Pictures of African Americans During World War II

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This online photograph collection, assembled to commemorate the 50th anniversary of World War II, illustrates African-American participation in the war effort. Approximately 2.5 million African American men registered for the draft, and African-American women volunteered for the military. The 261 images in this collection, drawn from the National Archive collections of photographs from the Army Signal Corps, the Department of Navy, Coast Guard, Marine Corps, and the Office of War Information, depict African Americans in military training, in combat, and on the home front. The photographs are grouped according to the five military branches and by six subjects: Merchant Marine; Women in the Military; Training; Rest and Relaxation; Personalities; and Homefront. While the separate photograph and finding aid sites make the collection a bit complicated, the site is helpful for those who are interested in 20th century African-American history or World War II history.

Hall of Black Achievement Gallery

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A collection of 30 biographical essays, ranging in length from 200 to 600 words, on African Americans, Cape Verdeans, and Hispanics of African descent who have accomplished significant achievements. Covers figures from Revolutionary America to the 1990s, though most of those included lived in the 19th century. All essays include portraits and links to relevant sites; 21 of the essays contain audio clips that allow visitors to hear the essays read. The selected subjects include war heroes, writers, statesmen, artists, activists, inventors, journalists, business people, and sports figures. Valuable for young users especially because of the audio files, but also may be useful to older students for the links provided.

A Brush With History: Paintings from the National Portrait Gallery

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Visitors to this site can view 76 portraits of prominent Americans, drawn from the Gallery's collections. The paintings are arranged in chronological order, from the 1720s to the 1990s. Featured artists include famous 18th and 19th century portraitists Gilbert Stuart and John Singer Sargent, as well as more abstract 20th century artists like Marguerite Zorath and Alex Katz. The wide variety of subjects includes Benjamin Franklin, popular music icon Michael Jackson, 20th century dancer and choreographer Martha Graham, and Cherokee statesman Sequoyah. A brief (200-250 word) biography of the subject accompanies each portrait, along with the artist's name (if known), the year painted, the medium, and accession information. For those interested in American portraiture from colonial times to the present, this site provides a sampler of changing styles and subjects.

Traveling Culture: Circuit Chautauqua in the Twentieth Century

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This site provides access to almost 8,000 documents publicizing and promoting some of the 4,500 performers who appeared on the Chautauqua circuit. Circuit performers included international cookery experts, Helen Keller, Jiujutsu masters, lecturers on Korea in the 1950s, and 12 different yodeling troupes. The pamphlets were printed between 1904 and the early 1960s, but many are undated. Each document, from one to 20 pages, is illustrated and can be viewed either by individual pages or downloaded as a PDF file. A 1,000-word essay introduces visitors to the Chautauqua phenomenon. Visitors may search the site by subject, keyword, or name. The site also contains finding aids for a larger collection of Chautauqua materials housed at the University of Iowa and links to four other sites about Chautauqua and four sites about the history of entertainment in the U.S. A bibliography of 12 books and articles on the history of Chautauqua is provided, but the site does not provide any background information about the performers. The site will be a delightful resource for historians of popular culture, entertainment, publicity, and the Chautauqua circuit.

Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History

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History Link is an encyclopedia of the history of Seattle and King County, WA. A timeline of 180 "Milestones" connects visitors to 500-word historical essays on topics in Seattle-area history from before 1851 to 2000. "People's Histories" presents roughly 150 memoirs and oral histories (1000 to 16,000 words) of Seattle residents of diverse class and ethnic backgrounds, including Squamish and Nordic. There are 18 "Magic Lantern" photographic essays ranging from one image and 40 words to 50 images and 300 words. Special collections have been arranged in 17 folios, which cover topics such as Martin Luther King's 1961 visit to the city and the World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in 1999. The WTO archive contains 19 articles of 100 to 2000 words on the history of radicalism in Seattle and the WTO protests of 1999 and 2000. This archive also contains 48 photographs of the protests taken by History Link staff.

Visitors may take four Cybertours of the city in which they click on sections of a map and connect to one or two images and 300-word descriptions of local history. "Then and Now" contains 49 before-and-after photographs of Seattle landmarks with 300-word essays on the history of each location. The site is easy to navigate and can be searched by subject. In March 2003, HistoryLink added a database for all of Washington state. It is an excellent resource for all levels of scholars interested in the history of the Northwest or oral history.

