Website
Library of Congress

Loc: African American Odyssey: The Civil War

For Students 9th - 10th
Prints, photographs and documents form the Library of Congress collections tell a story of African Americans and the Civil War including contrabands of war, emancipation, soldiers and missionaries, and fighting for freedom.
Primary
National Humanities Center

National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Making It, Making of African American Identity: V. 3

For Students 9th - 10th
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...
Handout
Library of Congress

Loc: America's Story: Frederick Douglass' Role in the Civil War

For Students 3rd - 8th
Frederick Douglass had the ear of Abraham Lincoln. Read about how he used his influence to allow African Americans to join the Union Army,
Primary
National Humanities Center

National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Asking, Making of African American Identity: V. 3

For Students 9th - 10th
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.
Primary
National Humanities Center

National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: New Hope?, Making of African American Identity: V. 3

For Students 9th - 10th
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.
Website
Art Institute of Chicago

Art Institute of Chicago: Art Access: African American Art

For Students 9th - 10th
The Art Institute of Chicago's collection of African American art provides a rich introduction to over 100 years of noted achievements in painting, sculpture, and printmaking. Ranging chronologically from the Civil War era to the Harlem...
Lesson Plan
National Humanities Center

National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Marching, Making of African American Identity: V. 3

For Teachers 9th - 10th
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...
Primary
National Humanities Center

National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: From Negro to Black, Making of African American Identity: V. 3

For Students 9th - 10th
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.
Primary
National Humanities Center

National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Soul, Making of African American Identity: V. 3

For Students 9th - 10th
An article that expresses the late 1960s disillusionment of the civil rights movement. It explores the obstacles the civil rights movement had to overcome and the movement's affect on the lives of African Americans.
Primary
National Humanities Center

National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Global Community, Making of African American Identity: V. 3

For Students 9th - 10th
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...
Unit Plan
PBS

Pbs Learning Media: Martin Luther King Jr.: Civil Rights Leader Video

For Students 3rd - 8th
In the second half of the 20th century, racial tensions rose in the US as African Americans began to challenge unjust laws that supported discrimination and segregation. This movement found its leader in the patient and inspiring...
Website
Library of Congress

Loc: African American Odyssey: Sit Ins, Freedom Rides, and Demonstrations

For Students 9th - 10th
The Civil Rights Era explores African American history in the 1960s, the fight against racial discrimination and segregation, and the search for justice through "freedom rides," boycotts, sit-ins, legislation, and marches.
Primary
National Humanities Center

National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Singing, Making of African American Identity: V. 3

For Students 9th - 10th
An analysis of the role music played in the civil rights movement. The well known spiritual, "We Shall Overcome," is referenced as playing a key role in supporting this movement.
Handout
Curated OER

National Park Service: International Civil Rights Walk of Fame: Bernard Parks

For Students 9th - 10th
A short biography on former Los Angeles Police Chief, Bernard Parks, a founding member of the Oscar Joel Bryant Foundation formed to better communication between African American police officers and the communities around Los Angeles.
Primary
National Humanities Center

National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Desegregation Integration, Making of African American Identity: V.3

For Students 9th - 10th
This resource presents James Farmer (1920-1999), a major figure in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s, and the distinction he draws between integration and desegregation, two terms often used interchangeably and often confused.
Website
Library of Congress

Loc: African American Odyssey: Reconstruction and Its Aftermath: Black Exodus

For Students 9th - 10th
Newly freed slaves left the South after the Civil War and many moved to the West. Read about the all-black community in Kansas called Nicodemus.
Primary
National Humanities Center

National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Community and Memory, Making of African American Identity: V. 3

For Students 9th - 10th
A story that defines community as a connection between the past and the present. This resource links to Henry Dumas's short story, "Ark of Bones" and reviews its social commentary as it applies to African American community.
Primary
National Humanities Center

National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Soldiers: Making of African American Identity: 1500 1865

For Students 9th - 10th
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.
Lesson Plan
New York Public Library

In Motion: The Land Promised Lesson Plan: African American Homesteaders

For Teachers 9th - 10th
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...
Primary
National Humanities Center

National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Voting: Making of African American Identity: V. 3

For Students 9th - 10th
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.
Primary
National Humanities Center

National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Community & Self Help, Making of African American Identity:v. 3

For Students 9th - 10th
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.
Primary
National Humanities Center

National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Race as Community, Making of African American Identity: V. 3

For Students 9th - 10th
Articles illustrating how African Americans defined community according to perceptions of race. Links are provided to these works by George Schuyler, Langston Hughes, E. Franklin Frazier.
Primary
National Humanities Center

National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Making of African American Identity: w.e.b. Du Bois, Souls of Black Folk

For Students 9th - 10th
A chapter that explores how white perceptions influence African American identity. Although granted freedom, citizenship, and suffrage by the Civil War amendments, W. E. B. Du Bois explains how the emancipated black person had yet to be...
Primary
National Humanities Center

National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Image of Community, 1968, Making of African American Identity: V.

For Teachers 9th - 10th
This article describes the history associated with the sculpture Black Unity, an image of African American community in 1968 by Elizabeth Catlett.