African-American Specific Links And Materials
For Colonial Era to 1899 Links and Materials
From Slavery to the Supreme Court: The African-American Journey through the Federal Courts: This site is the homepage of the Just the Beginning Foundation. The Foundation was formed to, among other things, commemorate the contributions of African-Americans to the federal judiciary, and to document the experiences of African-American lawyers and judges. The site contains a book which is primarily a collection of biographies, highlighting the lives and accomplishments of the 106 African-American federal judges, past and present. (There have been 106 African-Americans out of the more than 2,540 Article III federal judges appointed.) There are also chapters on the history of the Foundation and the Integration of the Federal Bench. The site also contains an Online Exhibit, which tells a small part of the story of the struggle of African-Americans in the legal system and the emergence of African-American judges in the federal courts. This excellent exhibit starts with the 17th Century and contains short articles on topics such as the slave revolts, the NAACP civil rights strategy, and legal education. It also contains a list of the first African-American lawyer in every state.
NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund: This site exists to publicize the work of the Fund's Western Regional Office located in Los Angeles, California. The site contains summaries of cases the office is involved in and litigation documents related to those cases. It also contains a summary anlysis of the 1996 Proposition 209 election results and a detailed description of Riots and Rebellion, a CD-ROM which puts the Rodney King beating and police reform in a broader legal, social, and political context.
National Urban League: The League is one of the country's oldest organizations devoted to empowering African-Americans to enter the economic and social mainstream. In addition to detailed descriptions of the organization's many programs, the site includes a number of reports on topics such as police brutality and the criminal justice system. The site also includes a virtual library containing press releases, speeches, and publications.
National Bar Association: This organization is the largest association of African-American attorneys in the United States. The site includes the names, addresses, and phone numbers of its affilate chapters across the country.
National Conference of Black Lawyers: The Conference is an association of progressive lawyers, scholars, judges, legal workers, law students, and legal activists. The site includes contact information for the organization's chapters around the country.
National Black Law Students Association: The Association is the largest student-run organization in the country and has over 200 chapters across the country. The site includes a newsletter, press releases, and information about the orfganization's moot court competition.
NAACP Online: The NAACP is the country's largest civil rights organization. The site contains press releases, report cards on companies in a number of industries and on the members of the 106th Congress, information on the organization's programs, and a good links page.
Rainbow/Push Coalition: The Coalition is a multiracial, multi-issue, international organization working to move the nation and the world toward social, racial, and economic justice. The site contains the transcripts of recent speeches by the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, the group's founder and president, and others, press releases, and archives of RPC Fax, a weekly analysis of public policy issues.
Black Radical Congress: The mission of the Congress is to promote dialogue among African-American activists and scholars on the left, to discuss critical issues on the national and international scene that pertain to the Black community, to explore new strategies and directions for progressive political, social, and cultural movements, and to renew the Black radical movement through united action. The site includes recent editions of the group's newsletter, press releases, sign-up information for a number of discussion lists, and contact information for its local organizing committees.
National Council of Negro Women: The Council's mission is to help women improve the quality of life for themselves, their families, and their communities. The site contains descriptions of the group's programs and contact information for its chapters around the country.
African-American Studies/Womanist Critique: This site, created by the Women Studies Department at Northern Arizona University, contains a list of links to sites dealing with African-American women.
Blackgirl International: This site is a huge list of web sites that are about Black women, contain content of particular importance to Black women, or are produced by Black women. The sections include organizations, resources, education, history, politics, literature, entertainment, and periodicals.
Blackstripe: This site exists to provide information for and about same-gender-loving, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people of African descent. It includes news, articles, book reviews, and an extensive list of links. The site also contains the Blacklist, a list of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people of African descent.
The Black Population in the U.S.: This Census Bureau site contains demographic data about the African-American population in the United States. In April 2003 the Census Bureau issued a report entitled The Black Population in the United States March 2002. It presents data on the demographic, social, and economic characteristics of the Black population in the United States. The Black Popluation: 2000.
