Web Sites

There is a great deal of information on the Internet related to Black history. The links provided below should aid you in finding material concerning Black history.

Sonja Haynes Stone Center Library for Black Culture and History Guide to the Web
This is a great comprehensive guide to web resources from the University of North Carolina.

African-Native Americans
The following links are a source of information on the history of African-Native Americans.

African-Native Americans: We are still here: A Photo Exhibit
This photo exhibit includes images of African Native Americans and text explaining their history.

Biographies
The following links are a source of biographical information on notable African Americans, including scientists, mathematicians, and authors. In addition to the web sites listed in this section, biographical information may be found on web sites listed under Contemporary Literature, Arts, News, Organizations, General Black History Resources, Historic Black Writers, Images and Imagemaking, and Library Collections & Digitized Historical Documents.

Colored Reflections
Included in this web site are brief biographies of people of various cultural and ethnic backgrounds.

The Faces of Science: African Americans in the Sciences
The Faces of Science provides brief biographies of scientists, listed by profession, name, women, and a list of the first African Americans to earn a science Ph.D.

Gale: Free Resources- Black History Month Biographies
Gale offers brief biographies of select African Americans

Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project
The Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project is a research project at Stanford University. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s autobiography, biography, speeches, sermons, and papers are available on the web site.

Mathematicians of the African Diaspora
This site was created by Dr. Scott W. Williams, Professor of Mathematics. It includes brief biographies and profiles of mathematicians and their bibliographies. There are links to scholarship and award opportunities for students from the high school to postdoctoral level.

Civil Rights
The links provided below are specific to the Civil Rights Movement. Images related to the Civil Rights Movement may be found under Images and Imagemaking.

African American History
African American History is a web site created by a student and it includes five major sections: The Dred Scott Case (1857), After the Civil War (1865-1900), Early Civil Rights Struggles (1945-1955) The Civil Rights Movement (1955-1965), and School Integration (1955-1975).

Civil Rights in Mississippi Digital Archive
This digital archive is an ongoing project at the University of Southern Mississippi. The project provides access to rare documents concerning civil rights in Mississippi. The oral histories include brief biographies of the individuals interviewed and the topics discussed in the interview.

General Black History Resources
The web sites listed below are general sources of information regarding Black history.

Africans in America
America's journey through slavery is presented in four parts. For each era, there is an historical narrative, a resource bank of images, documents, stories, biographies, and commentaries, and a Teacher's Guide for using the content of the web site and television series in U.S. history courses.

Africana.com: The Gateway to the Black World
Africana.com is an online resource for information relating to the African diaspora.  It has current articles on education, community, and entertainment, as well as articles and biographies of influential people and events in Black History.

Amistad links
The Amistad links web page includes links to Exploring Amistad: Race and the Boundaries of Freedom in Antebellum Maritime America, Cornell's Legal Information Institute's Amistad page, and The Amistad Case from National Archives and Records Administration.

Encyclopaedia Britannica Guide to Black History
The Encyclopaedia Britannica Guide to Black History includes 600 articles, including biographies, Eras in Black History beginning in 1517, a timeline, and audio and video files.

Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition
The Gilder Lehrman Center is a part of the Yale Center for International and Area Studies. The center is focused on the study and research of slavery. The center awards a fellowship program and an annual $25,000 prize for the year's most outstanding book on slavery, resistance, and/or abolition.

The Internet African American History Challenge
The Internet African American History Challenge is an interactive web site that tests your knowledge of Black history. Teachers may request a class code for students in their classes. This web site includes brief biographies of select African Americans.

Juneteeth World Wide Celebration
This web site provides a history behind the celebration of Juneteenth and national listings of Juneteenth celebrations. Tom Feelings' The Middle Passage is available through this web site as well.

The Underground Railroad @ nationalgeographic.com
The Underground Railroad is an interactive web site where children can learn about the experience of traveling the Underground Railroad. There are Classroom Ideas and links to additional web sites on the Underground Railroad.

Wonders of the African World
Wonders of the African World is a PBS special program with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., director of the W.E.B. DuBois Institute for Afro-American Research and W.E.B. DuBois Professor of the Humanities at Harvard. This special program provides both cultural and historical information on Africa.

The Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute
The Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute is a searchable online resource for teachers. It contains lesson plans and objectives for various grade levels. Searching with the terms "African Americans", "Civil Rights", "Black American musicians", specific names such as "Zora Neale Hurston" or "Rita Dove", or other similar phrases will return lesson plans covering these topics and subject areas.

Historic Black Writers
The web sites listed below are resources for individuals researching historic Black writers, such as James Baldwin and Zora Neale Hurston. See also: the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, listed under Library Collections & Digitized Historical Documents, has a web site on historic Black writers, African American Women Writers of the 19th Century.

Electronic Text Center: African American
This web site is an online archive of electronic African American texts.

Flashback from The Atlantic Monthly magazine
This web site includes notable articles published in The Atlantic Monthly by Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and W.E.B. DuBois.

The History Cooperative: Booker T. Washington Papers
Booker T. Washington Papers is a web site containing 14 volumes of Washington's papers that was published by the University of Illinois. In addition to text, it contains photographs from the volumes.

PAL: Chapter 9: Harlem Renaissance
PAL (Perspectives in American Literature) is an online research and reference guide to American Literature. Chapter 9 covers the literature of the Harlem Renaissance.

Paul Laurence Dunbar
Paul Laurence Dunbar is a web site that includes Dunbar's biography, full text of select poems, photographs, and links to related sites.

To Kill a Mockingbird: An Historical Perspective
This web site is designed to be used by teachers to further students' understanding of the historical context of the novel To Kill a Mockingbird. It offers student activities utilizing many online resources. Recommended Grade Level: High School.

Welcome to African American Literature Online
African American Literature Online briefly surveys the history and key literary works of African American literature.

Images - Photographs and Paintings
The following web sites will be useful for individuals searching for images of or related to African Americans.

Breaking Racial Barriers: African Americans in the Harmon Foundation Collection
Breaking Racial Barriers includes portraits of twenty African Americans. Brief biographies and descriptions of the paintings are included.

Jim Crow Museum at Ferris State University
The Jim Crow Museum is focused on the belief that openly discussing and confronting issues of racism can improve race relations. This web site contains images of anti-black racial artifacts and a brief history of Jim Crow.

Journal E: Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America
Without Sanctuary is a powerful and disturbing collection of images collected by James Allen documenting the racial violence and murder of American history. Be advised that the images included in this website are of a very disturbing and violent nature.

KODAK: Powerful Days in Black and White
Photographs by Charles Moore of the civil rights movement.

Digitized Library Collections & Historical Documents
Several libraries and academic institutions have special collections relating to African Americans and Black history, including slave narratives, newspaper articles, pamphlets, and historical images, many of which are now available online through digitization.

The African-American Mosaic Exhibition (Library of Congress)
The African-American Mosaic Exhibition is an online collection of some of the Library of Congress' holdings. The online exhibition includes explanatory texts and reproductions of historical photographs and documents.

African American Odyssey
The African American Odyssey exhibit is an online collection of historical documents and photographs. It includes three sections: A Quest for Full Citizenship, From Slavery to Freedom: The African-American Pamphlet Collection, 1824-1909, and Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938.

African American Pamphlets: African American Perspectives, Pamphlets from the Daniel A. P. Murray Collection 1818-1907
This collection of early American pamphlets includes over 350 items dealing with African Americans, slavery, voting rights, biographies, slave narratives, and speeches, some of which were illustrated. This special collection is part of the Library of Congress.

African-American Women: Online Archival Exhibits at Duke University
Included in this web site are historical letters and memoirs of three African American women.

American Slave Narratives
Includes interviews of former slaves with photographs taken at the time of the interviews.

Been Here So Long
A website designed to be used by teachers. It includes lesson plans and slave narratives to be used in the lesson plans.

Beyond Face Value
An online collection of digitized images of money depicting slave images, which includes information on the Civil War and economic conditions of the U.S. from 1830 to the early 1900's.

Black History at HarpWeek.com
Contains articles and images that appeared in Harper's Weekly between 1857 and 1874. The web site includes a timeline of slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction, and a classroom simulation.

By Popular Demand: Jackie Robinson and Other Baseball Highlights, 1860's-1960's
A special presentation from the Library of Congress. It includes documents, images of, and information about African Americans in baseball history.

