National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Making of African American Identity: Volume Iii, 1917 1968: Protest
A collection of 13 primary resources with questions for discussion and links to supplemental material about the various forms of protest undertaken by African Americans in pursuit of civil rights and how it helped shape identity.
Smithsonian Institution
Nat'l Portrait Gallery: Let Your Motto Be Resistance: African American Portraits
This exhibition by National Portrait Gallery titled "Let Your Motto Be Resistance" presents photographs documenting notable African Americans and their contributions to American culture. The gallery of portraits offers an impressive...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: The Making of African American Identity: Volume Ii 1865 1917
Uses primary resources-historical documents, literary texts, visual images, audio, and video material-to explore how African Americans created group and individual identities in the late-nineteenth century. Topics include freedom,...
Library of Congress
Loc: African American Identity in the Gilded Age
Examine the tension experienced by African-Americans as they struggled to establish a vibrant and meaningful identity based on the promises of liberty and equality in the midst of a society that was ambivalent towards them and sought to...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Poetry, Making of African American Identity: V. 3
This study of black protest poems from the early part of the twentieth century through the late sixties can provide insight into the issues African Americans faced during that time and the ways they responded to them. Works from seven...
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: 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: Associations (I), Making of African American Identity: V. 2
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.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Making of African American Identity: w.e.b. Du Bois, Souls of Black Folk
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...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Family, Making of African American Identity: V. 2
A short story and photographs that illustrate the role family played in shaping African American identity in nineteenth-century America. A link to "The Stones of the Village" by Alice Dunbar-Nelson supports this concept.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Institutions: Religion, Making of African American Identity
Scholarly article and an address that discuss the role of religion in the shaping of African American identity during the late-nineteenth century.
Scholastic
Scholastic: Dream in Color, African American Heritage
Discover the African American Culture and share the information through these lessons with your students. Choose from several different lesson plans and grade levels to help students learn about the African American Culture.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: The Making of African American Identity: Vol I: 1500 1865: Emancipation
Primary source material on the how enslaved Africans envisioned and pursued freedom and how these ideas affected them after the Civil War.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Self Image, Making of African American Identity: V. 2
An editorial and four poems that explore African American strivings for self-esteem in the late-nineteenth century. All documents referenced within this resource attempt to shine a light on African American self-image and identity.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Charles W. Chesnutt, Making of African American Identity: V. 2
A short story that explores the influence of the Southern plantation past on African American efforts to create new urban identities and the predicaments of post-emancipation life.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: History, Making of African American Identity: V. 2
An art exhibit and a chapter that illustrate African American efforts to create a usable past. Aspects of African American history, character, and potential are illustrated within this resrouce through Edward Johnson's promotion of...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Soldiers: Making of African American Identity: 1500 1865
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.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Citizenship, Making of African American Identity: V. 1
Public addresses, letters, and narratives about the absence of and the need for citizenship rights for African Americans. Links to resources used to lobby for equal rights are provided at the top of the page.
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: Community and Memory, Making of African American Identity: V. 3
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.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Making of African American Identity: Forward:1917
Letters, an article, a pamphlet, and a song that point to greater black migration from the South and black cultural achievements in the twentieth century. The texts examines how migrations north affected the relationships of African...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Making of African American Identity: World War I
Excerpts from "The Official History of the American Negro in World War I" by Emmett J. Scott, depicting the impact of the Great War on African Americans at home. The doubts that whites voiced about African Americans' loyalty and military...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Associations (Ii), Making of African American Identity: V. 2
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...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Freedom: Charles W. Chesnutt: African American Identity
Short story that explores the cultural and linguistic resources that sustained African Americans in the first years of freedom. This resource focuses on Charles Chesnutt and the influence he achieved by writing about race for a white...