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: Making of African American Identity: V. 1, 1500 1865
One hundred and sixty primary sources-historical documents, literary texts, and visual images-that explore the conditions of slavery, the search for identity, the development of a sense of community while enslaved, and the struggles for...
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: Freedom, Making of African American Identity: V. 1, 1500 1865
Twenty nine primary sources-historical documents, literary texts, and visual images-that explore the qualities and conditions of African lives on the west coast before and during the European slave trade.
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: Poets, Making of African American Identity: V. 1
The writings of four African Americans poets from the late-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries that examine slavery, abolition, and emancipation. These authors include Phillis Wheatley, George Moses Horton, James Whitfield, and...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Education, Making of African American Identity: V. 1
Nineteenth-century accounts and twentieth-century recollections by former slaves of the absence of and obstacles to education for African Americans. Links to narratives of freed and newly freed slaves are provided.
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: Making of African American Identity: Emigration
Proposals for and arguments against the emigration of blacks to Haiti and to Africa during the mid-nineteenth century. The struggle of African Americans, such as Martin Delany, to determine the appropriate course of action with this...
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...
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.