The African American Experience in Ohio, 1850-1920
http://dbs.ohiohistory.org/africanam/
“It was our intention to bring together as many diverse sources as possible to provide evidence of the diversity and complexity of African-American culture during this time period and to let those sources tell their own story without interpretation.…”
“Disclaimer for Historical Materials: This site contains some historical materials that may contain offensive language or negative stereotypes reflecting the culture or language of a period or place. The Ohio Historical Society is presenting these items as part of the historical record.”
As a great source of primary materials The African American Experience in Ohio, 1850-1920, brought to you by The Ohio Historical Society, is a website worth visiting. The collection on this site serves to bring to light specific moments in the history of African Americans between 1850 and 1920 in Ohio. Some of the sources on this website include (but are not limited to) manuscripts collections, newspaper articles, photographs, and pamphlets. With a search function and easily navigated sections like Manuscripts, Newspapers, Pamphlets, Photographs & Prints, and Serials, good information is located quickly.

The African-American Mosaic
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/african/introduction.html
“A Library of Congress Resource Guide for the Study of Black History & Culture…”
The African-American Mosaic: A Library of Congress Resource Guide for the Study of Black History and Culture is the first Library-wide resource guide to the Library of Congress’ African- American collections. This site is very thorough as it covers nearly 500 years of the black experience in the western hemisphere. With information in the form of books, periodicals, prints, great photographs, music, film, and recorded sound, this website brings a vivid picture of the life and experiences of African Americans through the development of our country. Covering four areas in our history - Colonization, Abolition, Migrations, and the WPA, the visitor is presented with information which can easily be located and viewed.

Africans in America: Journey Through Slavery
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/home.html
Africans in America, brought to you by PBS with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, is a very good source of information on the subject of slavery, how it started and evolved in the Americas. The information on this site is separated into four main sections, The Terrible Transformation: 1450-1750, Revolution: 1750-1805, Brotherly Love: 1791-1831, and Judgment Day: 1831-1865. Each of these four sections contains historical Narrative, a Resource Bank (people, events, and historical documents), and a Teacher’s Guide with links to primary documents.

Brown v. Board of Education Online Archives
http://www.lib.umich.edu/exhibits/brownarchive/index.html/
“Welcome to the University of Michigan Library’s Brown v. Board of Education Digital Archive. This archive contains documents and images which chronicle events surrounding this historically significant case up to the present.”
The American Civil Rights Movement succeeded by combining the voice of the people in the streets and the courtroom. Brown v. Board of Education Online Archives captures the legal aspects of this historic struggle. The site houses court case transcripts, case summaries, images, and current civil rights events. The material is easily accessible. For students unable to decipher the intricate wording of Supreme Court decisions, the designers included summaries that outline the case background, the decision, and its civil rights impact. Furthermore, this site contains links to other sources for civil rights information and court cases.

Documenting the American South
http://docsouth.unc.edu/index.html
“Documenting the American South (DAS), an electronic collection sponsored by the Academic Affairs Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, provides access to digitized primary materials that offer Southern perspectives on American history and culture. It supplies teachers, students, and researchers at every educational level with a wide array of titles they can use for reference, studying, teaching, and research.”
It is very difficult to summarize the wide array of possibilities that this website has for research and pedagogical needs. Documenting the American South is a database filled with primary documents and images from the colonial period of North Carolina and the South until World War 1. The categories include “First Person Narratives of the American South,” “Library of Southern Literature,” “North American Slave Narratives,” “The Southern Home front,” “The Church in the Southern Black Community,” “The North Carolina Experience, Beginnings to 1940,” and “North Carolinians and the Great War.” With a plethora of first hand accounts, students, teachers, scholars can explore these issues from the viewpoint of African Americans, Euro-Americans, women, and men. Needless to say, this site can prove invaluable to those researching topics in the South during this time period.