Womanist Theory and Research: This journal is a publication of the Institute for African-American Studies and the University of Georgia. It is a peer-edited, interdisciplinary, intercultural, international journal on women of color. The full text of all the published articles is available on the site. The site also contains a page of relevant links.
Fisk University's Race Relations Institute: The Institute promotes and facilitates scholarly research on the emergence and perpetuation of the global system of racism. The site includes articles and essays, information about conferences and events, and links to related sites.
Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies: The Center is a national institution that conducts research on public policy issues of special concern to Black Americans and other people of color. The site contains the DataBank which offers current and trend data on a boad range of information and includes as a standard feature comparison data on African-Americans and other racial and ethnic populations, reports, issues of its magazine, an international affairs section, a section on the Minority Business Roundtable with its own links page and some interesting demographic information, and a section on the Network of Alliances Bridging Race and Ethnicity with its own extensive Resources pages.
The Blurred Racial Lines of Famous Families: This site is a companion to an episode of the PBS show Frontline entitled "Secret Daughter" originally aired in November 1996. The show tells the story of a mixed race daughter and the mother who gave her away. The site contains the transcript of the show and information on ordering tapes. It also discusses some historical and contemporary examples of famous racially mixed families. Contemporary celebrities with African ancestry discussed include Heather Locklear and Peter Ustinov.
Are Emily and Brendan More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination: In this experiment by Marianne Betrand and Sendhil Mullainathan of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business the researchers answered help-wanted ads in Boston and Chicago newspapers by sending resumes. They attempted to control perceptions of race by randomly assigning each resume either a very African-American name or a very White sounding name. This manipulation produced a significant gap in the rate of callbacks for interviews. White names elicited about 50 percent more callbacks than African-American names. Additionally, for Whites the higher quality resumes elicited 30 percent more callbacks. For African-Americans, however, the higher quality resumes did not elicit significantly more callbacks. The study is also available from this link.
Statement by the African-American Faculty of the University of North Carolina School of Law Regarding the Visit of Justice Clarence Thomas (February 28, 2002)(pdf file): Before Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States and an African-American, visited the UNC School of Law on March 6, 2002, the school's five African-American faculty issued this Statement explaining their decision not to participate in any of the institutional gestures designed to honor him. (To their Statement they attached "An Open Letter to Justice Clarence Thomas from a Federal Judicial Colleague", written by Judge A. Leon Higginbotham and published in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. Written shortly after Justice Thomas' confirmation, the letter, though critical of some of Thomas' past actions and expressing skepticism about his future performance on the Supreme Court, expressed the hope that he would become "a thoughtful and worthy successor to Justice Marshall in the ever ongoing struggle to assure equal justice under law for all persons.") The law school's Black Law Student Association sponsored a Teach-In on Thomas' judicial philosophies the day before his visit which was attended by the African-American faculty. The Teach-In Materials contain extensive information about Thomas judicial record and are available in the pdf format.
The O.J. Simpson Trial: Seeing the Elephant: I wrote this short article as the Foreward to the 1995 Symposium Issue, Vol. 6 No.2, of the Hastings Womens Law Journal which focused on the case. It contains some of my thoughts on the controversy surrounding the Simpson criminal trial and what it said about race, gender, and class in the United States.
The O.J. Simpson Trial 1995: This site, part of the Famous Trials Project by Professor Doug Linder of the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, includes an account of the trial, excerpts from the trial transcript, a chrononlogy, maps, photographs, a bibliography, and a list of relevant links.
The Trials of the Los Angeles Police Officers in Connection with the Beating of Rodney King 1992 & 1993: In March of 1991 a video tape was shown on television stations around the country showing an African-American man, Rodney King, beating beaten by a large group of police officers. Most who saw the tape believed that the officers used excessive force in making the arrest. A year later a jury acquitted the police officers involved of criminal charges, and within hours Los Angeles was in flames resulting from some of the worst rioting in its history. This site, part of the Famous Trials Project by Professor Doug Linder of the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, includes the famous video tape of the beating, a Chronology of Events, the police reports, excerpts of the state court trial transcript, selected images, the Supreme Court decision, a bibliography, and a page of relevant links.
