National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Making of African American Identity: Segregation
A Supreme Court decision, a chapter from a novel, and an editorial that explore segregation in late-nineteenth-century America. This resource focuses primarily on Plessy v. Ferguson, and the complexities that followed from this ruling.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Two Views, Making of African American Identity: V. 2
Two poems that explore the struggles of African Americans in the early-twentieth century. Links to both poems by Fenton Johnson are provided, and illustrate the struggles experienced as black man in white America in the 1910s
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Making of African American Identity: Forward: Protest
An article that describes an NAACP meeting with Woodrow Wilson and excerpts from the film "Birth of a Nation." The text examines the gains and setbacks that mark the period of 1907 to 1917 for black Americans.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Making of African American Identity: Forward:1917
Letters, an article, a pamphlet, and a song that point to greater black migration from the South and black cultural achievements in the twentieth century. The texts examines how migrations north affected the relationships of African...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Lynching and Segregation: Making of African American Identity
Primary source articles discusses mob violence and the practice of lynching while examining social conformity and segregation. Links to both articles, summary of text and questions for discussion.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Life Under Segregation: Making of African American Identity: V. 3
Memoirs and a painting illustrating African American life under segregation. These resources help describe what it was like for an African American man or woman to enter the white world.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: The Black Psyche, Making of African American Identity: V. 3
Woodcuts that explore the effects of segregation on the black psyche. Links to Elizabeth Catlett's "The Negro Woman," a series of fifteen linoleum cuts are provided, as well as a summary of their meaning.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Passing: Making of African American Identity: V. 3
An excerpt from a novel that explores the tensions of racial passing. Set in Chicago, Passing examines the diverging lives and chance reunions of two light-skinned women.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Making of African American Identity: Old Timers, Newcomers
An editorial cartoon and a newspaper article illustrating the tensions between members of established African American communities in the North and Southern migrants. Links to both resources are provided within this site.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Asking, Making of African American Identity: V. 3
Attempts by African Americans to petition for their civil rights are described within this resource. This include attempts by the black citizens of Charleston to ask for civil rights by petition rather than demand them with protest.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Reasoning, Making of African American Identity: V. 3
Brochures and a speech from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference describing the organization's philosophy, its strategy, and its position on voting rights, civil disobedience, and segregation.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Marching, Making of African American Identity: V. 3
This resource by the National Humanities Center discusses the role of physical protest in the civil rights movement. Its primary focus, the print "Freedom Now," by Reginald Gammon (1921-2005), depicts the massing of bodies in the name of...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Boycotting, Making of African American Identity: V. 3
A memoir describing the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott by Jo Ann Gibson Robinson titled, "The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It." This text describes the importance of African American women in initiating the well-known...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Community as Place, Making of African American Identity: V. 3
Articles examining the notion of community as place. An essay by James Weldon Johnson and R. Edgar Iles provides different definitions of community by illustrating regional culture.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Community on Film, Making of African American Identity: V. 3
Excerpts from a 1941 film that depicts black and white communities in Kannapolis, NC, by H. Lee Waters (1902-1997). This two part film characterizes the differences in economy, community, and values of two separate cultures.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Community & Self Help, Making of African American Identity:v. 3
An interview illustrating some of the ways community functioned in the lives of African Americans. It explores how external pressures of racism brought African Americans together to form fraternal organizations and entire towns.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Community and the Folk, Making of African American Identity: V. 3
A story that examines African American community in a rural setting. Zora Neale Hurston's (1891-1960) brief tale "Spunk" is provided within this resources and documents the expressions of southern black "folk."
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: New Hope?, Making of African American Identity: V. 3
An article that critiques the early civil rights efforts of the Kennedy administration. It explores the obstacles the civil rights movement had to overcome and the movement's effect on the lives of African Americans.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: From Negro to Black, Making of African American Identity: V. 3
A painting that expresses the darkening hopes of the civil rights movement. It explores the obstacles the civil rights movement had to overcome and the movement's effect on the lives of African Americans.
Digital History
Digital History: Simple Justice
Follow the civil rights quest for integrated schools from the beginning in 1849 through the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. the Topeka Board of Education and the struggle that ensued for decades following in the most reluctant...
Digital History
Digital History: Plessy v. Ferguson
A very thorough explanation of the famous Supreme Court decision about Plessy v. Ferguson. It upheld the idea of "separate but equal," which was in effect until Brown v Board of Education in 1954. See who opposed the decision, and read...
Curated OER
History Matters: Atlanta Compromise Speech, 1895
Read an excerpt from Booker T. Washington's 1895 Atlanta Compromise speech, in which he stresses accommodation rather than resistance as way to deal with racism. Includes a short audio clip - the only surviving recording of Washington's...
Curated OER
History Matters: Recollection of 1906 Atlanta Race Riot
Walter White, who later became head of the NAACP, recalls witnessing the 1906 Atlanta Race Riots at age 13.
ibiblio
Ibiblio: Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
This ibiblio.org site gives the six-year history of this college based group that supported the civil rights movement and tells of its nonviolent philosophy.