Part of the Digital Schomburg/New York Public Library project, this site contains roughly 500 images selected primarily from the Photographs and Prints Division of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library. The items, selected by Marilyn Nance, freelance photographer, and Mary Yearwood, Curator of Photographs and Prints, include prints, original negatives, and transparencies from the 19th century, drawn from collections of family photographs, African-American school photographs, and personal collections. The images in this archive depict the social, political, and cultural worlds of their African American subjects. The site can be searched through 17 subject categories, such as family, labor, Civil War, slavery, social life and customs, and portraits. Under each subject category is a list of images with 15-word descriptions. This easily-navigable site also offers a keyword search engine through which collection items can be accessed. The images download quickly and are of good quality. Ideal for researching African American and 19th century history.

This collection of essays, documents, and bibliographies addresses Atlantic slavery, resistance, and abolition. Source Documents includes about 200 speeches, letters, cartoons, graphics, and articles (visitors may browse by author, date, subject, or document type—no searching), that document slavery in the Americas. Bibliographies contains about 12 detailed bibliographies by scholars of slavery and abolition that can be used in teaching or studying in this area, as well as links to book reviews on the internet. A Scholars Forum posts a 4,500-word featured essay by a noted scholar, and visitors can read past essays as well. Teachers may find useful a Curriculum section, where lesson plans are available, including one for the Amistad affair. It includes a timeline of abolition, a narrative of the incident and the subsequent trials, and an essay. Tangled Roots uses a 1,000-word essay to examine the history shared by Irish Americans and African Americans in America. Neither the most complete digital archive nor the greatest collection of essays, this site is nonetheless a valuable resource for the most recent scholarship of American slavery and abolition.

Transcriptions and images of more than 4,000 newspaper advertisements for runaway slaves and indentured servants between 1736 and 1803 can be browsed or search on this website. The runaways are primarily from Virginia, but also come from states along the Eastern seaboard and locations abroad. Materials include ads placed by owners and overseers as well as those placed by sheriffs and other governmental officials for captured or suspected runaway slaves. Additional advertisements announce runaway servants, sailors, and military deserters.

"Exploring Advertisements" offers browse, search, and full-text search functions, as well as maps and timelines for viewing the geographic locations of slaves. The site also provides documents on runaways—including letters, other newspaper materials, literature and narratives, and several dozen official records, such as laws, county records, and House of Burgess journals. Information on the currency and clothing of the time, a gazetteer with seven maps of the region, and a 13-title bibliography are also available.

An interactive site on the Underground Railroad in Lycoming County, PA. Users go to a map of the environs near Williamsport dotted with 13 relevant locations. Clicking on a location brings up images and streaming audio testimony from oral historian Mamie Sweeting Diggs, who details their significance using stories passed down from her great grandfather, Daniel Hughes, an agent and conductor on the railroad.

A river raftsman, Hughes brought logs down the Susquehanna River to Maryland, and then returned leading slaves on foot through a mountain trail. Slaves hid in warehouses, caves, and Hughes's own home. Helped by Hughes and his cohorts, the slaves headed for nearby Freedom Road, from which they would travel to Canada by foot or train.

More than 50 photographs and prints document the places where the story took place. Diggs relates four additional stories from Hughes. This site succeeds in illuminating the workings of the Underground Railroad.

Opening this website, visitors are greeted with several pictures of Frederick Douglass throughout his lifespan, while a five-part historical overview of his life explains what the exhibit entails. Visitors can access more of the site's content through the three key feature links in the lower right corner of the home page: the "House Tour," "Lesson Plans," and "Portraits." The "House Tour" takes the user on a virtual room-by-room tour of Frederick Douglass's home, which is physically located in Washington, DC. This link may be useful for educators who would like their students to experience Douglass’s home but who cannot reach DC, offering a memorable classroom experience for any K–12 classroom studying the life of Frederick Douglass or of African Americans during the Antebellum and Reconstruction eras.

Additionally, educators could assign this website to students for research using primary source artifacts and documents. "Portraits" provides not only portraits with captions explaining their significance in Douglass's life, but of his children and close abolitionist friends, as well as personal items such as his Panama hat, eyeglasses, coffee pot and articles from his paper, the North Star. In total, the site offers more than 150 primary source documents and artifacts from the time period and Douglass's life. Clicking on the link for “All Image Galley” allows the viewer to step into Frederick Douglass’s world, viewing all of the primary sources in one exhibit gallery with nine subsections, including "Leisure Time" and "Presidential Appointments." This truly brings history to life!