Kellogg African American Health Care Project: The Oral Histories

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This project, "Documenting the Health Care Experiences of African Americans in Southeastern Michigan: The Compilation and Dissemination of Primary Resources Relating to Health Care, the Health Professions and the Health Sciences," is based at the University of Michigan Medical School and sponsored by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation of Michigan. It was developed to study the experiences of African Americans during the era of segregated health care and their implications today. Researchers have collected oral histories of African-American health professionals and patients, from physicians, nurses, dentists, and administrators to non-traditional health care providers. The project also addresses contemporary issues, recording concerns of Michigan health care providers and policymakers about the "lack of understanding about the current needs and attitudes of African Americans with regard to health care." The website provides background biographical information and interview excerpts for more than 40 individuals. The biographies are roughly 300 words; the excerpts range from 300 to 1,000 words. Complete transcripts are available in five repository libraries in Michigan. In addition, a section on "Hospital Histories" provides background information on more than 20 black-owned and black-operated hospitals in Detroit, MI, during the 20th century.

The 3Cities Project

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A collection of 10 essays on "the modern American city as a space of representation," using New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles in the years between the 1870s and 1930s as focal points for interdisciplinary explorations. The essays, originally presented at the 1999 conference "New York, Chicago, Los Angeles: Cultures and Representation," run from 3,000 to 12,000 words in length, include approximately 100 photographs and address topics such as the urban novel, Harlem sidewalk photographs, urban perception in the fiction of W. D. Howells, urban electronic history, how the physical redefinition of Chicago in the 1890s "presaged and enabled the virtual city of a century later," and how public art in New York and Los Angeles represented the cities and their inhabitants.

The 3Cities Project, based in the departments of American and Canadian Studies at the Universities of Nottingham and Birmingham, has also produced the electronic book City Sites, which offers an additional 10 multimedia essays on New York and Chicago (see separate "History Matters" entry for a detailed description of this component site).

Highly theoretical and intellectually challenging, these sites will be valuable to those studying urban history, human geography, cultural representations, and societal consequences of the transformation to modernity in American cities.

The 19th Century in Print: Books

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This site, part of the Library of Congress American Memory project, features over 1,500 full-text images of 19th-century books digitized by the University of Michigan as part of the "Making of America" project. Books in the collection primarily date from 1850 to 1880 and cover such subjects as education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, science and technology, and poetry.

The collection is divided into seven general themes: Civil War, Slavery and Abolition, Religion, Education, Self-Help and Self-Improvement, Travel and Westward Expansion, and Poetry. Each section opens with a 200-word descriptive essay, and each book featured on the site is accompanied by notes on the author, full title of the work, date and place of publication, and the publisher.

The site is keyword searchable and can be browsed by subject, author, and title. The site is ideal for exploring late 19th-century literature and popular culture.

Jazz: A Film by Ken Burns

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A companion for Jazz, the PBS documentary series, this site explores the origins and evolution of a distinctively American form of music.

The site is divided into three main sections. Places, Spaces, and Changing Faces offers information on some of the cities and clubs that contributed to the growth of jazz, from New York's Savoy Ballroom to New Orleans' Anderson's Annex. Jazz Lounge outlines basic musical features and characteristics of jazz rhythm and melody and describes seven major strains of jazz from New Orleans to Bebop. Jazz in Time features a generally chronological history of the changes in jazz from antebellum America through the Jim Crow period, the Depression, World War II, the sixties, and beyond and also provides a link to a history of women in jazz. Another link offers over 100 biographies of musicians.

Each entry includes a roughly 500-word essay that outlines the historical background, major figures in the shaping of jazz, and specific characteristics of the music in that section. The site contains close to 100 audio clips of music and interviews with historians and musicians who appeared in the documentary. About 20 of the interviews are also transcribed.

A virtual piano in the "Jazz Lounge" provides an interactive opportunity to learn about and practice basic jazz techniques. There is also a section about the making of the documentary that includes information on the show's producer, Ken Burns. This site is ideal for researching American cultural history and the history of American music.

Riverboats and Jazz

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This exhibit offers more than 30 images of the riverboats, captains, staff, and musicians who helped to entertain the public with riverboat jazz and dance music from the turn of the 20th century to the 1960s. Images include musicians like Pete Fountain and Fate Marable's New Orleans Band, as well as riverboats like the S.S. President and several of the Streckfus Riverboat vessels. The Streckfus company helped to popularize the concept of riverboat cruises with dance music.

Each image is accompanied by a 250-word descriptive caption, as well as information on the location of the original image. There is no table of contents or index making it difficult to find images on specific subjects or persons, but this site is useful for providing illustrations and background information on the history of jazz and popular culture in the first half of the 20th century.