1619-2019: 400 Years of Resilience

Brief biography from the National Park Service

Article by Tanner Tafelski, 2018.
"Black Is the Color is an informative introductory survey of essential African-American artists for those in need of one. Art historians, collectors, artists, and curators all explain their importance and situate the pieces in their specific historical contexts. One leaves the documentary with renewed awareness that recent battles over inclusion, representation, and appropriation are the results of struggles that have been going on for decades."

"Founded February 12, 1909, the NAACP is the nation’s foremost, largest, and most widely recognized civil rights organization."

By Rachel B. Doyle, 2017
"In 1902, when Julian F. Abele graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in architecture, he was the school's first-ever black graduate. The debonair Philadelphia-born architect went on to design hundreds of elegant public institutions, Gilded Age mansions, and huge swathes of a prestigious then-whites-only university's campus."

A podcast with Dr. Hannah-Rose Murray of Yale University talks about her work tracking well-known US abolitionist on their travels in Britain in the mid-late 1800's.

"Carter G. Woodson [known as the Father of Black History] believed that Blacks should know their past in order to participate intelligently in the affairs in our country. He strongly believed that Black history – which others have tried so diligently to erase – is a firm foundation for young Black Americans to build on in order to become productive citizens of our society."

22 minutes, "In his quest for excellence and equality, all-star athlete Jackie Robinson shatters the barriers of racism to become the first black baseball player to play in the major leagues."

Green Books, publications written "to give the Negro traveler information that will keep him from running into difficulties, embarrassments and to make his trips more enjoyable" are digitized here. NYPL's collection spans 1936-1967 in the form of 23 Green Books.

A .pdf of a letter Hurston wrote to DuBois in 1945.

By Linda Hervieux, 2019.
"Seventy-five years after American troops landed in smoke, fire and chaos on the beaches of Normandy, France, a Maryland woman is fighting for recognition for her late husband, who is likely D-Day’s last unsung hero.
Corporal Waverly “Woody” Woodson Jr., was a 21-year-old medic from West Philadelphia when he splashed down in four feet of churning sea and waded toward Omaha Beach around 9 a.m. on the morning of June 6, 1944."

By Keisha N. Blain, 2018.
" Along with a cadre of women during this period, including Amy Jacques Garvey, Maymie De Mena, and Henrietta Vinton Davis, [Eunice] Lewis articulated a new and expansive vision of black women’s leadership in the UNIA and in the community as a whole. These women, from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds and social positions, adopted a proto-feminist stance in which they directly challenged male supremacy and attempted to change the UNIA’s patriarchal leadership structure."

By Heather Bourbeau, 2015.
"It has been 90 years since Ossian Sweet tried to move into his new home; since police stood by and did nothing as a mob threw rocks."

Researched, selected, arranged, and written by Barbara Lewis Burger.
260 images are available, divided by Army Air Forces, The Homefront, Merchant Marine, Rest and Relaxation, Personalities, Training, US Army, US Marine Corps, US Navy, and Women in the Military.

The Segregation Era (1900–1939), a part of the online exhibition,
The Civil Rights Act of 1964: A Long Struggle for Freedom, from the Library of Congress.

Volumes of The Crisis, the official publication of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), is available online in multiple locations, gathered here.

By Robin D.G. Kelley, 2015.
"Even as late as the 1930s, black farmers in Alabama labored under a highly exploitative system of tenant farming that preserved much of the power relations of slavery. But with the aid of the Communist Party, a militant movement of sharecroppers emerged to challenge this system."

Edited by Edith Mayo.
"This listing of African American Women Leaders in the American Woman Suffrage Movement is taken from the works of Dr. Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, former Professor of History and Coordinator of Graduate Programs in History at Morgan State University in Baltimore. She is the foremost authority on African-American women in the suffrage movement. A founder of the Association of Black Women Historians, her extensive research has enriched our historical knowledge of this topic. The works from which this information was taken are listed at the end of this entry. The Turning Point Suffragist Memorial wishes to acknowledge and express deep appreciation for her ground-breaking work."

By Cookie Woolner, 2017
"In November of 1920, the black newspaper The Chicago Whip ran a front-page article with the provocative headline, “Have We a New Sex Problem Here?” The short article detailing “one of the most peculiar divorce cases to yet be heard in Chicago” described an incident involving a married couple and another woman...The possibility that a woman would leave her husband to enter a romantic relationship with another woman and live with her as a family unit was a new concept for the anonymous journalist; so shocking was this notion that the author wondered if Ida May Robinson and her partner heralded a “new sex problem.”"

By Kat Eschner, 2017
"Langston Hughes wrote about dreams at a time when racism meant that black people’s dreams were silenced... {T]he poetry of Langston Hughes...influenced King’s sermons on a fundamental level and helped give rise to the preacher's most lasting line."

By Joan Quigley, 2016
"In a city known for iconic buildings, Thompson’s Restaurant was unremarkable. Located a few blocks from the White House... Mary Church Terrell, an 86-year-old charter member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, was not white...At roughly 2:45 p.m., Terrell walked through Thompson’s double glass doors. With her were three hand-picked compatriots: Geneva Brown and the Rev. William H. Jernagin, who were African American activists, and David H. Scull, a white Quaker. Collectively, none of them made it to the dining area."

"Between 1885 and 1929, Black residents in Baltimore and Maryland saw both new opportunities and difficult reversals. After the Civil War, three Constitutional Amendments laid out a promise of freedom, equal protection, and political power. In the years that followed, local, state, and federal elected officials often failed to protect the rights of Black Baltimoreans or actively worked against their interests."

While the Born in Slavery collection contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves, available here are the filtered results specific to Maryland.