This Black History Resource Guide has tools ranging from study guides to rich multimedia and interactive timelines that can aid in introducing Black history at home or in the classroom. Everyone can learn more about African American history with the help of these reference materials, including parents, teachers, students, and the community.
Federal Sites
African American Heritage
Information on people, places, stories, museum collections, travel, and lesson plans are linked together on this National Park Service website.
African American Odyssey
The National Digital Library has been the target of a five-year initiative by this library to add rare and distinctive materials from its substantial collection of African-American materials.
The Daniel A.P. Murray Pamphlet Collection
Manuscripts with full texts that describe African American history and culture from the early 19th century to the present.
National Museum of African American History
The National Museum of African American History and Culture is the national museum dedicated only to recording African American life, history, and culture.
Sources for Images on African American History
Numerous pieces about the History of black people in America from the time of slavery through the civil rights era can be found in the Prints and Pictures Division’s extensive holdings of photographs, prints, posters, and drawings. The holdings about African American history are not all compiled in one place.
Libraries and Databases
African American Biographical Database
The African American Biographical Database (AABD) compiles the biographies of thousands of African Americans, many of whom are not represented in any other reference works, in one convenient location. These biographical sketches were painstakingly put together using information from dictionaries and other sources.
African American Oral History Collection
A series of interviews done in the 1970s to record the lives of African Americans in Louisville have been digitally preserved and made accessible online by the Oral History Center at the University of Louisville.
African American Women Writers of the 19th Century
This is a guide to African American women writers from the 19th century has a digital library of their published works, profiles of each author, citations, and much more.
African American Civil Rights movement Researching Civil Rights in the Archives Department
A list of African American-related collections in Wisconsin focuses on the Milwaukee region.
Africans in America
America’s experience with slavery is outlined in four sections. You can use the information from the Web site and television series in U.S. history classes by using the historical narratives, resource banks of pictures, documents, stories, biographies, and commentary corresponding to each era.
Allegany County African American History
Western Maryland’s Historical Library provides a list of African American individuals, groups and organizations of Allegany and surrounding counties.
Black Archives of Mid-America
This project is a collaboration between the Black Archives of Mid-America Inc. and the Kansas City Public Library. Funded by the Missouri State Library, it is the largest repository of African American history and artifacts in the Midwest, particularly in the four-state area of Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, and Oklahoma.
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
The Digital Schomburg component on this website for the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of the New York Public Library provides access to online exhibitions, books, pictures, Africana Heritage Newsletters, audio resources, and video resources.
Unknown No Longer
The Virginia Historical Society used its archive of unpublished papers to compile this database of enslaved Virginians. The slaves’ names are listed in the database, along with other pertinent details about each individual. Additionally, users can access a discussion board, and the collection can be browsed.
American History Essays- After Slavery
This website is the result of an international study partnership combining post-emancipation South developments to comprehend the significance of this period in American labor history.
University Database and Research
African American Collection- University of Pittsburgh
The Africana Studies Department is supported by the University of Pittsburgh African American Collection in its study, research, interpretation, and dissemination of information about African American, African, and Caribbean issues and cultures.
African American History: Digital Library
The information on this website can be found in libraries throughout the nation. The topics covered range from manuscripts and personal materials to music scores and speech transcripts.
Avery Research Center
The College of Charleston, South Carolina, documents the “unique historical and cultural heritage of African Americans in Charleston and the South Carolina Low Country.”
Documenting the American South
This collection at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, contains sources on Southern History, literature and culture from the colonial period through the first decades of the 20th century.
Hutchins Center for African & African American Research
The Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University fosters research on the History and culture of people of the African diaspora all over the world and offers a platform for cooperation and an ongoing exchange of ideas.
The John Henrik Clarke Africana Library
The library at Cornell University has a specific collection that focuses on the History and culture of persons of African descent.
John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture
The Franklin Research Center gathers, safeguards, and encourages the use of published and unpublished primary sources for the investigation, comprehension, and development of scholarly work on the History and culture of Africa and those of the African Diaspora in the Americas.
Moorland-Spingarn Research Center
The MSRC at Howard University is known as one of the biggest and most thorough archives for documenting the History and culture of people of African origin in Africa, the Americas, and other regions of the world.
The Ohio State University African American Studies Database
This site provides a database, guides on Black History resources.
The Negro Travelers Green Book
The Negro Travelers Green Book, a resource for African American tourists looking for safe places to eat, stay, and explore during the segregation era, has been digitally preserved by the University of South Carolina Libraries. The 1956 edition was published that year. The website also features interactive maps along with the digitized book.
Research Quick Start Guides: African American Studies
This Stanford University website helps start your research on Black History.
African-Americans – Biography, Autobiography, and History
This website, hosted by the Avalon Project at Yale Law School, provides access to full-text books by notable black authors, including Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass, and Martin Luther King Jr.
Mapping Projects
Explore Historical Landmarks in various cities and states across the United States to elevate our awareness of rich African American heritage and culture.
Alabama Historical Commission Historic Preservation Map Initiative (with layers for Black History sites)
This map represents data from the various programs of the Historic Preservation Division of the Alabama Historical Commission.
Chicago Mapping Arts Project
Chicago maps the city’s social cultures from the 20th century’s Great Black Migration through the present day.
Columbus, Ohio Landmarks – Black History
This 82-page document explores the black history landmarks in Columbus, Ohio.
Enslaved African Americans at the University of Virginia
The University of Virginia utilized the labor of enslaved Black people from the earliest days of its construction in 1817 until the end of the American Civil War.
Mapping Newark & New Jersey Black History
This website is dedicated to sites of Black abolitionists and activists in Newark in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. The virtual one includes sites in greater New Jersey.
Olive Cemetery Veterans TourMt Olive Cemetery is an African American cemetery established about 1817.
Preserving Significant Places of Black History: African American Landmarks and Historic Districts in New York City
African American Landmarks and Historic Districts in New York City.
The African American Heritage & Culture of North Carolina Digital Asset Map
This map can be used as a tool for people across North Carolina to elevate our awareness of rich African American heritage and culture.
The Rosenwald Schools
How Black Communities Across the American South Took Education into Their Own Hands
Tufts University: African American Trails Project
This project maps African American and African-descended public history sites across Greater Boston and Massachusetts.