The Confirmation of Clarence Thomas as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court (1991): Thomas, only the second African-American appointed to the Court, was confirmed after one of the most heated judicial confirmation battles in American history. This site contains the transcripts of both the initial Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the nomination and the reopened hearings following the disclosure of the sexual harrassment allegations against Thomas by Professor Anita Hill of the University of Oklahoma Law School, also African-American. The site also contains the transcripts of other proceedings, documents relating to the confirmation controversy, a bibliography, and an extensive list of links to relevant sites and materials including student papers.
Loving v. Virginia (1967): In Loving the United States Supreme Court concluded that the Virginia law which prohibited Blacks and whites from marrying in the state or marrying elsewhere and returning was unconstitutional. The Court asserted, "[t]he fact that Virginia prohibits only interracial marriages involving white persons demonstrates that the racial classifications must stand on their own justification, as measures designed to maintain White Supremacy." 388 U.S. 1, at 11. The site contains the Supreme Court opinions and also the oral argument before the Court. This link provides a brief statement of the facts of the case and lists some articles which discuss it. A made for TV movie telling the story of the Lovings was made in 1996 starring Ruby Dee, Lela Rochon, and Tmothy Hutton. More information about the film is available from this link to the Internet Movie Data Base.
Law and the Politics of Marriage: Loving v. Virginia After 30 Years: This site is devoted to a conference by that name held November 19-21, 1997, at one of its sponsors, The Catholic University of America's Columbus School of Law. The conference was cosponsored by the Howard University School of Law and the J. Rueben Clark School of Law at Brigham Young University. The site describes the presentations made at the conference and contains RealAudio versions of two of them. One of the presentations one can listen to at the site is by Professor A. Pratt, a history professor at the University of Georgia who grew up knowing Richard and Mildred Loving. It discusses the human and political story behind the case and provides information on what happened to the couple after the Supreme Court decision. The other discusses the connection between Loving and contemporary challenges and is by Professor Stephen Carter of the Yale Law School.
U.S. v. Price, et. al.- The "Mississippi Burning" Trial 1967: Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney, three civil rights workers, came to Mississippi in 1964 to work in the Mississippi Summer Project and were shot to death. The Federal Bureau of Investigation's search for their murderers was depicted in the 1988 movie "Mississippi Burning" and led to the trial which is the subject of this site. The site, also part of the Famous Trials Project, includes an account of the trial, a chronology, biographies of the key figures, excerpts from the trial transcript, the Supreme Court decision, pictures, a bibliography, and a list of relevant links.
Freedom Summer 1964: After about a thousand young African-Americans and whites went to Mississippi in the summer of 1964 to peacefully work against racism, it became known as Freedom Summer. This website contains a radio documentary on that summer, divided into three segments, a narrative describing the events, a number of interviews with participants, and a slide show with photographs.
Civil Rights in Mississippi- A Digital Archive: The goal of this project is to create an Internet-accessible, fully searchable database of digitized versions of rare and unique library and archival resources on race relations in Mississippi. The site contains a substantial number of oral history transcripts on the Civil Rights Movement. One of the people interviewed is Dr. Sandra Adickes, whose civil rights lawsuit reached the Supreme Court. The site also includes descriptions of other materials in the archives that may be digitized in the future, and a page of links to other Civil Rights Movement resources.
Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project: The Project located at Stanford University is a major research effort to assemble and disseminate historical information concerning Martin Luther King, Jr. and the social movements in which he participated and was initiated by the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change. The site includes the papers, speeches, sermons, and articles written by Dr. King. It also has information as to how published versions of these materials can be ordered.
The Role of Law in Social Change (pdf): This paper, written by Steve B. Chu while a law student, examines the views of Martin Luther King, Jr., Thurgood Marshall, and Malcolm X on the role of law in furthering social change.
Powerful Days: The Civil Rights Photography of Charles Moore (1958-1965): This site contains a collection of powerful photographs chronicling the Civil Rights Movement. Many believe that these images helped to gain support for the Movement and quicken passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Among other things, they show the arrest of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in Montgomery, Alabama in 1958, the use of U.S. marshalls to gain James Meridith's admission to the University of Mississippi in 1962, and the police using dogs and water hoses on demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963.
