Resources
By no means complete, here is a sampling of some online organizations, museums, references and guides that can help you learn and explore.
National Organizations:
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
Founded in 1909 in New York City by a group of black and white citizens committed to social justice, the NAACP is the nation's largest and strongest civil rights organization. The NAACP's principal objective is to ensure the political, educational, social and economic equality of minority group citizens of United States and eliminate race prejudice.
National Urban League
Founded in 1910, this organization is the nation's oldest and largest community-based movement devoted to empowering African Americans to enter the economic and social mainstream. The League is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, community-based organization headquartered in New York City, with affiliates in over 100 cities in 34 states and the District of Columbia.
American Civil Liberties Organization
Founded in 1920, the ACLU's mission is to fight civil liberties violations wherever and whenever they occur. It is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.
American Association for Affirmative Action
Founded in 1974, the American Association for Affirmative Action (AAAA) is dedicated to the advancement of affirmative action, equal opportunity and the elimination of discrimination on the basis of race, gender, ethnic background or any other criterion that deprives people of opportunities to live and work.
National Association of Black Journalists
Founded in 1975, the National Association of Black Journalists is the largest media organization for people of color in the world.
National Society of Black Engineers
Civil Rights and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:
The King Center
Established in 1968 by Coretta Scott King as a living memorial dedicated to the preservation and advancement of the work of Martin Luther King, Jr.
The Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project at Stanford University
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. Its principal mission is to publish a definitive fourteen-volume edition of King's most significant correspondence, sermons, speeches, published writings, and unpublished manuscripts.
We Shall Overcome: Historic Places of the Civil Rights Movement
A travel itinerary of the National Register of Historic Places, telling the powerful story of the civil rights movement through the places where these seminal events occurred in churches, schools, homes, and neighborhoods.
Greensboro Sit-ins: Launch of a Civil Rights Movement
This site tells the story of the Greensboro Four and documents the Greensboro sit-ins through audio clips, photos, and stories.
Charles Moore Civil Rights Photography
Many credit Moore's dramatic photos with transforming the national mood and quickening passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Much of Moore's landmark civil rights photographs were originally published in Life Magazine.
Undeground Railroad:
Aboard the Underground Railroad: A National Register of History Places Travel Itinerary
This site introduces travelers, researchers, historians, preservationists, and anyone interested in African American history to the fascinating people and places associated with the Underground Railroad. The itinerary currently provides descriptions and photographs on 46 historic places that are listed in the National Park Service's National Register of Historic Places.
National Underground Railroad Freedom Center
This site site, maintained by a museum and education center in Cincinnati, Ohio, educates the public about the historic struggle to abolish human enslavement and secure freedom for all people. Find current news, recent historical research, video clips, links and other resources.
National Geographic presents the Underground Railroad
Pretend you are a slave trying to escape to freedom on the Underground Railroad with this interactive journey from National Geographic.
National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom
Museums, historic sites and monuments:
Museum of Afro American History
This museum, located in Boston, Mass., is a not-for-profit history institution dedicated to preserving, conserving and accurately interpreting the contributions of African Americans during the colonial period in New England.
National Civil Rights Museum
The National Civil Rights Museum, located in downtown Memphis, Tenn., is the first and only comprehensive overview of the civil rights movement in exhibit form. As an educational institution, the museum exists to provide understanding of the civil rights movement and its impact on human rights movements worldwide. The museum, housing over 10,000 square feet of permanet exhibits, offers unique educational experiences through its collections, research, and public learning programs.
Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History
This museum, located in Detroit, Mich., documents, preserves and educates the public on the history, life and culture of African Americans.
Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site
The boyhood home of Martin Luther King, Jr. is a national historic site located in Atlanta, Ga.
Booker T. Washington National Monument
Booker T. Washington was born into slavery on this 207-acre tobacco farm located in Hardy, Va. Visitors are invited to step back in time and experience firsthand the life and landscape of people who lived in an era when slavery was part of the fabric of American life.
Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site
This site, located in Topeka, Kansas, commemorates the landmark Supreme Court decision aimed at ending segregation in public schools and consists of the Monroe Elementary School, one of the four segregated elementary schools for African American children in Topeka, and the adjacent grounds.
Mary Mcleod Bethune Council House National Historic Site
This site, located in Washington, D.C., commemorates the life of Mary McLeod Bethune and the organization she founded, the National Council of Negro Women.
Frederick Douglass National Historic Site
From 1877 to 1895, this site, located in Washington D.C., was the home of Frederick Douglass, the nation's leading 19th-century African American spokesman.
George Washington Carver National Monument
Carver's boyhood home, located in Diamond, Missouri, consists of rolling hills, woodlands, and prairies. The 210 acre park has a 3/4 mile nature trail, museum, and an interactive exhibit area for students.
Online exhibits:
American Visionaries: Legends of Tuskegee
Booker Taliafero Washington, George Washington Carver and the Tuskegee Airmen all came to Tuskegee and created their own legends. Tuskegee is more than a town located in Macon County, Alabama. It is an idea and an ideal. It was a bold experiment and a site of major African-American achievements for over 100 years.
