Black history, Black joy, Black brilliance

Black Lives Matter at School is a national coalition organizing for racial justice in education.  We encourage all educators, students, parents, unions, and community organizations to join our annual week of action during the first week of February each year.

BlackPast timelines that explore the rich history of Black people in the world. The timelines are filterable by year range, year, event keyword, and location.

Perspectives on Global African History features accounts and descriptions of important events in Global African history. Many of these accounts will be instant primary sources available to current visitors to BlackPast and to future historians. Each article is accompanied by a brief biography and photo of its author.

For more on Black History, this Black History collection highlights the importance of teaching and celebrating Black History year-round, beyond Civil Rights and enslavement, to affirming the identities of Black people and their literature, art, and creativity that has shaped the culture of the world. The resources in the collection emphasize teaching centering liberation and teaching Black History that celebrates Black joy and Black brilliance.

The African-American Mosaic is a Library of Congress Resource Guide for the Study of Black History & Culture. This collection is divided into the following sections:  colonization, abolition, migration, and WPA.

 

The Race Stories essay series, published monthly on the Lens Blog of the New York Times, is a continuing exploration of the relationship of race to photographic portrayals of race by Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture Research Professor and Chief Curator, Dr. Maurice Berger.

 

RACE: The Power of an Illusion is the most widely taught documentary in the United States. The filmmakers and collaborators have created a series of lesson plans and collated other materials to guide discussion and engagement in the classroom.

For more on Black History, this Black History collection highlights the importance of teaching and celebrating Black History year-round, beyond Civil Rights and enslavement, to affirming the identities of Black people and their literature, art, and creativity that has shaped the culture of the world. The resources in the collection emphasize teaching centering liberation and teaching Black History that celebrates Black joy and Black brilliance.

Schomburg's Black Liberation List for Young Readers.

For 95 years, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture has preserved, protected, and fostered a greater understanding of the Black experience through its collections, exhibitions, programs, and scholarship. In response to the uprisings across the globe demanding justice for Black lives, the Schomburg Center has created a Black Liberation Reading List. The titles on the list represent books we and the public turn to regularly as activists, students, archivists, and curators, with a particular focus on books by Black authors and those whose papers we steward.

The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, one of The New York Public Library’s renowned research libraries, is a world-leading cultural institution devoted to the research, preservation, and exhibition of materials focused on African American, African Diaspora, and African experiences.

We are pleased to offer a range of ways to access the Library’s research services online through Scan & Deliver, other expanded research services, online research assistance, our Digital Collections, and more.

Explore essential titles selected by the Schomburg Center as it marks 95 years of collecting and preserving Black history, arts, and culture.

For more on Black History, this Black History collection highlights the importance of teaching and celebrating Black History year-round, beyond Civil Rights and enslavement, to affirming the identities of Black people and their literature, art, and creativity that has shaped the culture of the world. The resources in the collection emphasize teaching centering liberation and teaching Black History that celebrates Black joy and Black brilliance.

This is a searchable database of books that feature Black girls as the main characters. Users can filter all books in the database by reading level or search by title, author or keyword. (Scroll all the way down to use the database.) 

Please note this is a database of book titles designed to facilitate the process of locating books; there are no options to download the books; . The 1000 Black Girl Books Resource Guide was created by Marley Dias, Creator of the #1000BlackGirlBooks campaign and is hosted by the GrassROOTS Community Foundation in West Orange, New Jersey.

Africa Access was founded to help schools, public libraries, and parents improve the quality of their K-12 collections on Africa. Their website provides annotations and scholarly reviews of children’s and young adult books that focus on Africa. Africa Access also sponsors the Children's Africana Book Awards, which give annual awards for the best children’s and young adult books on Africa available for purchase in the United States. 

For more on Black History, this Black History collection highlights the importance of teaching and celebrating Black History year-round, beyond Civil Rights and enslavement, to affirming the identities of Black people and their literature, art, and creativity that has shaped the culture of the world. The resources in the collection emphasize teaching centering liberation and teaching Black History that celebrates Black joy and Black brilliance.

Four films are the centerpiece of the project Created Equal: America’s Civil Rights Struggle. The films, The Abolitionists, Slavery by Another Name, The Loving Story, and Freedom Riders connect the stories of the long civil rights movement and address issues of race and rights. The films invite students to confront the complicated history of race relations in this nation from the perspectives of individuals who felt personally wronged and through the eyes of those who saw themselves as part of a larger persecuted and disenfranchised community.

The films are available freely from this site, but Adobe Flash player is required to view them. The site also shares discussion group questions and curriculum material. Given time constraints, the videos may be assigned to a setting in a library/media center so that students may also view and take notes outside of the classroom setting.

 

The 1619 Project is an ongoing initiative from The New York Times Magazine that began in August 2019, the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative. Read all the stories.

The 1619 Project began with the publication, in August 2019, of a special issue of The New York Times Magazine containing essays on different aspects of contemporary American life, from mass incarceration to rush-hour traffic, that have their roots in slavery and its aftermath. Each essay takes up a modern phenomenon, familiar to all, and reveals its history. The first, by the staff writer Nikole Hannah-Jones (from whose mind this project sprang), provides the intellectual framework for the project and can be read as an introduction.

Elizabeth Acevedo is a National Poetry Slam champion and her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Poetry, Puerto Del Sol, Callaloo, The Notre Dame Review and others. See Elizabeth Acevedo Author Study for essential questions: 

• What is Elizabeth Acevedo's influence as a writer?
• What are the key themes of Elizabeth Acevedo's work?
• How do our various group identities shape us as individuals?
• What part do culture and history play in the formation of our individual and collective identities?
• How do our intersecting identities shape our perspectives and the way we experience the world?
• How do we remain true to ourselves as we move in and out of different communities, cultures and contexts?

Lessons for students on the institutionalization of racism and the long struggle for human, economic, and civil rights in the U.S. Shared by Teaching for Change.
 

This PBS collection captures the voices, images, and events of the Civil Rights Movement and the ongoing struggle for racial equality in America. (Select a topic within "civil rights" from the menu on the left side.) All grade levels. Shared by PBS Learning Media.

The History Channel provides a collection of 49 short videos on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his career.

For more on Black History, this Black History collection highlights the importance of teaching and celebrating Black History year-round, beyond Civil Rights and enslavement, to affirming the identities of Black people and their literature, art, and creativity that has shaped the culture of the world. The resources in the collection emphasize teaching centering liberation and teaching Black History that celebrates Black joy and Black brilliance.