National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Making of African American Identity: Old Timers, Newcomers

Series of 10 primary resources explores African American identity from 1917 to 1968, examining the changing notions of identity and affects on the definition of African American community.

A journal, an autobiography, and selections from narratives about the conditions experienced by free-born African Americans in the nineteenth century. They ask such questions as: How did African Americans construct identity in antebellum...

Collection of 11 primary resources exploring the migrations made by African Americans in the 20th Century and the effects they had. Includes text links, notes and questions for discussion.

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.

One hundred and sixty primary sources-historical documents, literary texts, and visual images-that explore the conditions of slavery, the search for identity, the development of a sense of community while enslaved, and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...

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...

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...

Primary resource material explores the outcome of civil rights protests and the Civil Rights Movement and examines what remains yet to overcome. Links to supplemental materials, discussions questions and notes.

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...

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...