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

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.

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...

A chapter, an interview, and film clips that illustrate cultural expressions of African American identity in the late-nineteenth century. Culture is explored during the turn of the 20th century within this resource and is supported by...

An article that describes the price paid by African Americans for school desegregation. The story of six-year-old Tracy Price Thompson is described and link to her memoir is provided.

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.

Newspaper articles that illustrate how benevolent and charitable societies fostered racial solidarity among African Americans in late-nineteenth-century America are provided. Links to these articles can be found on the second page.

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...

A sculpture, poster, poem, and a painting that challenge black stereotypes in the early-twentieth century. Links to these precursors to the Harlem Renaissance are provided at the top of the page.

Chapter from a novel that describes the workings of a charitable society. This chapter, "The Sewing Circle," illustrates some of the various functions that institutions, especially the benevolent and charitable societies, performed in...

An eighteenth-century map, several illustrations by Europeans of Africans from Sierra Leone, and two eighteenth-century narratives depicting Sierra Leone natives through the eyes of two British physicians who describe the peoples they...