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: Ambiguity of Integration: Making of African American Identity
A painting and a photograph illustrating some of the problems posed by racial integration. Norman Rockwell's illustration is compared to the experiences of Ruby Bridges.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Making of African American Identity: Migrations: Negro Migration During War
An analysis of the reasons why blacks moved north around the time of World War I. An article by Emmett J. Scott (1873-1957), who for a time served as Booker T. Washington's personal secretary, is linked to this resource.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Writing for Help, Making of African American Identity: V. 3
Letters by African Americans seeking help to leave the South. They explore issues including identity, family, community, and the struggles induced by the need to migrate north.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Making of African American Identity: Chicago Riots
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...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Making of African American Identity: The Promised Land?
A short story and a painting illustrating African American perceptions of Northern cities. Rudolph Fisher's short story "The City of Refuge" and William H. Johnson's painting Moon over Harlem offer insight into life within the black...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Making of African American Identity: The Blues
Examples of the blues inspired by the African American migration to Northern cities. These lyrics and audio clips explores the reasons for, and effects of, these migrations.
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: Making of African American Identity: Leaving, but Staying
Accounts of African American migrations from the rural South to Southern cities. This resource provides not just accounts of the Great Migration focusing on the flight from the South to the North, but also the migration within the South...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Making of African American Identity: New Consciousness
Alain Locke's essay, "Enter the New Negro," is provided within this site and describes a new African American sense of self, inspired by migration to the urban North.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: New Art, Making of African American Identity: V. 3
Artistic expressions of the new black self image inspired by migration to the urban North. This focus of this site is "Song of the Towers", a series of four murals sponsored by the federal Works Projects Administration, outlining black...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Making of African American Identity: Painting the Migration
Paintings by Jacob Lawrence titled, "The Migration of the Negro", a series of sixty paintings, illustrates the migration of African Americans to the North in the twentieth century. A link to this artwork can be found within this summary.
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: Singing, Making of African American Identity: V. 3
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.
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: Arming, Making of African American Identity: V. 3
This resource offers a memoir that examines the role of armed self-defense in the civil rights movement. An excerpt from the text "Negroes with Guns", by Robert Williams is made available here, describing his approach towards civil...
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: Separating: Making of African American Identity: V. 3
Article summarizes and provides links to audio and text versions of a speech made by Malcolm X one month after he left the Nation of Islam over a disagreement with its leader Elijah Muhammad. Includes questions for discussion.
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...