Also American

Library

Every resource in the archive — aggregated and cited for further study.

84 resources

Film· 2013
12 Years a Slave
Steve McQueen

Best Picture adaptation of Solomon Northup's memoir.

Documentary· 2016
13th
Ava DuVernay

Documentary tracing the 13th Amendment loophole to mass incarceration.

Primary source· 1868· Primary
14th Amendment (transcript)
National Archives

Citizenship and equal protection, 1868.

Music· 1964· Primary
"A Change Is Gonna Come"
Sam Cooke

An anthem of the Civil Rights movement.

Music· 2015· Primary
"Alright"
Kendrick Lamar

An anthem of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Film· 1997
Amistad
Steven Spielberg

The 1839 shipboard rebellion and its trial.

Book· 1987
Beloved
Toni Morrison

Pulitzer-winning novel of slavery and memory.

Website
Black Lives Matter (official)
Black Lives Matter

The movement's official organization and resources.

Primary source· Primary
Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives, 1936–1938
Federal Writers' Project

2,300+ first-person accounts of slavery and 500 photographs of formerly enslaved people.

Primary source· 1954· Primary
Brown v. Board opinion
National Archives

The 1954 decision ending school segregation.

Book· 2020
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
Isabel Wilkerson

America's racial order analyzed as a caste system.

Website· Primary
Chronicling America — historic Black newspapers
Library of Congress / NEH

Searchable digitized American newspaper pages, 1789–1963.

Website· Primary
Chronicling America — the Tulsa Race Massacre
Library of Congress

Contemporary newspaper coverage of the 1921 massacre.

Research· 1998· Primary
CIA Inspector General Report on Contra drug allegations
CIA

The agency's internal review acknowledging ties to traffickers.

Primary source· Primary
Civil Rights History Project (oral histories)
Library of Congress / NMAAHC

1,200+ recorded interviews and transcripts with civil-rights participants.

Website· Primary
Civil Rights Movement Archive
Civil Rights Movement Veterans

A primary archive built by veterans of the movement — documents, photos, and accounts.

Primary source· Primary
Court Ruling on Anthony Johnson and His Servant (1655)
Encyclopedia Virginia

The 1655 Virginia court record in the Johnson v. Parker case.

Book· 1998
Dark Alliance
Gary Webb

The book-length investigation into the CIA, the Contras, and crack.

Video· 1973
DJ Kool Herc and the birth of hip-hop
YouTube

Documentary clips on the 1973 Bronx party that launched hip-hop.

Research· Primary
DOJ review of the Tulsa Race Massacre
U.S. Dept. of Justice

The federal review of the 1921 destruction of Greenwood.

Primary source· 1857· Primary
Dred Scott v. Sandford opinion
Library of Congress

The 1857 Supreme Court decision.

Primary source· 1863· Primary
Emancipation Proclamation (transcript)
National Archives

The full text of Lincoln's 1863 proclamation.

Website
Equal Justice Initiative
Bryan Stevenson

Nonprofit confronting mass incarceration, racial injustice, and the legacy of slavery.

Documentary· 1987
Eyes on the Prize
Henry Hampton

The definitive documentary history of the Civil Rights movement.

Documentary· 1987
Eyes on the Prize (PBS American Experience)
Henry Hampton

The official home of the landmark 14-part civil-rights documentary.

Website· Primary
FDR Library — Marian Anderson
FDR Presidential Library

Documents on the 1939 Lincoln Memorial concert and Eleanor Roosevelt's DAR resignation.

Music· 1989· Primary
"Fight the Power"
Public Enemy

The defining protest anthem of hip-hop, 1989.

Primary source· Primary
Frederick Douglass Papers
Library of Congress

~7,400 items: correspondence, speeches, and writings of Frederick Douglass.

Article
Free Black People in Colonial Virginia
Encyclopedia Virginia

How a small free-Black community lived, worked, and owned land in 17th-century Virginia.

Primary source· Primary
Freedmen's Bureau Records (RG 105)
U.S. National Archives

Federal records of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands.

Website· Primary
Germantown Friends' Protest Against Slavery, 1688
National Park Service

The first written protest against slavery in the English colonies.

Film· 1989
Glory
Edward Zwick

The 54th Massachusetts, one of the first Black Union regiments.

Research· 1937· Primary
HOLC "residential security" redlining maps
University of Richmond

Digitized 1930s redlining maps with the original appraisals.

Documentary· 2016
I Am Not Your Negro
Raoul Peck

Baldwin's unfinished manuscript becomes a meditation on race.

Speech· 1963· Primary
"I Have a Dream"
Martin Luther King Jr.

King's address at the 1963 March on Washington.

Book· 1952
Invisible Man
Ralph Ellison

National Book Award-winning novel of Black identity in America.

Primary source· Primary
Juneteenth — General Order No. 3 (original record)
U.S. National Archives

The original 1865 order announcing emancipation in Texas.

Website· Primary
Library of Congress — African American History (research guide)
Library of Congress

Digitized collections documenting 400+ years of the African American experience.

Research· 2017
Lynching in America (EJI)
Equal Justice Initiative

Documents 4,000+ racial-terror lynchings of Black Americans between 1877 and 1950.

Film· 1992
Malcolm X
Spike Lee

Denzel Washington as the revolutionary leader.

Article· Primary
Marian Anderson and the Lincoln Memorial concert
Smithsonian

The 1939 concert and the DAR's refusal of Constitution Hall.

