National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Voting: Making of African American Identity: V. 3
The efforts to secure African American voting rights in Mississippi are described within this resource. Anne Moody's, "Coming of Age in Mississippi", a four-part memoir recounts her childhood and young adulthood in racist rural Mississippi.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Connecting: Making of African American Identity: V. 3
An article that makes a case for black engagement with the American political system. This resource provides a link to Bayard Rustin's "From Protest to Politics", where he encourages African Americans to begin a "revolution through the...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Writing, Making of African American Identity: V. 3
Articles that examine the goals of black literature. It primarily focuses on the advent of the New Negro Movement and critics assertion that black writing should abandon its explicit social and political purposes in favor of more...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Images, Making of African American Identity: V. 3
This article review examples of black protest in art by Claude Clark and Charles White. Links to images and supplemental resources are provided here as well.
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: Bight of Biafra, Making of African American Identity: V. 1
An audio clip of a Yoruba drum and two accounts by slaves or their descendants that offer African perspectives on life and culture in the Niger River Delta.
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: Image of Community, 1939, Making of African American Identity
This resources illustrates how artist Augusta Savage (1892-1962) embodied the virtues of self-help, self-reliance, and close-knit cohesion of the black community in her sculpture Lift Every Voice and Sing (The Harp).
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: Image of Community, 1968, Making of African American Identity: V.
This article describes the history associated with the sculpture Black Unity, an image of African American community in 1968 by Elizabeth Catlett.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Global Community, Making of African American Identity: V. 3
On February 16, 1965, in Rochester, New York, Malcolm X delivered a speech that placed African American in a global black community. Just five days before his assassination, he relates the American civil rights movement to similar...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Attacking Stereotypes, Making of African American Identity: V. 3
Two images that express the growing militancy of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. This article explains how Joe Overstreet (1934-) and Betye Saar (1929-) went head to head with the formidable Aunt Jemima and with wit and irony...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Making It, Making of African American Identity: V. 3
Excerpts from a novel and an interview that illustrate where the success of the civil rights movement left some middle class African Americans. They explore the obstacles the civil rights movement had to overcome and the movement's...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Artists, Making of African American Identity: V. 1
The artwork of four nineteenth-century free blacks expressed in portraits, landscapes, sculpture, and photography. Links to works from Joshua Johnson, Robert Scott Duncanson, Edmonia Lewis, and Augustus Washington are provided.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Soldiers: Making of African American Identity: 1500 1865
Photographs of and letters from black soldiers-both enslaved and free-from the late-eighteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries that examine military experience for African Americans.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: The Making of African American Identity: Vol. Ii, 1865 1917: Migration
Congressional testimony and a letter that explore late nineteenth-century black migration from the South. Links to both resources are provided within this site.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Mechanics/workers, Triumph of Nationalism: America, 1815 1850
Two statements issued by workers' groups advocating greater equality for all who labor.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Cult of Domesticity: Caroline Gilman: The Planter's Bride
A Northern author who moves with her husband to South Carolina and reflects in this chapter on the domestic roles of women. Through this text, Caroline Gilman examines one woman's definition of a fulfilling life.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Cult of Domesticity: Catharine E. Beecher
A chapter from Catherine Beecher's book, "A Treatise on Domestic Economy for the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School." Read how it contributes to the understanding of the American identity.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Cult of Domesticity: Fanny Fern: Fern Leaves From Fanny's Portfolio
Short periodical pieces that examine the complex and challenging roles that women found thrust upon them in mid-nineteenth century American culture. Discussion questions are provided.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: William Cullen Bryant and Philip Freneau
Two poems examining divinity and concluding that while God is benevolent, one appreciates God either through a romantic lens or a rationalist calculation. Poems are William Cullen Bryant's, "To a Waterfowl," and Philip Freneau's, "On the...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Religion: Frederick Douglass
The National Humanities Center presents collections of primary resources compatible with the Common Core State Standards - historical documents, literary texts, and works of art - thematically organized with notes and discussion...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Religion: Henry David Thoreau
The National Humanities Center presents collections of primary resources compatible with the Common Core State Standards - historical documents, literary texts, and works of art - thematically organized with notes and discussion...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Expansion: Triumph of Nationalism: America, 1815 1850
A collection of eight primary resources--historical documents, literary texts, visual images, maps--illuminated and contextualized by notes, thematic questions, and text-specific discussion questions for classroom instruction and teacher...