The Death of Emmett Till: This site provides an account of the events surrounding the murder of a 14 year old Black youth in Mississippi in 1955 for flirting with a white woman. The two murderers were acquitted by an all white jury following a very short deliberation. The site includes passages from Anne Moody's book, Coming of Age in Mississippi, which contains her recollections of the events, and from The Death of Emmett Till, the song Bob Dylan wrote about them.
The Murder of Emmett Till: This site allows the user to listen to a 29 minute RealAudio file of an excellent radio documentary about the murder and the trial. The documentary includes interviews with Till's mother, Mamie Till Bradley, and one of his murderers.
The Emmett Till Disaster: This site provides a one page summary of Till's murder, but includes the famous photograph of Till's body at the top. The fourteen year old was shot in the head, one of his eyes were gouged out, and one side of his head was smashed in. Nonetheless, his mother insisted on an open casket funeral so the entire world could see what they did to her son. The picture appeared in Jet Magazine and enraged African-Americans throughout the country. Another site with a good short account of the events is The Murder of Emmett Till.
Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site: This National Historic Site is located in Topeka, Kansas, and both it and this web site are administered by the National Park Service. In Brown the United States Supreme Court held that state statutes requiring or permiting the segregation of white and African-American children in state public schools solely on the basis of race violated the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment of the United States Constitution. The Court set the case for reargument on the issue of how its decision was to be implemented. After the reargument the Court issued Brown II, its second opinion. This site contains information about all the cases from around the country which the Court consolidated under the Brown name, both of the Court's Brown opinions, a list of cases litigated by Charles Hamilton Houston, special counsel for the NAACP, which led to Brown, and a Resources section containing an extensive bibliography and list of primary sources. The first Brown opinion can also be found at this site, and Brown II is also available from this link. Copies of the court documents from the Brown case filed in Kansas can be obtained from the Kansas State Historical site devoted to the case.
In Pursuit of Freedom and Equality: Brown v. Board of Education: The Washburn University School of Law makes this site available for the Brown Foundation for Educational Equity, Excellence, and Research as a resource for information and source material about Brown and related topics. The site contains a short background summary of the case, an electronic exhibit, and the archives of the Brown Quarterly, a newsletter for classroom teachers. The Research Sources section of the site contains an Orentation Handbook discussing Brown and the cases leading up to it, the opinions in Brown and related cases, a list of the participants in the Brown Foundation's oral history project, and a bibliography listing citations to books related to Brown. For a site outlining a unit for high school students on school desegregation focusing on Brown, follow this link. It includes sample lesson plans, discussions of the assigned readings, and bibliographies for both teachers and students. Another site on Brown v. Board of Education contains excerpts from editorials from around the country on the ruling, several political cartoons done in response to it, a note by Justice Frankfurter as to how quickly desegregation should occur, and other information relevant to the case. This site is part of landmarkcases.org, which provides teachers with resources and activities to support the teaching of landmark Supreme Court cases.
