National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Identity, Making of African American Identity: V. 2, 1865 1917
Sixteen primary sources-historical documents, literary texts, visual images, audio, and video material-that explore how African Americans created group and individual identities in the late-nineteenth century.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Teacher Serve: Reconstruction and the Formerly Enslaved
What are the "big questions" of Reconstruction? Article provides an overview of the Reconstruction period when Americans debated rights and the nature of freedom and equality. It focuses on who was an American and how citizenship should...
US National Archives
Docsteach: From Dred Scott to Civil Rights Act of 1875: Eighteen Years of Change
In 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Dred Scott decision that African-Americans were not citizens of the United States. Yet within 18 years, Black Americans would not only have citizenship, but would be guaranteed the right to...
Stanford University
Sheg: Document Based History: Reading Like a Historian: Sharecropping
[Free Registration/Login Required] Students solve a problem surrounding a historical question by reading primary source documents. This historical inquiry instructional activity allows students to critically evaluate their classroom...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Institutions: Power
This sermon by Rev. Alexander Crummell calls for racial solidarity and self-help, forcefully addressing the question of why African Americans should have their own distinctive institutions.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Institutions: Religion, Making of African American Identity
Scholarly article and an address that discuss the role of religion in the shaping of African American identity during the late-nineteenth century.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Freedom: Charles W. Chesnutt: African American Identity
Short story that explores the cultural and linguistic resources that sustained African Americans in the first years of freedom. This resource focuses on Charles Chesnutt and the influence he achieved by writing about race for a white...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Reconstruction: African American Identity: 1865 1917
An interview, government reports, two paintings, and a work song that explore the constraints placed upon African American freedom in the late-nineteenth century as a result of reconstruction.
New York Public Library
In Motion: The Land Promised Lesson Plan: African American Homesteaders
The narrative, The Western Migration, features African Americans with agricultural backgrounds who migrated west following the Civil War and availed themselves of the opportunity to homestead. The Land Promised is designed for use in...
Georgia Humanities Council and the University of Georgia Press.
New Georgia Encyclopedia: Sharecropping
Features a detailed discussion of sharecropping, a labor system that developed in Georgia after the Civil War in which workers raised crops for someone else in exchange for a share of the crop.
Other
W.e.b. Du Bois: Black Reconstruction in America 1860 1880
In this article, the book Black Reconstruction in America by W.E.B. Du Bois is reviewed by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. This book was written to convey the experiences of African Americans during and after the Civil War, which other history...
Constitutional Rights Foundation
Constitutional Rights Foundation: African Americans and the 15th Amendment
Article on equal rights and the series of events leading to the passage of the 15th Amendment. Includes questions for discussion and an activity in which students re-create the Voting Rights Convention.