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February’s Black History Month is the perfect time to investigate the tremendous contributions that African Americans have made to the history and cultural development of the United States. In this special feature, teachers, parents, and students will find a collection of  NEH-supported websites and EDSITEment-developed lessons that tell the four-hundred-year story of African Americans. They will also encounter some of the most influential voices and the most memorable images in American history and culture.

From Africa to Colonial America | African Americans and the Struggle for Independence | Life under Slavery | Free Black People | Resistance to Slavery and Abolitionism | Civil War | Reconstruction | Jim Crow Era | W.E.B. Du Bois and the Rise of the NAACP | World War I | The Twenties and the Great Migration | Great Depression & New Deal | World War II | Civil Rights Era | African Americans in the Global Age | General

From Africa to Colonial America

• Africans in America: Terrible Transformation: 1450-1750
  • Teachers Guide
• Unthinking Decision: Why Did Slavery Emerge in Virginia?
• Voyages: The Transatlantic  Slave Trade Database
  • Lesson Plans
• Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in America: A Visual History

African Americans and the Struggle for Independence

• Revolution: 1750-1805
  • Teachers Guide
• Revolution! The Atlantic World Reborn

• Free Blacks in Colonial Virginia from Encyclopedia Virginia

• Slavery and the American Founding: The “Inconsistency not to be excused”
• Taking Up Arms and the Challenge of Slavery in the Revolutionary Era
• After the American Revolution: Free African Americans in the North

Life under Slavery

• Slave Narratives: Constructing U.S. History through Analyzing Primary Sources
• Families in Bondage
• Spirituals
• Crafting Freedom
  • Henry “Box” Brown
  • Thomas Day
  • Frances E. W. Harper
  • George Moses Horton
  • Harriet Jacobs
  • Elizabeth Keckly
  • William Henry Singleton
  • Sally Thomas
  • David Walker

• Prince Among Slaves: The Cultural Legacy of Enslaved Africans
  • Educational Modules

Free Black People

• Brotherly Love: 1791-1831
  • Teachers’ Guide
• African American Communities in the North Before the Civil War

Resistance to Slavery and Abolitionism

• Judgment Day 1831-65
  • Teachers’ Guide
• Who Was Cinque?
• Frederick Douglass What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?
• From Courage to Freedom the Autobiography of Frederick Douglass
• Perspectives on the Slave Narrative
• Exploring Amistad
• Mission US 2: Flight to Freedom

Civil War

• Judgment Day: 1831-65
  • Teachers’ Guide
  The Emancipation Proclamation: Freedom's First Steps 
• The Massachusetts 54th Regiment: Honoring the Heroes
• Black Confederates from Encyclopedia Virginia
• Free Blacks During the Civil War from Encyclopedia Virginia

Reconstruction

• Reconstruction the Second Civil War
• Teachers’ Guide

Jim Crow Era

• Rise and Fall of Jim Crow
  • Teachers’ Guide

• Booker T. Washington Papers
• Booker T. Washington in Chronicling America
• Plessey v. Ferguson in Chronicling America

W.E.B. Du Bois and the Rise of the NAACP

• Birth of a Nation, NAACP, and Balancing of Rights
• W.E.B. Du Bois
• Du Bois Central

World War I

• African American Soldiers in World War I: The 92nd and 93rd Divisions
• African American Soldiers After WWI: Had Race Relations Changed?

The Twenties and Great Migration

• Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series: Removing the Mask
• NAACP’s Anti-Lynching Legislation in the 1920s
• Eleanor Roosevelt and Rise of Social Reform

Great Depression & New Deal

• NAACP’s Anti-Lynching Campaign in the 1930s
• Folklore in Zora Hurston Neale Their Eyes Were Watching God
• To Kill A Mockingbird and the Scottsboro Boys Trial: Profiles in Courage
• The Poet's Voice: Langston Hughes and You
• Eleanor Roosevelt and the Rise of Social Reform in the 1930s

World War II

• Did World War II Advance Minorities, Women, and the Poor?

Civil Rights Era

• Eyes on the Prize: 1954-85
• For All the World to See
• Freedom Riders
• Thurgood Marshall: Before the Court
• A Raisin in the Sun: The Quest for the American Dream
• Gwendolyn Brooks’s poem “We Real Cool”
• I Have a Dream: Celebrating the Vision of Martin Luther King
• Jackie Robinson: Civil Rights Leader, from Digital History Reader
• The Loving Story
• Picturing Freedom: Selma to Montgomery March
• Romare Bearden: The Dove
• JFK, Freedom Riders, and the Civil Rights Movement
• Martin Luther King and Non-Violent Resistance
• Black Separatism and the Beloved Community
• Freedom Riders and Music of the Civil Rights Era
• Revolution 67: Protest Why & How?
• Revolution 67: What Happened in July 1967?

African Americans in the Global Age

• Martin Puryear’s Ladder for Booker T. Washington
• The Election of Barack Obama
• Afropop

General

• African American History from Encyclopedia Virginia
• African American Women
• Images of African Americans of the 19^th century
• Voices Across Time

 

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About this Image

Enoch Long. Unidentified African American soldier in Union uniform with a rifle and revolver in front of painted backdrop showing weapons and American flag at Benton Barracks, Saint Louis, Missouri, c. 1863-1865.

Credit: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C