LibGuides: OER Resources Toolkit: African American Studies

Image of the National Museum of African American History and Culture

"National Museum of African American History and Culture" by John Brighenti is licensed under CC BY 2.0

African American Odyssey
Includes Library of Congress digital collections on Frederick Douglass, Jackie Robinson, slavery and more.
Africans in America
PBS provides an overview of slavery in America with links to historical documents and commentary from contemporary historians and authors.
Black Past
"This reference center with 7,318 posts is dedicated to providing information to the general public on African American history and the history of more than one billion people of African ancestry around the world."
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Search by keyword, or browse one of four special features: 101 African American Firsts, Genealogy Resources, Major African American Office Holders, STEM Innovators.
Colored Conventions Project
Provides full text documents and digital exhibits on many facets of the Colored Conventions held in the 19th century.
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"From 1830 until well after the Civil War, African Americans gathered across the United States and Canada to participate in political meetings held at the state and national levels. A cornerstone of Black organizing in the nineteenth century, these “Colored Conventions” brought Black men and women together in a decades-long campaign for civil and human rights."
Freedom's Story: Teaching African American Literature and History
Provides essays, discussion questions, primary resources and more.
Google Cultural Institute: Black History and Culture
A great collection of photographs and other artifacts with historical information for each.
Library of Congress: African American Studies
See the digital collections for each subject area.
The Making of African American Identity,1500-1865
From the National Humanities Center Toolbox Library: Provides primary resources thematically organized with notes and discussion questions.
The Making of African American Identity, 1865-1917
From the National Humanities Center Toolbox Library: Provides primary resources thematically organized with notes and discussion questions.
The Making of African American Identity, 1917-1968
From the National Humanities Center Toolbox Library: Provides primary resources thematically organized with notes and discussion questions.
National Archives: African American Heritage
"The Archives holds a wealth of material documenting the Black experience. This page highlights these resources online, in programs, and through traditional and social media."
North American Slave Narratives
Includes full text and images from books, broadsides and pamphlets in the University of North Carolina's Documenting the American South Collection.
Oral Histories of the American South: The Civil Rights Movement
Recorded interviews with students and teachers included in The University of North Carolina's Documenting the American South collection.
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
The Schomburg Center has over 1,000 collections on its website, over 300 recorded programs on Livestream, plus a number of digital exhibitions.
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Scroll down the page and click on the "Learn more" link under "Recommended by the Schomburg Center."
Slave Voyages
Includes maps, images, essays and more.
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"The new SlaveVoyages website itself is the product of three years of development by a multi-disciplinary team of historians, librarians, curriculum specialists, cartographers, computer programmers, and web designers, in consultation with scholars of the slave trade from universities in Europe, Africa, South America, and North America."
Voices Remembering Slavery: Freed People Tell Their Stories
The 23 interviews in this collection were recorded between 1932 and 1975. Interviewees discuss how they felt about slavery and freedom.

"Frederick Douglass, from an 1856 Ambrotype in the National Portrait Gallery" by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com is licensed under CC BY 2.0

African American History
Christopher Collins of Skyline has created this textbook from a compilation of several works on African American History.
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Unless otherwise indicated, African American History for HIST 244 is a compilation of selected readings from African American History (Lumen), American Yawp, Boundless US History, and US History by Chris Collins for Skyline College.
Slavery to Liberation: The African American Experience
A comprehensive and up-to-date account of African Americans’ cultural and political history, economic development, artistic expressiveness, and religious and philosophical worldviews in a critical framework.
African American History and Culture (Lumen)
Includes 10 chapters beginning with African history and culture and ending with U.S. Reconstruction.
Standard Ebooks
Beautifully formatted classics from a variety of genres. Includes the following titles: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,
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Solomon Northup's Twelve Years a Slave, Booker T. Washington's Up from Slavery, Phyllis Wheatley's Poems of Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, James Weldon Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, and Jean Toomer's Cane.
SAC ebooks
Many SAC ebooks allow for multiple users. Add additional terms to limit your results: "african americans" and suffrage, for example.
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SAC ebooks are available remotely to SAC students and employees only.

Black History Buff
These short podcasts feature stories of black historical figures from around the world.
Black History Year
"Black History Year connects you to the history, thinkers, and activists that are left out of the mainstream conversations. You may not agree with everything you hear, but we’re always working toward one goal: uniting for the best interest of Black people worldwide."
Blackbelt Voices
"The Blackbelt Voices podcast propagates the richness of Black Southern culture by telling the stories of Black folks down South. Through first-person narratives and in-depth conversations, hosts Adena J. White, Kara Wilkins, and Katrina Dupins share the experiences of Black Southerners living in, loving, and reconciling with the region we call home."
Historically Black
Each episode of this podcast focuses on the history of an object donated to the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Noire Histoir
"Black history and literature from a Noire perspective. Noire Histoir features Black history facts, literature, and motivational stories from across the Black diaspora. Join me, Natasha McEachron, as I celebrate Black pride, excellence, and power all 366 days of the year."
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"Up until now, the Noire Histoir Podcast has focused on reviews about books, movies, and museums related to Black history. But moving forward, I’ll be expanding the amount and types of content to focus on not just Black history from the past but Black history in the making."
School Colors
This podcast shows how race, class, and power shape schools in Brooklyn, New York.
The Toni Morrison Lectures
"The Toni Morrison Lectures are sponsored by the Department of African American Studies and Princeton University Press. The lectures are held annually and spotlight the new and exciting work of scholars and writers who have risen to positions of prominence both in academe and in the broader world of letters."
Witness Black History
The BBC podcasts features "interviews with people who were there at key moments in black and civil rights history."
Africana Studies Lectures
Auburn University provides a series of academic and cultural lectures in honor of retired professor of history and Africana Studies, Dr. Patience Essah.
The Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Lecture
An annual lecture, given between 2012 and 2018, from a world-renowned scholar in African Diaspora Studies.

"Langston Hughes, author" by US Department of State is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

African American Studies
This UC, Irvine course is an interdisciplinary introduction to important historical, cultural, literary, and political issues concerning African Americans.
African American History: From Emancipation to Present
An Open Yale course taught by Professor Jonathan Holloway. The purpose of this course is to examine the African American experience in the United States from 1863 to the present.
Black Matters: Introduction to Black Studies
An MIT Open course taught by Professor Michel DeGraff. This course connects the experiences of African-Americans and of other American minorities, focusing on social, political, and cultural histories.
Racial Violence in America: Lynchings, 1877 to 1920
This lesson introduces students to the reasons behind racial violence, and provides images of the violence and African-American and mainstream society's response to the violence.

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Deanna Aguilar

OER Resources Toolkit: African American Studies

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