The History of the Civil Rights Movement in Prince Edward County Virginia (1951-1964): This article describes the events leading up to one of the cases consolidated as Brown v. Board of Education and what happened in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's decision. It is part of a website sponsored by the Longwood College Library, "They Closed Their Schools". In 1951 the students at the all-black Moton High School in Prince Edward County walked out and staged a boycott to protest the separate but clearly unequal conditions at the school. After Brown was decided, all the public schools in the county were closed to avoid integration, and a private, publicly funded school for white children was opened with extensive support from around the South. The article includes a bibliography. The site contains links to a number of articles about the closing of the schools in Prince Edward County and related websites and lists books and journal articles which discuss it. Moton High has now become the site of the Moton Museum and has been designated a National Historic Landmark. An online exhibit presented by the James Branch Cabell Library of Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), Separate But Equal: Race, Education, and Prince Edward County, Virginia, also explores the history of school segregation in Prince Edward County in the 1950s and the 1960s. Most of the materials presented in the exhibit are taken from the papers of Dr. Edward H. Peeples, Emeritus Professor of VCU. The exhibit contains photographs documenting the disparity between Black and white public schools in the county, a documents section containing a number of papers and reports, an excellent bibliography, and a page of links to related sites. After the public schools were closed in the county, the county's Black children and many low-income white children were without local access to public education for five years. Consequently, the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) started the Emergency Student Placement Program which sought to relocate students without access to education with families in communities across the country so that they could continue their education. The Special Collection on AFSC Work in Prince Edward County Virginia website contains an index describing the AFSC records available pertaining to its activities and information on accessing the records. These records include correspondence, minutes, studies, and reports and are available in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
The History of Jim Crow: This site is designed for educators and presents teachers with new historical resources and teaching ideas on the Jim Crow Era. It contains both short and in-depth historical essays, first hand narratives on a variety of subjects, and an image gallery with themed collections. The geography section contains a short overview of Jim Crow legislation (available from the link as a pdf file) and provides state by state information on the Jim Crow laws passed with the year of enactment. There is also a section on the literature that addresses the Jim Crow years. It is an award-winning site, and it is easy to understand why.
Behind the Veil: Documenting African-American Life in the Segregated South: Behind the Veil is a major research project being conducted at Duke University into the history of African-American life during the age of Jim Crow, roughly from the 1890s to the 1950s. The project has collected hundreds of life-history interviews with the first hand testimony of ordinary men and women who lived behind the veil. The site contains a number of audio clips with excerpts from the oral histories. These clips are from Remembering Jim Crow: African-Americans Tell about Life in the Segregated South, a book and cd set which includes excerpts from hundreds of interviews and two hours of recordings, the first publication to emerge from the Project. Remembering Jim Crow is also the name of an hour long National Public Radio documentary, which is included on the cd, and the extensive online documentary which accompanies it. The Resources section of that website contains the entire hour long radio documentary, divided into three segments, a transcript of the program, and a selection of links and books on the subject. The site also contains additional audio clips of interviews with people who suffered the indignities of Jim Crow, slideshow presentations, written personal stories, and a sampling of Jim Crow laws. The Behind the Veil website also includes a section on Educator Resources which includes suggestions for further reading and an extensive links page.
A Sampling of "Jim Crow" Laws: From the 1880s to the 1960s the laws of many American states prohibited people from different races engaging in various activities together and mandated racial segregation in numerous aspects of everyday life. This site contains descriptions of a number of these laws.
Lynching in America: Statistics, Information, Images: This site contains lynching statistics by year, race, state, and supposed offense from 1882 to 1968. The last lynchings were reported in 1964. The site also contains links to relevant sites.
Lynching and Race Riots in the United States 1880-1950: This article discusses anti-Black violence and focuses upon lynching, race riots, and the African-American response to them. The site outlines a unit designed as part of a course in African-American History for high schoool students and contains a bibliography.
The Press and Lynchings of African Americans and the Press: This site contains a summary of an article by the same title by Professor Richard M. Perloff which appears in the Journal of Black Studies, January 2000, pp. 315-330. The article examines how newspapers discussed lynchings on their news and editorial pages and includes a list of references.
Lynching in America: This site focuses on a 1897 lynching in Urbana, Ohio of an African-American and includes excerpts from newspaper editorials from around the country discussing it. Some of the editorials seem to endorse the practice of lynching.
The Origins and History of Lynching: This very short article was written by a colege student as part of a class project and contains a bibliography.
Lynching: This site contains a list of links to sites and materials related to lynching.
Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America: This site contains photographs and postcards taken as "souvenirs" at lynchings throughout the United States. The pictures can be experienced as a flash movie with narrative comments or as a gallery. The photographs together with some essays have been published in book form, Without Sanctuary by Twin Palms Publishers.
The Integration of the Armed Services: On July 26, 1948, President Harry Truman signed Executive Order 9981 establishing the President's Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Forces and leading to the integration of the armed services. This site discusses the process of that integration. Additionally, it contains a section on the History of Blacks in Military Service, an extensive list of relevant links, and some film clips.
