See documents and pictures of those actively involved in the anti-slavery movement. From the Library of Congress.

Share in the campfire stories of the people who defined Texas. Read about free people of color, and how the Republic of Texas was between a rock and a hard place.

[Free Registration/Login Required] This passage contains biographical information about the famous African American abolitionist and former slave, Frederick Douglass. This passage is a stand-alone curricular piece that reinforces...

Detailed essay provides an overview of Africa's contributions to American culture while discussing how basket makers, potters, and quilters helped preserve American history through their works.

Read this detailed narrative to learn about the mistreatment of African Americans long after people thought slavery had ended after the Civil War, but actually persisted into the twentieth century. Based on original documents, photos,...

Learn about life after slavery for African Americans.

One hundred and sixty primary sources-historical documents, literary texts, and visual images-that explore the conditions of slavery, the search for identity, the development of a sense of community while enslaved, and the struggles for...

Twenty nine primary sources-historical documents, literary texts, and visual images-that explore the qualities and conditions of African lives on the west coast before and during the European slave trade.

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professor Heather Andrea Williams discusses the lives of enslaved African American families and how slavery made their lives different from other families.

Three late-eighteenth-century petitions to state legislatures and one to Congress by enslaved or free African Americans seeking civil liberties. These four petitions, called "memorials", present a range of origins, goals, and outcomes.

The writings of four African Americans poets from the late-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries that examine slavery, abolition, and emancipation. These authors include Phillis Wheatley, George Moses Horton, James Whitfield, and...

Sorrow Songs are examined as the music the African American slaves of the antebellum South to express both sadness and despair as well as well as hope for better. See "Sorrow Songs Activities" for related artifacts and activities.

Interviews from the 1930s that reflect on African Americans' experience of the institution of slavery. A narrative with firsthands accounts is linked within this resource.

For the four million newly emancipated persons, the transition from slavery to freedom was a defining moment of their lives?although not always apparent at the time. This resource provides texts that explore what freedom meant to African...

From the Library of Congress, this resource documents the course of post-Civil War, post-slavery life for black Americans. Topics include education, constitutional amendments, voting rights and the many challenges African Americans faced...

A poem, an address, and a blues song that express black life in the first fifty years after the Emancipation Proclamation. The texts examine whether the true meaning of the proclamation carried forward to the lives African Americans.

An analysis of the 1919 Chicago race riot and a description of African American life in Chicago. One analysis is provided by Charles Johnson, editor of the Urban League's magazine Opportunity, describing the problems that beset black...

Nineteenth-century accounts and twentieth-century recollections by former slaves of the absence of and obstacles to education for African Americans. Links to narratives of freed and newly freed slaves are provided.

Primary resource provides letters, statements, and photographs of free and enslaved African Americans who journeyed to Liberia to establish new lives and identities. Also includes questions for class discussion.

Proposals for and arguments against the emigration of blacks to Haiti and to Africa during the mid-nineteenth century. The struggle of African Americans, such as Martin Delany, to determine the appropriate course of action with this...

Provides a discussion of what life was like for African Americans after slavery ended, focusing on the Freedman's Bureau, Freedman schools, and the Ku Klux Klan.

This virtual tour of the slave quarters of the Hermitage Plantation tells of the family life of slaves, their skills, and their resistance to the institution of slavery.

An overview of the status and experiences of African Americans in the mid-1800s, both free and enslaved. Includes references to Frederick Douglass and his efforts to enlighten people about the discrimination and prejudice faced by...

Using primary documents, oral histories, and other historical resources, discover how the arts of Africa, Europe, and pre-Civil War America influenced the culture of enslaved African Americans.