NATIONAL FOCUS

Stories to Tell: African-American History in Your Parks
Americans cherish the image of the rugged, "against-all-odds" individual. Their images are everywhere, but, despite common perceptions, not always white.

Visit African-American National Parks
Thirty-six national park units with an African-American heritage theme.

Our Shared History: Celebrating African-American Culture and History
The recent growth in the study and interpretation of African-American history within the National Park Service illustrates the comprehensive attempt by many park units to tell their parts of the story to the American people.

African American History Month
The National Register of Historic Places promotes awareness of and appreciation for the historical accomplishments of African Americans through featured sites, parks, and publications.

Black History Month, A Celebration
Black History Month is the month in which we make a special attempt to focus on and bear witness to the progress, richness, and diversity of African American achievement.

African-American Mosaic: A Library of Congress Resource Guide for the Study of Black History and Culture
This web site exhibits African-American history from colonization to the Work Projects Administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's "New Deal."

African-American Archaeology Newsletter
Newsletter of the African-American Archaeology Network.

Africans in America
This web site chronicles the history of racial slavery in the U.S. from the start of the Atlantic slave trade in the 16th century to the end of the American Civil War in 1865. It examines the economic and intellectual foundations of slavery in America and the global economy that prospered from it.

American Visionaries: Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass has been called the father of the civil rights movement. This exhibit features items owned by Frederick Douglass and highlights his achievements.

Teaching with Historic Places: African-American History
Teaching with Historic Places posted on the web the following four complete lesson plans that consider important aspects of Black history. These lessons are free and ready for immediate classroom use by students in history and social studies classes.

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture African American Pamphlets
This is another African-American history and culture web site. It has various time lines and links.

Black Resistance Slavery in the United States
This web site provides information on the voyage to the Americas from Africa, the different African ethnicities captured for enslavement, slave revolts, and women's role in all of this.

History of African Americans in the American Civil War
Approximately 180,000 African Americans comprising 163 units served in the Union Army during the Civil War, and many more African Americans served in the Union Navy. Both free Africans-Americans and runaway slaves joined the fight. 

Cyndi Howells' African-American Culture and History Links
A very comprehensive listing for history, culture, and genealogy links. 

Mount Vernon Slave Memorial
The slave burial is located on a hill overlooking the Potomac River near Washington's tomb. The African-American slaves were the field laborers who tilled Mount Vernon's fields; the skilled craftsmen who constructed its buildings, and the tradesmen who made its industries successful. 

AARP - Explore African American History - Travel information.

SOUTHEASTERN U.S. FOCUS

Legends of Tuskegee
Who are the Legends of Tuskegee and what do they have in common? Booker Taliafero Washington, George Washington Carver and the Tuskegee Airmen all came to Tuskegee and created their own legends.

African-American Heritage in the Golden Crescent
On isolated coastal plantations, enslaved blacks created the unique Gullah culture based on mixed European and African elements.

Living Under Enslavement: African Americans on Hermitage Plantation
During the early 1800s, the majority of Africans in America were enslaved. In 1850, there were 201 enslaved African Americans living at the Hermitage Plantation near Savannah, Georgia.

Grave Matters: The Preservation of African-American Cemeteries
Detailed information on African American cemeteries. The site starts with the history of African-American gravesites and compares in Euro-American and African American cemeteries. It concludes with information on preserving African-American graveyards.

Florida in the Civil War
This web site gives historical references to Florida's experience in the Civil War, information on battles, the Union and Confederacy, as well as African-American Floridians.

A Brief History of Tallahassee
This site gives information on the development of Tallahassee. It discusses how the city got its name, the Civil War Era, and the fight to remain Florida's capital.

Tallahassee Statistical Digest History
This web site displays a chronological history of Tallahassee. It also has a chart of Tallahassee's record of annexations.

Manassas National Battlefield Park
LOST, TOSSED AND FOUND . . . Clues to African-American Life at Manassas National Battlefield Park

Scholarship on Southern Farms and Plantations
This publication and NPS Web site lays out some of the major changes and developments which have occurred in the scholarly interpretations of black communities on plantations and other sites and selectively reviews landmark works pertaining to this topic.

North Georgia History
This web site discusses explorers, American Indians, the American Revolution, the Civil War, and Reconstruction.

John and Sarah is a dramatic multimedia documentary exhibit that tells the story of two 19th century slaves in North Carolina. It includes a reconstruction of their home, a video, archival documents, and a learning guide.

An African American Album, the Black Experience in Charlotte, NC and Mecklenburg County

History of the 1968 strike by AFSCME Local 1733 sanitation workers in Memphis,TN. Site also includes Martin Luther King, Jr.'s last public speech and links to other African American labor history sites.

South Carolina - African American Coastal Heritage Trails

Will The Circle Be Unbroken: audio history of the civil rights movement in five Southern communities and the music of those times.

Persistence of the Spirit is an interpretive study of the people and events that contributed to the black experience in Arkansas.

Tennessee African American Heritage Trails & Travel Guide
 

NORTHEAST & MID-ATLANTIC U.S. FOCUS

African Burial Ground, Lower Manhattan
One of the most important African American archeological sites in North America, this National Historic Landmark in New York City documents and commemorates the major contributions made by enslaved African men, women, and children to the economy, development, and culture of America. The Rites of Ancestral Return commemorative ceremony documented and celebrated the contribution of African Americans as the ancestral remains from the African Burial Ground were reinterred at the site on October 4, 2003. Explore the African Burial Ground Web site includes a recent schedule of commemorative events and photographs. Also see Archaeology Magazine for an informative overview of the site.

