African American History Web Sites
The 1619 Project ★★★★★
Created to commemorate the origins of slavery in the United States on its 400th anniversary, This New York Times interactive website is an eye-catching presentation of Black history.
Teaching Ideas and Resources to Help Students Make Sense of the George Floyd Protests ★★★★★
This module, created by the New York Times and other prominent media outlets, compiles a list of resources, discussion questions, interviews, and more for teaching about the history of slavery and civil rights in the United States, and the critical context they can provide for the nation’s recent political upheaval.
Race: Are We So Different? ★★★★☆
“Race: Are We So Different” is an excellent educational web site from the American Anthropological Association that explores race from three lenses: History, Human Variation, and Lived Experience. The History section provides articles on race from the 1600s to the present while the Human Variation section explores human biology and genetics. The Lived Experience section is heavily interactive, with a Game of Life Experience, a Race Blog, a Sports Quiz, and more. There are educational materials available for download at the site as well as impressive multimedia features: You can watch a movie about a teenage girl’s experience and take a 3D trip into cell structure. In all, “Race: Are We So Different” is a great introductory web site for students into the complex issue of race.
Africans in America: America’s Journey Through Slavery (PBS) ★★★★☆
Part of PBS’s African-American Journey site, here you’ll find a rich collection of resources — images, documents, stories, biographies, commentaries — on the experience of slavery in America. There are four parts: The Terrible Transformation: 1450-1750, Revolution: 1750-1805, Brotherly Love:1791-1831, and Judgment Day: 1831-1865. There is also a useful teacher’s guide and activities for students. A great site for black history.
This Far by Faith: African-American Spiritual Journeys ★★★★☆
This PBS companion site covers 1526 to the present day and provides an introductory essay to each section and interactive timelines where one can explore significant events and people.
African Voices
The Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History provides a thematic exploration of Africa. The themes revolve around issues of wealth and working and living conditions in Africa. The history-oriented sections focus on the slave trade, colonialism, and other subjects. The Learning Center offers a helpful list of African resources.
BBC: The Story of Africa ★★★★☆
This BBC site features Africa’s top historians and analyzes the events and characters that have shaped the continent from the origins of humankind to the end of South African apartheid. Among the topics covered are the rise and fall of empires and kingdoms, the power of religion, the injustices of slavery, and the expansion of trade between Africa and other continents. Features audio segments.
Internet African History Sourcebook ★★★★☆
Part of Paul Halsall’s excellent series of Internet Sourcebooks, Internet African History Sourcebook has full-text sources for African history arranged by topics that include the Black Athena Debate, human origins, Egypt, Ethiopia, Islam in Africa, West African kingdoms, Great Religion, the slave trade, and more. Great primary sources for black history.
WGBH Forum Network ★★★★☆
The WGBH Forum Network is a free online archive of public lectures at educational or cultural organizations in the Boston area. Of special historical interest are the series of lectures examining the Civil Rights Movement from Brown v. Board of Education to the civil rights initiatives today. Visitors can browse archived content by category or contributing institution. Visitors download the lectures if desired and subscribers to the WGBH Forum Network RSS|New Lectures feed will receive their listing automatically.
Voices of the Shuttle: Minority Studies Page(UCSB) ★★★★☆
Voices is an on-line guide to humanities studies and a worthwhile source of links to information on minorities in America
African-American Registry ★★★☆☆
Daily historical background for African-American figures, communities, politics and culture
Black History Pages ★★★☆☆
US focused site, pointing to useful and plentiful online resources for Black History.
The African-American Mosaic Exhibition (Library of Congress) ★★★☆☆
A LOC resource guide for the study of Black History and Culture, the Mosaic explores colonization, abolition, migration, and the WPA. Included are maps, charts, primary sources, and background information on black history.
Lesson Plans, Teacher Guides, Activities, and more
Jim Crow Museum Lesson Plans
The Jim Crow Museum has gathered a huge collection of lesson plans for teaching Black history, the Civil Rights movement, Reconstruction, Slavery, and more.
Lesson Plan: The Music of African-American History
In this EdSiteMent lesson plan, students investigate the long history of how African Americans have used music as a vehicle for communicating beliefs, aspirations, observations, joys, despair, resistance, and more across U.S. history.
Lesson Plan – After the American Revolution: Free African Americans in the North
This lesson plan is meant to teach about African American life in the North. Designed by EdSiteMent, the plan includes many resources and biographies of slaves and free blacks at the end of the revolution.
Utilizing the Registers of Free Blacks For the City of Staunton and Augusta County, Virginia, 1803-1864
Created by Carl Shulkin, this History Matters lesson plan uses many primary sources to help students learn about the Free Blacks in the antebellum South.
Lesson Plan: Segregation from Jim Crow to Linda Brown
Designed by the Library of Congress, this comprehensive lesson plan focuses on Segregation and other issues that confronted the Black Community from 1897 to 1953. The black history lesson plan has both Teacher and Student Sections and plenty of available resources.
Economy vs. Humanity: Exploring the Triangle Trade and The Middle Passage
The Triangle Trade, though morally reprehensible, was integral to the growth of the economies of the United States and Great Britain. The last leg of that trek, known as the Middle Passage, retains the infamy of having been a horrific journey for Africans who had been free in their countries but were being enslaved in the Americas. Through the video series, Freedom: History of US, and the companion Web site utilized in this middle school lesson plan, students will explore the economic importance of the Triangle Trade and the experience of enslaved Africans who were forced to endure the Middle Passage.
Culture & Change: Black History in America
Meet famous African Americans, listen to jazz music, publish your own writing, and explore black history with this interactive timeline from Scholastic.
The NAACP
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People website has an excellent History section which includes an interactive timeline.