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January 1, 1997
African American Resources
by Roger Gottlieb
In doing research on African-American studies, I have found, that, as usual, the Web is the quickest and most productive way to find current and practical information. Here are some online resources that I've found most useful in working with my students. I hope you also will find these Internet sites worthwhile.
Black History: Exploring African American Issues on the Web
The developers say that the following Web sites are intended to help integrate the World Wide Web and videoconferencing into classroom learning by focusing on African-American History, a topic selected for its importance, high-interest, and the wealth of Internet resources available on the topic. Each site takes a slightly different approach:
BLACK QUEST Power Links
By playing a game, visitors to this site will gain a greater insight, understanding and knowledge regarding the African American heritage. BLACK QUEST consists of over 1,200 multiple choice and true/false questions about such topics as slavery, Revolutionary War, Civil War, Reconstruction Era, Civil Rights Movement, inventions, art, entertainment, sports, and more.
A Deeper Shade of History
A Black history database, searchable by topic, month or year. You can also learn interesting facts about This Week in Black history.
Black Studies
Various resources in Black Studies compiled by the Library staff at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB).
AFRO American Almanac™
This site attempts to deal with the entire history of African-Americans in America, from the slave trade through the struggle for Civil Rights up to present times. Its designers hope to provide an awareness of the problems that Black people have faced and still face.
Database: Afro-American Poetry ý 1760-1900
This is a collection of over 2,500 poems based upon a bibliography, Afro-American Poetry and Drama 1760-1975, by William French. Note: because this is a commercial product held under a licensing agreement, access may be restricted. Members of VIVA, the Virtual Library of Virginia, should have complete access.
Schomberg Center
A part of the New York Public Library system, Harlem's "Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture" is actually a national research library dedicated to those studying the experiences of peoples of African descent throughout the world. Also see the following listing.
Digital Schomberg:Digital Schomberg: images of 19th century african americans
This is a digital collection of visual images of African Americans in the 19th Century. The Schomburg Center offers these as a way of introducing users to just some of the images in their Photographs and Prints Division and in other Research Branches of the New York Public Library system.
Library of Congress
The first of its kind, the African-American Mosaic is actually a comprehensive guide to just about all of the Library of Congress' collections related to the past 500 years of the Black experience in the Western Hemisphere. This includes books, periodicals, prints, photographs, music, film and recorded sound.
Smithsonian Institution Information on African American History and Culture
Part of the National Museum of American History's pages, this site is worth a stop by any researcher.
Carnegie Mellon--Race
The English Server at Carnegie-Mellon University is a cooperative managed by students, faculty, and staff. It has published humanities texts to readers online since 1990, offering more than 10,000 texts in many disciplines.
Art McGee
The Web is wonderful for research, but many of us recall that there are other sources of online information. These pages provide a list of FTP, Gopher, Telnet, BBS, and other information storage sites that also have significant amounts of information relating to Black or African peoples. There are also lists of resources dedicated to ethnic and intercultural relations, international and sustainable development (including global networking), and social and progressive activism. (Please see next entry.)
WWW Links--African Studies
A complement to the above, this ongoing project lists online resources in African Studies that are not necessarily covered at the Penn African Studies Web site.
African-American History Archives
This set of archives is part of the Americas Archives Section of the World History Archives and is associated with Gateway to World History.
Mississippi State
Another text archive, this courtesy of Mississippi State University.
WEB DuBois Virtual University
This site is devoted to the works, life, and legacy of William Edward Burghardt DuBois, and also deals with the repercussions of the African Diaspora.
E-Mail: Roger Gottlieb
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