Jackie Robinson and other baseball highlights: 1860s to 1960s
When Jackie Robinson took the field as a Brooklyn Dodger in 1947, he became the first African-American to play major league baseball in the 20th century. A special presentation from the Library of Congress, drawing on items from many parts of the library, tells his story and the history of baseball in general.
William P. Gottlieb: Photographs from the Golden Age of Jazz
The William P. Gottlieb Collection, comprising over sixteen hundred photographs of celebrated jazz artists, documents the jazz scene from 1938 to 1948, primarily in New York City and Washington, D.C. This online collection from the Library of Congress presents Gottlieb's photographs, annotated contact prints, selected published prints, and related articles from Down Beat magazine.
American Visionaries: Frederick Douglass
Committed to freedom, Douglass dedicated his life to achieving justice for all Americans, in particular African-Americans, women, and minority groups. He envisioned America as an inclusive nation strengthened by diversity and free of discrimination. This online exhibit features items owned by Frederick Douglass and highlights his achievements.
Harlem 1900 - 1940: An African-American Community
Harlem has long symbolized the culture of the African-American experience in 20th-century America. This history education exhibition portfolio from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and The New York Public Library documents various elements of the urban experience in Harlem's early days as the cultural capital of African- Americans.
The African Presence in the Americas: 1492 - 1992
An exhibition portfolio designed to introduce you to the dynamics and dimensions of the 500 year history of African people in the Americas from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
African-American Women Writers of the 19th Century
A digital collection of some 52 published works by 19th-century black women writers. This collection from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture provides access to the thought, perspectives and creative abilities of black women as captured in books and pamphlets published prior to 1920.
Africans in America: America's Journey through Slavery
This site from WGBH Interactive and PBS Online chronicles the history of racial slavery in the United States -- from the start of the Atlantic slave trade in the 16th century to the end of the American Civil War in 1865 -- and explores the central paradox that is at the heart of the American story: a democracy that declared all men equal but enslaved and oppressed one people to provide independence and prosperity to another.
African American Odyssey
The Library of Congress has developed a supplementary site to their largest black history exhibit, The African American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship. Through nine chronological periods, the exhibit tells the story of the African American quest for equality from the early national period to the twentieth century. The materials on the site include text and images from the books, government documents, manuscripts, maps, musical scores, and plays of the exhibit.
AFRO-americ@'s Black History Museum
Interactive exhibits on the Tuskegee Airmen, Jackie Robinson, the Black Panther Party, and much more.
African-American Mosaic
Covering the nearly 500 years of the black experience in the Western hemisphere, the Mosaic surveys the full range size, and variety of the Library of Congress's collections, including books, periodicals, prints, photographs, music, film, and recorded sound. This online exhibit is but a sampler of the kinds of materials and themes covered by the publication and the Library's collections.
History:
BostonFamilyHistory.com - African American History
This site offers information about Boston's black history, including timelines and links.
54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, Company B Reenactors
The memory of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment lives on in a Washington, DC area reenactment group known as B Company. The Company, a non-profit organization of professional and amateur historians, was formed in 1988 as a U.S. National Park Service "Volunteers in Parks" unit.
History of African-Americans in the Civil War
Approximately 180,000 African-Americans comprising 163 units served in the Union Army during the Civil War, and many more African-Americans served in the Union Navy. Both free Africans-Americans and runaway slaves joined the fight. This site from the National Park Service documents African-American participation in the Civil War and contains a database with basic facts about servicemen who served on both sides during the Civil War.
General:
EverythingBlack.com
"The place to find anything and everything black on the Net."
BlackVoices.com
"Where African-Americans live online."
NetNoir.com
"The premier African-American online Web site, providing tools and resources to manage your life online."
Africana.com
This site attempts to bring together authoritative information about the whole world of Africa and her diaspora with news and analysis, reviews and personal essays from all around the world. It also tries to provide a place where people of African descent, wherever they live, can gather together to nurture one another, and to emerge refreshed and strengthened by new knowledge of a shared history, heroes and achievements.
Local Organizations:
National Association of Black Accountants, Inc.
Boston Metropolitan Chapter
P.O. Box 1945
Boston, MA 02105-1945
Phone: (617) 445-NABA (6222)
New England Regional Black Nurses Association, Inc.
P.O. Box 690
Roxbury, MA 02119
Phone: (617) 524-1951
National Coalition of 100 Black Women Greater
Boston Chapter
32 Edmund Street
Malden, MA 02148
Phone: 781-338-0902
National Black MBA Association Boston Chapter
P.O. Box 181188
Boston, MA 02118
Phone: (617) 989-0331
The Boston Coalition of Black Women, Inc.
198 Tremont Street RMB #413
Boston, MA 02116
Phone: (617) 499-4876
Concerned Black Men of Massachussetts, Inc
300 Warren Street, Suite 217
Roxbury, MA 02119
NAACP Boston Branch
P.O. Box 8368
Boston, MA 02114-0034
Phone: 617-265-7900
Urban League - Eastern Mass
Phone: (617) 442-4519