The Desegregation of the Armed Services: This site contains an excellent timeline summarizing the events leading to the desegregation of the U.S. Armed Forces and a large collection of official documents from the Truman Library which were part of that process.
Sweatt v. Painter Archive: In 1946 the University of Texas School of Law denied Herman Marion Sweatt admission because he was an African-American, and it was reserved for whites. Sweatt filed suit, and in a 1950 decision the United States Supreme Court ordered that the school be integrated. The site contains historical records linked to the litigation including university records, litigation materials, newspapers, and oral histories.
Photographs of Signs Enforcing Racial Discrimination (1937-1943): This site contains more than thirty photographs taken by photographers working for the federal government's Farm Security Administration Historical Section (later transferred to the Office of War Information). The photographers were encouraged to document continuity and change in American life and were particularly encouraged to take pictures of billboards and signs as one indicator of such developments.
"Scottsboro Boys" Trials 1931-1937: In 1931 case nine young Black men were charged with raping two white women. Eight were initially convicted and sentenced to death. This infamous case led to protests both around this country and abroad. This site, another section of the Famous Trials Project , includes accounts of the trials, a chrononlogy, biographies of key figures, letters, newspaper articles, the appellate court court decisions, photographs, a bibliography, and a list of relevant links.
Race and Place: This site is an archive about the Jim Crow or racial segregation laws from the late 1880s until the mid-twentieth century, focusing on the town of Charlottesville, Virginia. The site contains phots, letters, newspaper articles, city records, census data, poltical materials, and student projects. The site is a collaborative effort of the Virginia Center for Digital History and the Carter G. Woodson Institute for Afro-American and African Studies at the University of Virginia. The Institute is an interdisciplinary teaching and reserach center. Its site contains a list of its publications and a Resources page of relevant links. One section of the site is the Proffit Historic District, an Online Resource Archive, which focuses on a nearby Black community established after the Civil War. The archive contains a community timeline from 1870 to 2000, interviews, news clips, photos, maps, and a bibliography.
The Sweet Trials 1926 & 1926: Dr. Ossian Sweet, an African-American, purchased a home in a previously all-white neighborhood in Detriot, Michigan, in 1925. Shortly after he and his family moved in a mob gathered outside, and rocks hit the house. Shots rang out from the house, and one hit and killed one of Sweet's new neighbors who was on his porch. The police then arrested all eleven occupants of the Sweet home, and they were all charged with first-degree murder. Clarence Darrow, the most famous defense attorney of the time, represented the defendants. This site, also part of the Famous Trials Project , includes accounts of the trials, a chrononlogy, excerpts from the trial transcripts, Darrow's summations, a speech by Darrow on race relations, photographs, and a bibliography.
The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers Project: Marcus Garvey lead the largest organized mass movement in African-American history. The United States government essentially terminated that movement when it prosecuted and convicted Garvey on mail fraud charges filed in 1922. This research project of the James S. Coleman African Studies Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, seeks to provide a full, objective account of Garvey and the movement he led. The site contains short overview articles on Garvey and the UNIA, a Fact Sheet on Garvey, a list of the Project's publications with sample documents from each volume, a photo gallery, and a sound library containing two speeches by Garvey.
Remembering Rosewood: Rosewood was a small Black community in Florida. Following an alleged attack on a white woman by an unidentified Black man on January 1, 1923, white vigilantes killed several Blacks, burned all the buildings in the town, and forced the Black residents to flee into the woods in fear for their lives. This site contains a brief chronology of the events in the What Really Happened section, photos of some of the survivors, and links to other sites with information about Rosewood.
A Documented History of the Incident Which Occurred at Rosewood, Florida, in January 1923: This site contains the report on the massacre prepared for the Florida Legislature in 1993 by a team of researchers from several Florida universities.
