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: 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: 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: Community & Self Help, Making of African American Identity:v. 3
An interview illustrating some of the ways community functioned in the lives of African Americans. It explores how external pressures of racism brought African Americans together to form fraternal organizations and entire towns.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Race as Community, Making of African American Identity: V. 3
Articles illustrating how African Americans defined community according to perceptions of race. Links are provided to these works by George Schuyler, Langston Hughes, E. Franklin Frazier.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Making It, Making of African American Identity: V. 3
Excerpts from a novel and an interview that illustrate where the success of the civil rights movement left some middle class African Americans. They explore the obstacles the civil rights movement had to overcome and the movement's...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Reconstruction: African American Identity: 1865 1917
An interview, government reports, two paintings, and a work song that explore the constraints placed upon African American freedom in the late-nineteenth century as a result of reconstruction.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Global Community, Making of African American Identity: V. 3
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...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Leadership, Making of African American Identity: V. 2
Essay in which W. E. B. Du Bois discusses the need for a black elite. This essay, "The Talented Tenth" is provided, illustrating his efforts to improve the social standing of African Americans.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Two Views, Making of African American Identity: V. 2
Two poems that explore the struggles of African Americans in the early-twentieth century. Links to both poems by Fenton Johnson are provided, and illustrate the struggles experienced as black man in white America in the 1910s
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: 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: Image of Community, 1968, Making of African American Identity: V.
This article describes the history associated with the sculpture Black Unity, an image of African American community in 1968 by Elizabeth Catlett.
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: 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: 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: 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: New Hope?, 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.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: From Negro to Black, Making of African American Identity: V. 3
A painting that expresses the darkening hopes of the civil rights movement. It explores the obstacles the civil rights movement had to overcome and the movement's effect on the lives of African Americans.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Soul, Making of African American Identity: V. 3
An article that expresses the late 1960s disillusionment of the civil rights movement. It explores the obstacles the civil rights movement had to overcome and the movement's affect on the lives of African Americans.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Dubious Victory, Making of African American Identity: V. 3
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.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: W. E. B. Du Bois, Making of African American Identity: V. 2
Chapter in which W. E. B. Du Bois examines the state of African Americans between 1861 and 1872. He reviews the period from 1861 to 1872 as the "dawn of freedom," focusing on the Freedmen's Bureau, its promise, achievements, and doom.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Racial Identity, Making of African American Identity: Vol 2, 1865 1917
A chapter from a novel and a short story that explore the phenomenon of passing. These works examine the self-judgment and scrutiny often invoked upon oneself as a result of belonging to more than one race.
NPR: National Public Radio
Npr: Jews & African Americans Built Tradition
Read about the history of the Freedom Seder, a Jewish and African-American tradition. Includes an audio version of the story and a video.