Exploring Amistad:
Race and boundaries of freedom in Antebellum Maritime America
http://amistad.mysticseaport.org
“The heart of the web site is the Library which contains thousands of pages from over 500 primary documents including court documents, journal entries, and newspaper stories. Each can be viewed in the original print or handwriting or in transcription.”
This site investigates the Amistad Revolt of 1839-1842 and analyzes its place in history. The Discovery section of this website offers a detailed description of the Revolt, along with extensive background information about the broader social, political, economic and historic issues surrounding the Revolt, the Amistad trials and the Atlantic slave trade. This information is divided into the sections that focus on the story, people involved, places where important events happened and a timeline. In addition to the wealth of information provided, there is a set of lesson plans and interactive classroom activities that will help bring all of this information into the classroom. This website is valuable in its historically significant topic and content as well as its presentation and overall wealth of resources.

Freedmen and Southern Society Project: The Black Military Experience
http://www.history.umd.edu/Freedmen/
“The Freedmen and Southern Society Project was established in 1976 to capture the essence of that revolution by depicting the drama of emancipation in the words of the participants: liberated slaves and defeated slaveholders, soldiers and civilians, common folk and the elite, Northerners and Southerners…”
Brought to you by the University of Maryland and grants from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission and the National Endowment for the Humanities, Freedmen and Southern Society Project: The Black Military Experience has collected some 50,000 plus documents serving to show the black experience from slavery to the beginning of Reconstruction. The collected documents have yet to all be included on this site, so the site itself is still relatively small. The documents themselves however are very good quality and convey in “first-person the experiences of the liberated.” With letters representing both the North and South attitudes and opinions this site does a good job at giving the visitor an overall picture of America at this time.

From Slavery to Freedom: The African-American Pamphlet Collection, 1824-1909
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/aapchtml/aapchome.html
"From Slavery to Freedom: The African-American Pamphlet Collection, 1824-1909 presents 397 pamphlets from the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, published from 1824-1909, by African-American authors, and others who wrote about slavery, African colonization, Emancipation, Reconstruction, and related topics…”
As with other American Memory websites, this website offers an excellent source of primary documents in the form of scanned and digitized materials. Multiple views of slavery are included, e.g., abolitionists; those who attempted to justify slavery; British; Irish. “In exploring the contents of From Slavery to Freedom, readers may encounter attitudes and language that are jarring to contemporary sensibilities. It should be noted that these materials express the language, experience, and viewpoints of the era in which they were written.”

The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition
http://www.yale.edu/glc
“Located at Yale University, the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition is ‘dedicated to the investigation and dissemination of information concerning all aspects of the Atlantic slave system and its destruction.'"
Created by a major gift from Richard Gilder, this website provides good educational material on a wide range of activities for educators. A special feature of this site is its “Source Documents” section which has many primary documents pertaining to “slavery, slave resistance, and the abolitionist movement”. There are important documents to view on this site ranging from the “Argument of John Quincy Adams, before the Supreme Court”, Jim Crowe Laws, to “American Slavery and Britain's Rebuke of Man-Stealers”. One area worth viewing on this site is its Amistad page, which features the history of the event, along with online resources for further reading.

Harlem 1900-1940: An African American Community
http://www.si.umich.edu/CHICO/Harlem/index.html
“The contents of this package have been developed to stimulate in students and teachers a desire to discover and uncover the fascinating history of a unique community, Harlem.”
Compiled and written by Nashormeh N. R. Lindo and supported by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Harlem 1900-1940: An African American Community contains primary documents, text, images, and lesson plans about Harlem. Although the site does not have an extensive collection of primary documents, those that are provided richly illustrate the history of this community. For instance, browsers can access History of the NAACP by Mary White Ovington that describes the early days of this organization. In addition to primary documents, the website has narratives and images of important people, places, and events. Harlem notables like Madame C. J. Walker, Duke Ellington, Langston Hughes, and Augusta Savage receive ample attention. Yet, historical sketches are not limited to positive moments. Browsers will also encounter tragic events that Harlem residents faced. Finally, teachers will find a lesson plan on utilizing photographic evidence and print-outs on the “do’s and don’ts” of oral history.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project
http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/
“The King Papers Project is a major research effort to assemble and disseminate historical information concerning Martin Luther King, Jr. and the social movements in which he participated.”
Brought to you by Stanford University, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project website brings together a great collection of Martin Luther King, Jr. resources in one place. Not only can one find published documents about King, but also lesson plans in the area of civil rights. Of particular interest is the “Documents for use in the Classroom” section where one can find speeches and popular quotes in (audio and text formats) that Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered. This project does a good job at presenting historical information about King and the social movements in which he participated, and would be worthwhile to view.