One of the most useful links for educators is "Lesson Plans." This takes the user to a section of the National Park Service's website called Teaching with Museum Collections, where educators can download two lesson plans on Frederick Douglass, or download lesson plan templates to create their own artifact-based lessons. The lessons are clear and include state standards as well as differentiated instruction ideas. "Frederick Douglass's Hat" is appropriate for middle school students, but can be modified and integrated to the needs of all students. "Forced March," created by an 8th-grade middle school teacher, can also be modified or enhanced to meet the needs of a differentiated classroom.

Teachinghistory.org Teacher Representative Lynn Roach wrote this Website Review. Learn more about our Teacher Representatives.

In a well-organized and enjoyable format, this site introduces Thomas Wright (Fats) Waller, one of jazz music's most renowned pianists. This exhibit features recordings and photographs of Fats Waller at the pinnacle of his career. The introduction to this exhibit "Life and Time of Fats Waller" includes a 1,000-word essay about Waller's legendary piano style. Visitors will also want to read the 500-word essay about his recording legacy and a 1,200-word essay that describes the continued influence of Waller's music today. Many of the more than 50 photographs, displayed in a slide-show format, have appeared in other publications, but others are shown for the first time. They include pictures of theater marquees and billboards, scenes aboard a ship bound for Europe, and pictures of Waller backstage as well as on-stage in performance. Other kinds of documents in the collection include seven record covers, several handwritten drafts of music, and a letter penned by Waller. As users navigate the sections, recordings from some of Waller's most memorable compositions play, including "Spreading the Rhythm Around" and "Honeysuckle Rose." For those seeking to learn more about the life and musical achievements of Fats Waller, the site includes 20 references to relevant books and articles.

Part of the "Famous Trials" site created by Law Professor Douglas O. Linder, this collection provides documents, photographs, essays, and information about the controversial trials of nine African American youths for allegedly raping two white women on a train in the Depression South. Contemporary materials include 20 excerpts from the trials; 22 contemporary news articles; 10 appellate court decisions; eight letters; 28 photographs; 16 quotes from participants and others commenting on the trials; a political cartoon; and a postcard.

Also offers two essays by Linder of 6,000 and 18,000 words each; 20 biographies ranging from 100 to 1,000 words each on participants in the trials, political figures, and historians who have chronicled it; and a bibliography of 30 entries, including five links to related sites. Of value to those studying American race and gender history, the South, legal history, and Depression America.

The art of Dox Thrash (1893-1965) is exhibited in more than 60 images—mostly reproductions of his prints, but also including drawings and photographs of the artist at work. Born in Griffin, GA, Thrash spent most of his life in Philadelphia, which he expressively documented in his artworks. The exhibit proceeds along a timeline from birth to death that allows visitors to read a biographical narrative placing his life in appropriate historical context and to view images relevant to each period. Texts and images also can be downloaded in PDF format. Thrash's prints illuminated aspects of African American community life in Philadelphia with scenes of street life, workers, domestic scenes, and leisure activities. Thrash also portrayed scenes drawn from his experience as a soldier in World War I, life on the road, and the lynching of blacks.

In addition to his artistic creations, Thrash invented a new and influential printmaking technique—the carborundum process—in the 1930s as he worked in the WPA Graphic Arts Workshop. The exhibit provides descriptions and images of nine techniques Thrash used, and also includes four audio files of the curator discussing the process of putting the exhibit together. Valuable for students of the history of art and for those interested in expressive depictions of African American life and culture in Philadelphia.

These 150 oral history interviews and 16 collections of documents address the civil rights movement in Mississippi. Interviews were conducted with figures on both sides of the movement, including volunteers and activists as well as "race-baiting" Governor Ross Barnett and national White Citizens Council leader William J. Simmons.

Document collections offer hundreds of pages of letters, journals, photographs, pamphlets, newsletters, FBI reports, and arrest records. Approximately 25 interviews also offer audio clips. Users may browse finding aids or search by keyword. Six collections pertain to Freedom Summer, the 1964 volunteer initiative in Mississippi to establish schools, register voters, and organize a biracial Democratic party. One collection is devoted to the freedom riders who challenged segregation in 1961. Four explanatory essays provide historical context. Short biographies are furnished on each interviewee and donor, as well as a list of topics addressed and 30 links to other civil rights websites.

A joint project between college students and a nonprofit organization, this site collects the documents, recollections, and other media relating to the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. Many of the documents were submitted by visitors to the website, and the site actively solicits additional resources.

Materials include 10 documents, five video files that document interviews and panel discussions, and links to 15 outside Brown sites. The Interactive section features six interactive activities, including a map showing Jim Crow laws in various states and communities. The site includes relatively few primary sources, but the individual stories featured are valuable.