Documenting the American South
A collection of electronic historical documents, including memoirs, letters, and diaries, of southerners and fugitive and former slaves from the University of North Carolina and the Academic Affairs Library.

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
The Schomburg Center is a research library dedicated to preserving Black culture. Its collections include art objects, music, manuscripts, books, films, photographs, and periodicals. The Center has digital collections, such as African American Women Writers of the 19^th Century, which includes fictional works, biographies, autobiographies, essays, and poetry and Images of African Americans from the 19^th Century, which includes photographs from the Centers collections. And the Center has online exhibitions, such as Harlem 1900-1940: An African American Community  and The African Presence in the Americas: 1492-1992, both of which have special links for teachers.

Virginia Runaways
A searchable database of ads placed in newspapers for runaway slaves, servants, and military deserters.

Books at the Library

Ocean County Library has a large collection of print and electronic materials related to African American culture and history. To find books on a particular topic, perform a subject search in the library catalog using the terms:

African American and/or African Americans

For example:

• African American Athletes
• African American Cooking
• African American Musicians
• African Americans Biography
• African Americans History

You can also search for books on African American literature using the terms:

American Literature African American Authors

Or you can search for a specific author by name.

If you have trouble performing a search, please ask for assistance at the information desk or call your local branch.

Biography

African American biographies: profiles of 558 current men and women. 1992. R J920.009296 Haw
Provides brief biographies of African Americans who have made positive contributions to the African American community or who have made other notable achievements and who have died after the year 1968.

African American biography. 6 volumes. 1994. R J973.0496 Afri
Provides brief biographies of living and deceased notable African Americans. An image of each individual covered in the series is included next to his or her biography.

African American women: a biographical dictionary. 1993. R 920.72 Afri
Includes nearly 300 biographies of notable African American women. Each entry includes a bibliography.

The biographical encyclopedia of the Negro baseball leagues. 1994. R 796.357 Rile
Provides biographies of 4,000 Negro baseball league players, as well as a brief history of the Negro baseball leagues.

Notable Black American scientists. 1999. R 509.2 Nota
Contains over 200 profiles of African American scientists, researchers, teachers, and inventors.

Notable Black American men. 1999. R20.71 Nota
Contains 500 biographies with references.

Notable Black American women. 1991. and Notable Black American women, Book II. 1996. R 920.72 Nota
These titles contain 500 biographies and 300 biographies, respectively. The biographies range from pioneers, educators, activists, artists, athletes, and physicians and each entry includes references.

General Reference

African American almanac. 8th Edition. 2000. R 973.0496 Afri
Provides a wealth of information related to African American history and events from the recent past.

The African-American atlas: Black history and culture, an illustrated reference. 1998. R 973.0496 Asan
Provides a wealth of information on African American history and culture.

The African American encyclopedia. 6 volumes. 1993. R 973.0496 Afri
A resource that provides information on individuals, organizations, events, and arts related to African American culture and history.

The African-American experience on file. 1998. R 973.0496
Provides a brief history of Africa, the development of slavery, the political and social African American history to the present, including civil rights.

Africana: The encyclopedia of the African and African American experience. 1999. R 909.0496 Afri
Africana is a scholarly encyclopedia covering not only African American culture and history, but also the entire African Diaspora.

Encyclopedia of African-American heritage. 2nd Edition. 2000. R 973.0496 Altm
Provides information on places, people, vocabulary, and events significant to African American history and culture.

Books for Children

Great books for African-American children. 1999. 028.162 Tous
An annotated reading list of books that have strong African American characters and focus on the African American experience. The reading levels covered in the book range from babies and toddlers to young adults.

Strong souls singing: African American books for our daughters and our sisters. 1998. R J028.162 Stro
Strong Souls Singing is an annotated bibliography of recommended books for African American children, girls in particular.

Literature

African American writers. 2nd Edition. 2 volumes. 2001. R 810.9896 Afri
Presents essays by scholars on a range of authors with selected bibliographies.

Masterplots II: African American literature series. 3 volumes. 1994. R 810.9896 Mast
Masterplots II includes 266 essays covering various African American authors and literary movements. Each essay includes a bibliography.