CommonLit
Common Lit: Book Pairings: "A Raisin in the Sun" by Lorraine Hansberry
Selected (7) reading passages (grades 8-10) to pair with the drama "A Raisin in the Sun" by Lorraine Hansberry. When a struggling African-American family receives a large insurance check, a conflict erupts on how to spend the money....
Khan Academy
Khan Academy: Us History: 1945 1980: The Reemergence of the Kkk
Disbanded after Reconstruction, the KKK returned to national prominence in the 1920s to direct its hatred against African Americans, Catholics, Jews, and immigrants.
Khan Academy
Khan Academy: Us History: 1865 1898: Jim Crow
After Reconstruction, states in the South passed laws that barred African Americans from voting and segregated schools, restaurants, and public accommodations.
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Eugenics Archive: Eugenics Popularization
This article explains how the idea of eugenics, based on poor science, became popular in the 1920s as a reaction against immigration and African Americans.
Curated OER
History Matters: Atlanta Compromise Speech, 1895
Read an excerpt from Booker T. Washington's 1895 Atlanta Compromise speech, in which he stresses accommodation rather than resistance as way to deal with racism. Includes a short audio clip - the only surviving recording of Washington's...
Read Works
Read Works: Famous African Americans Muhammad Ali: The Greatest
[Free Registration/Login Required] Biographical information about the famous boxer Muhammad Ali is contained in this passage. This passage is a stand-alone curricular piece that reinforces essential reading skills and strategies and...
Read Works
Read Works: Famous African Americans Martin Luther King, Jr.
[Free Registration/Login Required] This biographical sketch contains information about the Civil Rights leader, Martin Luther King, Jr. This passage is a stand-alone curricular piece that reinforces essential reading skills and...
Read Works
Read Works: Famous African Americans Marian Anderson
[Free Registration/Login Required] This passage contains brief biographical information about the famous singer named Marian Anderson. This passage is a stand-alone curricular piece that reinforces essential reading skills and strategies...
Read Works
Read Works: Famous African Americans Thurgood Marshall
[Free Registration/Login Required] This mini-biographical pieces shares information about Thurgood Marshall. This passage is a stand-alone curricular piece that reinforces essential reading skills and strategies and establishes...
Khan Academy
Khan Academy: Us History: 1844 1877: Life for Enslaved Men and Women
During the nineteenth century, enslaved African Americans worked on large plantations in the US South under brutal conditions.
Scholastic
Scholastic History Mystery: Roaring '20S: Ossian Sweet
Students try to guess the mystery subject Carlotta Facts, the History Mystery Museum's professor, is studying. They read the clues, do some online and offline research, and then attempt to identify the game's mystery person, Ossian Sweet.
University of Richmond
Black Virginia: The Richmond Planet: 1894 1909
This curation, transcription, and interpretation of the Richmond Planet opens a window into fundamental issues of race, equity, justice, violence, and power that still stir the nation today. Thirteen formerly enslaved men formed the...
US National Archives
Nara: Powers of Persuasion: United We Win
In spite of racial discrimination and segregation in the military and in civilian life, the overwhelming majority of black Americans participated wholeheartedly in the fight against the Axis powers. This site explores the posters,...
Other
Slavery in the North: Exclusion of Blacks
After emancipation, African Americans were granted rights, such as voting or sitting on a jury, in some Northern states. But often they were prevented from exercising these rights due to the deeply ingrained prejudices of whites.
PBS
Pbs Need to Know: Florida Ex Felon Voting Laws
Did you know that one in ten adults in Florida is currently not eligible to vote due to having been convicted of a felony? Find out how African Americans in particular are disproportionately affected. Article has particular emphasis on...
Yale University
Yale New Haven Teachers Institute: Negro Holocaust: Lynching and Race Riots
A instructional activity unit with good background information for students. Details the history of lynching and race riots in America and the treatment of African-Americans from 1880 to 1950.
Smithsonian Institution
Smithsonian Tween Tribune: The True Story of "Hidden Figures"
"Hidden Figures" was a blockbuster movie and book about African-American women working for NASA beginning after WWII. These women not only made great strides for the space program but also advanced the civil rights movement. Learn more...
Siteseen
Siteseen: American Historama: The Exodusters
Learn about the Exodusters, thousands of African Americans, from the southern states along the Mississippi River, who migrated to Kansas.
Library of Congress
Loc: Jackie Robinson and Other Baseball Highlights, 1860s 1960s
Timeline of the history of baseball, from 1860 to 1972, with a focus on the events leading to the integration of African Americans into the major leagues.
PBS
Pbs: Identity, Oppression, and Protest
This lesson plan supplements a study of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. The instructional activity is designed to help students understand the impact of Jim Crow Laws and their impact of oppression on African Americans. Blues music...
Library of Congress
Loc: Baseball, Race Relations and Jackie Robinson
In this instructional activity, students draw on their previous studies of American history and culture as they analyze primary sources from Jackie Robinson and Other Baseball Highlights, 1860s-1960s in American Memory. A close reading...
CommonLit
Common Lit: Book Pairings: "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou recounts her coming of age story as a mature but apprehensive girl in the American South and California during the Jim Crow era. Selected (8) reading passages (grades 7-10) to pair with "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by...
Digital History
Digital History: To the Heart of Dixie
In the early 1960s civil rights activists put the ban on segregation to the test. In 1961, "Freedom riders," boarded buses headed south to test the federal ban on segregated travel. And in 1962, the University of Mississippi was ordered...
Black Past
Black Past: Buxton, Iowa
This is an interesting encyclopedia article about the multi-ethnic town of Buxton, Iowa, a coal-mining town with little racial discrimination.