Website· Primary
National Archives — Black History portal
U.S. National Archives

Federal records and research guides spanning slavery to the present.

Website· Primary
National Archives — March on Washington
U.S. National Archives

Records and photographs of the 1963 March on Washington.

Article
NEH — The 1921 Tulsa Massacre
National Endowment for the Humanities

Scholarly overview of the destruction of Greenwood.

Article· Primary
NMAAHC — How George Floyd's death became a catalyst
Smithsonian NMAAHC

The museum's account of 2020 and the movement that followed.

Website· Primary
NMAAHC — Slavery and Freedom
Smithsonian NMAAHC

The museum's narrative of slavery, emancipation, and the Thirteenth Amendment.

Website· Primary
NMAAHC — The Harlem Renaissance
Smithsonian NMAAHC

The 1918–mid-1930s flowering of Black art, literature, and music.

Website· Primary
NPS — 1619 and the 400 Years of African American History Commission
National Park Service

How the federal government frames the 1619 Point Comfort arrival.

Website· Primary
NPS — Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley
National Park Service

The national monument and history of Emmett Till's murder and its legacy.

Website· Primary
NYPL Digital Collections — the Great Migration
New York Public Library

Digitized photographs and documents of the Great Migration and Harlem Renaissance.

Video· Primary
Obama's second inauguration (2013)
The Obama White House

Official video of the January 21, 2013 public inauguration ceremony.

Primary source· Primary
Plessy v. Ferguson — digital collection
Library of Congress

Primary documents on the 1896 decision that constitutionalized "separate but equal."

Primary source· Primary
Rosa Parks Papers
Library of Congress

~7,500 manuscript items and 2,500 photographs documenting Parks's life and the movement.

Article
San Miguel de Gualdape slave rebellion, 1526
BlackPast

The first documented Africans — and first slave rebellion — in what is now the US.

Website· Primary
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
New York Public Library

The world's leading research library on the African diaspora; 10M+ items.

Film· 2014
Selma
Ava DuVernay

The 1965 voting-rights marches dramatized.

Book· 2008
Slavery by Another Name
Douglas A. Blackmon

Pulitzer-winning history of convict leasing and re-enslavement after the Civil War.

Book· 1999
Soul by Soul
Walter Johnson

Life inside the antebellum slave market.

Book· 2016
Stamped from the Beginning
Ibram X. Kendi

A National Book Award history of racist ideas in America.

Music· 1939· Primary
"Strange Fruit"
Billie Holiday

A protest against lynching, 1939.

Primary source· Primary
The 13th Amendment (milestone document)
U.S. National Archives

The amendment abolishing slavery, ratified December 6, 1865.

Book· 2019
The 1619 Project
Nikole Hannah-Jones, ed.

Reframing US history around the consequences of slavery.

Documentary
The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross
Henry Louis Gates Jr.

A sweeping documentary survey of 500 years of African American history.

Book· 1965
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Malcolm X & Alex Haley

One of the most influential memoirs of the 20th century.

Speech· 1964· Primary
"The Ballot or the Bullet"
Malcolm X

Malcolm X's 1964 case for Black self-determination.

Article· 2014
The Case for Reparations
Ta-Nehisi Coates

A landmark essay connecting slavery, redlining, and the wealth gap.

Newspaper· 1905· Primary
The Chicago Defender
Robert S. Abbott

The newspaper that helped spur the Great Migration.

Book· 1963
The Fire Next Time
James Baldwin

Baldwin's searing essays on race in America.

Book· 2014
The Half Has Never Been Told
Edward E. Baptist

Slavery and the making of American capitalism.

Book· 1937
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston

A landmark of the Harlem Renaissance.

Website
The Jim Crow Museum
Ferris State University

A teaching museum of racist artifacts documenting the Jim Crow era and its imagery.

Book· 2010
The New Jim Crow
Michelle Alexander

Mass incarceration as a system of racial control.

Newspaper· 1847· Primary
The North Star
Frederick Douglass

Douglass's influential abolitionist newspaper.

Newspaper· 1907· Primary
The Pittsburgh Courier
Pittsburgh

One of the most influential Black newspapers of the 20th century.

Book· 1903· Primary
The Souls of Black Folk
W. E. B. Du Bois

Foundational essays on race and "double consciousness."

Book· 2010
The Warmth of Other Suns
Isabel Wilkerson

The definitive narrative history of the Great Migration.

Book· 1901· Primary
Up from Slavery
Booker T. Washington

Washington's influential and contested autobiography.

Primary source· Primary
USCT Compiled Military Service Records
U.S. National Archives

Service records of ~179,000 men of the United States Colored Troops.

Article· 2019
Virginia's First Africans
Encyclopedia Virginia

Scholarship on the 1619 Point Comfort landing and its contested history.

Research· Primary
Virginia's First Africans (1619 report)
City of Hampton, VA

Research on the White Lion's arrival at Point Comfort and the first recorded Africans.

Primary source· Primary
Voices Remembering Slavery
Library of Congress

Audio recordings (1932–1975) of formerly enslaved people across nine states.

Music· 1971· Primary
"What's Going On"
Marvin Gaye

A landmark of socially conscious soul.

Documentary· 2019
When They See Us
Ava DuVernay

Dramatization of the Central Park Five case.

Article
William Tucker (1624– )
BlackPast

The first documented child of African descent born in the English colonies.