Rosewood Victims v. State of Florida: This site contains the Special Master's Report of March 24, 1994, on an equitable claim against the State of Florida asserted by the former residents and descendants of former residents of Rosewood seeking compensation for the deaths of their relatives, the loss of their property, and the emotional and physical injuries inflicted upon them. The Report summarizes the massacre, the introduction of the Bill seeking compensation, the appointment of the academic research team, and the arguments in favor of and against compensation. Among other things, the Special Master recommended that the each elderly claimant who sustained emotional trauma as a result of the destruction and forced evacuation be compensated in the amount of $150,000.
Rosewood Reborn: This site contains a RealAudio version of a radio documentary hosted by James Earl Jones recounting the massacre and the two million dollar survivor settlement of 1994. It includes interviews with five survivors. The site also contains a brief summary of the massacre and a discussion of Rosewood, the 1997 feature film directed by John Singleton and starring Jon Voigt and Ving Rhames based upon it. The movie's official homepage is at this Warner Brother's site.
Rosewood Bibliography: This State Library of Florida site lists books, book articles, journal articles, newspaper articles, internet sites, bills, and reports which focus on the Rosewood Massacre of 1923. The Library also maintains this site with information about Rosewood materials.
The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921: This site contains an article on the activities of a well-armed white mob, some of them deputized by the police, who killed some 300 people and burned more than 3,000 homes, and the events leading up to their rampage. The article was written by Walter White, who later became Execuitve Director of the NAACP, and was published in the magazine, the Nation. The site also contains links to other materials on the Riot, including the University of Tulsa Library's site containing almost 100 photographs of the Riot. In February 2003, a group of lawyers, including Professor Charles T. Ogletree, Jr., of Harvard Law School, filed suit on behalf of some 200 plaintiffs seeking reparations for the lives lost, the injuries suffered, and the property damaged and destroyed during the Riot. Professor Ogletree's website contains litigation documents filed in the case, newspaper articles about the lawsuit, slides of the riot and its aftermath, and links to other relevant sites.
The Final Report of the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 (February 2001): This Commission was created by the State of Oklahoma. Its report is 178 pages long and includes photographs. It is available in pdf format - Tulsa Race Riot A Report by the Oklahoma Com mission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. The site also permits the reading or downloading of the file divided into 4 smaller files.
The Race Problem and the Presidential Election of 1912: This site is designed to help visitors understand both the racial situation in the United States in 1912 and how the issue affected the presidential election that year. The discussion on race relations in the South centers upon sharecropping, lynching, and Jim Crow laws. The election materials discuss African-American reactions to four political parties which ran candidates for president.
The Springfield Race Riot of 1908: This site, created by high school students, provides a detailed account of the events surrounding the Riot and notes the role it played in the creation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
The Trial of Sheriff Joseph Shipp, et al. 1907-1908: The United States Supreme Court has only conducted one criminal trial in its history. It resulted in the conviction of a sheriff, a deputy, and four members of a lynch mob on charges of criminal contempt. An apparently innocent Black man, convicted of raping a white woman, was lynched even though the Supreme Court had stayed his scheduled execution. This site, part of the Famous Trials Project , includes an account of the trial, a chrononlogy, biographies of key figures, excerpts from the trial transcript, the Supreme Court decision, 214 U.S. 386 (1909), newspaper articles, photographs, and a bibliography.
Defending Home and Hearth: Walter White Recalls the 1906 Atlanta Race Riot: Vague reports of Blacks harassing white women preceeded five days of rioting in which at least 10 Black people were killed. In this excerpt from his memoirs, Walter White, future head of the NAACP, recounts how he, at age 13, and his father had to defend their home from white rioters. A review of Negrophobia: A Race Riot in Atlanta, 1906 (Encounter Books 2001) is available from this link.
Lynch Law in America by Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1900): The author of this article, an African-American journalist, led a campaign against lynching in the United States.
U.S. Senator declares murder of Blacks justified (1900): Senator Benjamin R. "Pitchfork Ben" Tillman of South Carolina attempted to justify the murder of several African-Americans by whites in this March 23, 1900 speech on the Senate floor. He also argued that lynching and violence against Black men was needed to prevent them from "gratifying [their] lust on our wives and daughters." It is perhaps surprising that such racist notions were a primary reason that lynching was tolerated as long as it was in the United States.
