1896 "separate but equal" ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson. The majority of African Americans still lived in the south and worked as agricultural laborers for white landowners who denied them an education and exploited them economically. New job opportunities during World War I offered one escape.

Jefferson's Blood

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An adjunct site to a PBS "Frontline" program exploring the claim that Thomas Jefferson fathered at least one and maybe all of the children of his slave, Sally Hemmings. This view is supported by DNA testing and believed valid by a consensus of historians and experts. The site presents ten essays ranging from 2,000 to 5,000 words in length by prominent historians and other scholars—including Joseph Ellis, Annette Gordon-Reed, Philip D. Morgan, Jack Rakove, and Gordon Woods—on the controversy, its historical background and significance, interracial sex in the antebellum Chesapeake region, Jefferson's legacy, and America's mixed-race heritage. The site also provides accounts by four Monticello slaves and the chief overseer; four video segments, from seven to nine minutes each; transcripts of interviews with Ellis, Gordon-Reed, Dr. Eugene Foster, who designed and carried out the testing, and Lucia Cinder Stanton, from the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation; and links to a clearinghouse for information that argues against the claim.

African American History Month

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Revolution & New Nation, 1754-1820s

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John Brown's Raid

Question

Did Northerners all respond the same way to Brown's infamous raid? Southerners?

Textbook Excerpt

Textbooks present the response to John Brown’s 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry as polarized according to geographic sections, with Southerners condemning Brown as a dangerous fanatic and many Northerners supporting his bold and violent strike against slavery. That portrayal reaffirms the deep and growing sectional divide and depicts a nation barreling towards secession and war.

Source Excerpt

As one of the most riveting events of the antebellum era, Brown’s raid precipitated passionate responses in newspapers, sermons, and political speeches. Those sources provide a compelling glimpse into a vast nation’s complicated responses to the captivating moment in time.

Historian Excerpt

Historians detect more variation in the responses to Brown’s raid, and more nuance even among Northerners and Southerners. In particular, the raid provoked deep and complicated reactions in the North, ranging from celebration to political censure. Those responses reveal a country deeply divided over the institution of slavery, but far from uniform in thought.

Abstract

Textbooks present John Brown’s abortive raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859 as a polarizing event in the growing sectional rift between North and South, unifying opinion in both regions. In fact, the initial response to the raid was more nuanced than it is often portrayed—particularly in the North, where different reactions revealed a complex and multifaceted society struggling with the implications of Brown’s actions.

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Marian Anderson: A Life in Song

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Created by the staff of the Annenberg Rare Book and Manuscript Library at the University of Pennsylvania, this exhibit traces the life and musical career of African American contralto Marian Anderson. Anderson broke the race barrier when she came to prominence in the 1930s and 1940s. The materials are drawn from Anderson's personal papers, which she donated to the University of Pennsylvania in 1993. The exhibit is presented chronologically in 10 sections that explore Anderson's birth in Philadelphia, her education and musical training, and her career and humanitarian efforts toward improving African Americans' opportunities.

The site contains more than 30 audio and six video excerpts from performances and interviews, over 50 images, with approximately 100-word explanatory captions, illustrating Anderson's life and work. This exhibit is ideal for researching African American history and the history of the performing arts in America.

Women's History Month

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