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African American Studies: Home

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Let Your Motto Be Resistance: African American Portraits- This website presents the inaugural exhibition of the National Museum of African American History and Culture.  The portraits that make up the exhibition span 150 years. The title is drawn from an address delivered on August 16, 1843 by the abolitionist clergyman Henry Highland Garnet to a group of free blacks in the North who had gathered to discuss the future prospects of their community.

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Afrocentric and Genealogical Sites

 

 

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Museums

  • African American Odyssey - The purpose of this virtual exhibition is to "give a comprehensive, rich picture of more than 200 years of African American struggle and achievement." This site is organized in nine sections, among them, Slavery, The Civil War, Reconstruction, Depression, New Deal, World War II, and Civil Rights.
  • Association of African American Museums
  • Black Loyalists - A digital collection of primary and secondary documents tracing the history of the African Americans who accepted the British promise (first stated by Lord Dunmore, royal governor of Virginia in a 1775 proclamation included in this collection) during the American Revolution that any slave of a rebel who came over to their side would be granted freedom and land. The 30,000 men and women who acted on this offer found themselves at war's end in Nova Scotia, and the promised land never materialized, leading many to emigrate to Sierra Leone.
  • Black Wings: African American Pioneer Aviators - Housed at the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution, this colorful site traces the entry of African Americans into both civilian and military pilot corps. The first section begins with the story of Bessie Coleman, who became the first licensed black pilot in 1922 (although she had to study in France, and died young in 1926), and follows the growth of her successors up to 1934. The training provided at six black colleges and the Tuskegee Institute prior to World War II and the birth of the Tuskegee 99th Fighter Squadron in 1941 is covered in the second section. The 99th was joined by three other squadrons- the 100th, 301st and 302nd during World War II, where they combined into the 332nd Fighter Group, the famous ô Red Tails ô, whose colorful history is chronicled in the third section. The final death blow to segregation within the Armed Forces was given by President TrumanÆs Executive Order 9981, profiled in the final section.
  • Cycles: African Life Through Art ( Indianapolis Museum of Art )
  • Documenting Our Past: The Teenie Harris Archive Project -Charles " Teenie" Harris served as a staff photographer for the influential newspaper the PIttsburgh Courier from the 1930s to the 1970s and left a legacy of over 80,000 images of life in the city's African American community. This site offers access to the collection ( now housed at the Carnegie Museum of Art .)
  • Henry Ossawa. Tanner
  • National Civil Rights Museum (Memphis, Tennessee)
  • Studio Museum in Harlem
  • Wrapped in Pride: Ghanaian Kente and African American Identity

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Robert Ridinger
Contact:
268A Founders Memorial Library, Northern Illinois University, De Kalb, IL 6015-2868.