For Colonial Era to 1899 Links and Materials
A Syllabus for an African-American Literature and American Law Course: This syllabus is part of a site which contains a collection of African-American Literature Syllabi.
Africans in America: America's Journey Through Slavery: This website is a companion to the excellent six hour public television series of the same name (now available on video tape and dvd). It chronicles the history of Africans in the United States from the beginning of the slave trade to the end of the Civil War and is one of the most comprehensive Black History sites available on the Internet. It contains hundreds of primary documents, images, stories, biographies, commentaries from scholars, and a detailed narrative.
Africa and African-Americans: The El Centro College History Department created this website. It contains a huge list of links to African-American history sites and materials.
Black History: This site links six sites created as models to suggest ways to include the Web and videoconferencing into classroom learning. One of the sites, the Black History Hotlist, is intended as a starting point for anyone studying African-American events and issues and includes sections on the Civil Rights Movement and slavery.
Afro-American Almanac: This site contains a huge list of links to sites and materials related to African-American history including historical documents, books, and biographies.
AFRO-Americ@'s Black History Museum: The Museum has exhibits on a few Black History topics including one on slavery which emphasizes Black resistance and an exhibit on the Scottsboro Boys case. The Museum is actually a part of the Afro-American Newspapers Home Page, and that site also contains news and culture sections.
About.com African-American History: This site contains a large list of links to sites and materials on African-American history.
The African-American Mosaic: A Library of Congress Resource Guide for the Study of Black History: The Mosaic itself is a Library-wide resource guide to its African-American collections. These collections include books, periodicals, prints, photographs, music, film, and recorded sound. The site is essentially a sampler of the kinds of materials included in the collections and only covers four areas- Colonialization, Abolition, Migrations, and the WPA.
African-American Studies Resources: This Columbia University Library site contains links to African-American Studies resources.
African-American WWW Resources: This list of links is part of the University of California at Los Angeles Center of African-American Studies web site. The site also contains a list of its publications, current and past copies of its newsletter, its Cultural Studies in the African Diaspora Project, and a number of bibliographies on specific topics such as the Rodney King Verdict and its Aftermath, the LA Experience, and the Black Indians in the CAAS Library section.
African-American History Links: This site contains links to African-American history sites.
Encyclopedia Brittannica Guide to Black History: The Guide features 600 articles and also contains film clips and audio recordings. Additionally, the Related Internet Links and Bibliography sections provide good source material for further study.
Margaret's African American History: This site contains a long list of links to sites and materials on African-American history.
John Henrik Clarke Africana Library: This collection at Cornell University focuses on the history and culture of people of African ancestry. It includes links to selected digital historical texts and links to selected full-text digital periodicals.
African-American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship: This Library of Congress exhibit contains more than 240 items including manscripts, maps, and other documents. The exhibit sections include Slavery, Reconstruction, and Civil Rights.
Pamphlets from the Daniel A.P. Murray Collection 1818-1907: This collection of pamphlets is part of the American Memory Project of the Library of Congress. The bulk of these works by African-Americans were published between 1875 and 1900. The authors include Frederick Douglas, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and Booker T. Washington. One of the documents included is the text of a speech given by D. Augustus Straker to African-American law graduates of Allen University in 1884.
African-American Web Connection: This site is an African-American cyber gateway for the entire family. The categories of links include history, organizations, prominent people, publications, resources, and authors.
EverythingBlack.com: This site is an African-American portal and contains links in categories ranging from Art and Humanities to History to Reference to Sports.
Black Voices: This site, another African-American portal, includes news, editorials, and mutltimedia essays.
Netnoir.com: This African-American portal is divided into "channels" including news, health, women, gospel, music, tv/film, and lifestyle.
Africana.com: This portal is designed to bring together authoritative information about the world of Africa and her Diaspora. The site includes news, essays, and articles from the United States and around the world.
The BlackMarket.com: This site contains a long list of links to sites related to African-Americans.
Universal Black Pages: The purpose of this site is to maintaina comprehensive listing of African-diaspora related Web pages.