Remembering Black Loyalists, Black Communities in Nova Scotia
http://museum.gov.ns.ca/blackloyalists/index.htm
“Between 1783 and 1785, more than 3000 Black persons came to Nova Scotia as a direct result of the American Revolution. They came from slavery and war to take control of their lives, making choices within the limits they faced.”
Sponsored by the Nova Scotia Museum and Department of Canadian Heritage, Remembering Black Loyalists, Black Communities in Nova Scotia gives browsers the history of black loyalists who fled to Nova Scotia after the American Revolutionary War. Having fought for or supported the British Empire during the conflict, these individuals faced re-enslavement after the departure of the British military. Finding solace in Nova Scotia, the settlers began the long and arduous process of establishing communities in their new homeland. This website includes their story, as well as images, documents, and recordings.

Slaves and the Courts: 1740-1860
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/sthtml/sthome.html
"Slaves and the Courts, 1740-1860 contains just over a hundred pamphlets and books (published between 1772 and 1889) concerning the difficult and troubling experiences of African and African American slaves in the American colonies and the United States…”
Slaves and Courts, 1740-1860 offers the visitor information pertaining to a very troubling time in our country’s past. Through such voices as abolitionists, presidents, slave owners, and fugitive and free territory slaves, a visitor can see a representation of nearly all viewpoints. This site is searchable by subject, author, or title, which makes the information very easy to locate. While not the easiest subject to talk about or teach, this site offers a good way of showing all of the different social and economical dynamics that served to play a role.

Teachers’ Domain: Civil Rights Special Collection
http://www.teachersdomain.org/special/civil/preview
“In 1954, the Supreme Court's landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education declared segregated schools unconstitutional and sparked a decade of groundbreaking civil rights activism and legislation. Using archival news footage, primary sources, and interview segments filmed for Eyes on the Prize, this collection captures the voices, images, and events of the Civil Rights movement and the ongoing struggle for racial equality in America.”
This free collection of audio/visual and textual resources could be of tremendous value in the classroom. This collection spans decades of the Civil Rights movement and provides timelines, images, background information and video clips. These short (3-5 minutes on average) video clips come from a variety of sources and cover many important aspects of the Civil Rights era. If teachers have Internet access and multi-media capabilities in the classroom, many of these videos could be used in a highly effective manner. With the inherent emotional nature of the topic, seeing video footage and live interviews can bring this topic alive for students and leave a lasting impact upon them. The resources can be accessed via an interactive timeline or by subject categories provided on the opening page. In addition to these resources there are a few lesson plans that help in integrating the website into classroom use. This website is free, but does require a quick and easy registration. This resource is highly recommended as a supplement to any discussion or lesson plan on the Civil Right movement.

University of Virginia Electronic Text Center
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/subjects/
“The Etext Center at the University of Virginia Library has pursued twin missions with equal seriousness of purpose since its inception in 1992: To build and maintain an internet-accessible collection of SGML and XML-encoded texts and images…To build and maintain user communities adept at the creation and use of these materials.”
The most useful collection in this online library is The Modern English Collection (AD 1500-present). Within this collection there are primary documents from African American and Native American sources, the American Civil War, the Colonial era, Women Writers and many others. These documents range from runaway slave advertisements to works of early American fiction. This collection has many of the common documents that are easily found elsewhere, but also contains thousands of unique resources. The selection offers the opportunity to go beyond well-known sources and to utilize new and fresh documents. This collection is an excellent place to find primary documents for classroom use. Though not directly applicable to U.S. History there are also interesting sources for European and world history. (BR)