Households from Manassas National Battlefield Park
Archeological excavations reveal a diversity of cultures and social classes who lived here before and after the Civil War, including enslaved and free African-Americans who were a part of this community.

54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment. Led by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the Fifty-fourth was made up of free Blacks including the sons of Frederick Douglass, who were instrumental in the formation of the unit.

Places in Boston to explore African American heritage

Seneca Village existed from 1825 through 1857. It was located between 82nd and 89th Streets and Seventh and Eighth Avenues. Today, this area is part of Central Park. Seneca Village was Manhattan's first significant community of African American property owners.

Black Baltimore: A Historic Legacy

Freedom Trail - Hartford Connecticutt

History and description of Lutherville Colored School #24 Museum
Only Remaining Colored School in Baltimore County Maryland

Brooklyn, Illinois: 126 years America's Oldest African-American Incorporated City

African-American Historical Sites On The W&OD (Washington and Old Dominion) Trail

Chronicling Black Lives in Colonial New England

New Jersey African American Cemeteries Online
Included in the guide are the descriptions and maps to sixteen New Jersey historic African American locations

Small Towns Black Lives:
African American communities in the southern counties of New Jersey

Inventory of African-American Historical and Cultural Resources - Maryland

Seacoast New Hampshire Black History

Washington DC area African American Museums

Museum Afro- American History - Boston
 

MIDDLE U.S. FOCUS

Black Archives of Mid-America

Tour Black Chicago

African Missouri

State Historical Society of Wisconsin has made available the full text of the first African-American owned and operated newspaper. "All 103 issues of the Freedom's Journal have been digitized and placed into Adobe Acrobat format. We have placed the first 20 issues on the website and will add the rest over the next few months."

Milwaukee, Wisconsin African American Collection

The African American Experience in Ohio

The Daily Aesthetic: Leisure and Recreation in a Southern City's Segregated Park System explores African-American urban history and experience in Kentucky's largest cities, focusing on the parks and recreational spaces of African-American communities prior to legal integration of public facilities.

WESTERN U.S. FOCUS

Bibliographic Essay on the African-American West
Refuting the widely held assumption that the African-American presence in the American West was not significant until World War II, this site presents historical literature on blacks in the region that is surprisingly rich and diverse.

Buffalo Soldiers in Guadalupe Mountains National Park
Following the Civil War, African-American soldiers who remained in the United States Army were organized into segregated units, including the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry Regiments.

The African American Heritage of Arizona

Juneteenth!

Colored Reflections

COLONIAL / REVOLUTIONARY WAR FOCUS

African American Life Colonial Williamsburg

African-American Revolutionary War History
A number of selected links on the contributions African-Americans to the Revolutionary War.

AMERICAN CIVIL WAR FOCUS

54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment. Led by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the Fifty-fourth was made up of free Blacks including the sons of Frederick Douglass, who were instrumental in the formation of the unit.

The Native Guards, Louisiana - the first black soldiers in the Union Army during the American Civil War.

Willie Lynch's Speech (Truth or hoax?)
A purported speech by Willie Lynch, a British slave owner in the West Indies, who came to the United States to tell American slave owners how to keep their slaves under control. The site claims that the term "lynching" is derived from Lynch's name. It may be a 20th century hoax.

North Georgia History
This web site discusses explorers, American Indians, the American Revolution, the Civil War, and Reconstruction.

John and Sarah is a dramatic multimedia documentary exhibit that tells the story of two 19th century slaves in North Carolina. It includes a reconstruction of their home, a video, archival documents, and a learning guide.

African American Civil War Memorial

Juneteenth! - Texas
 

AFRICAN FOCUS

Gateway to African Archaeology
Examples of archaeology Web sites on Egyptology and Classical Archaeology in North Africa, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Namibia; also sites in East Africa with the archaeology of human origins and more.

The Afrocentric Experience
This web site displays various aspects of the African culture and history. It has information on African Kings and Queens, slave revolts, inventors and news briefs.

Food and Foodways
This is a source of different food that originated in Africa that are commonly used today in the United States and West Indies. Some of these foods are very popular among African Americans.
 

SLAVERY FOCUS

Understanding Slavery: The Lives of 18th Century African Americans
This site discusses the role that Africans played in the development of South Carolina. It also notes archeology's relationship to history in aiding the understanding of African-American lifeways.

African Americans in Slavery

For 500 years, slavery and the African Diospora in the New World resulted in the massive displacement of millions of Africans.

Living Under Enslavement: African Americans on Hermitage Plantation
During the early 1800s, the majority of Africans in America were enslaved. In 1850, there were 201 enslaved African Americans living at the Hermitage Plantation near Savannah, Georgia.

John and Sarah is a dramatic multimedia documentary exhibit that tells the story of two 19th century slaves in North Carolina. It includes a reconstruction of their home, a video, archival documents, and a learning guide.

Slave Narratives
Journalists and other writers employed by the Federal Writers Project, part of the New Deal's Works Progress Administration (WPA), conducted over 2,000 interviews in compiling the American Slave Narratives from 1936 to 1938.

The Plantation
Explore the early 19th century Monticello plantation community, home to as many as 150 persons, enslaved and free.
 

UNDERGROUND RAILROAD

Underground Railroad Archeological Initiative

Aboard the Underground Railroad: A National Register Travel Itinerary

The Menare foundation's North Star Website

The Underground Rail Road: The National Geographic highlights the UGRR.
 

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