AP African American Studies Resource Archive | Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

John Lewis, a Black man, wearing a dark jacket and tie and white shirt, speaking in front of two microphones on a table.

“The Revolution Is at Hand”

1963

Read the draft of John Lewis’s original planned speech for the March on Washington.

Primary Source

A page from a book focused on a title of legislation, "An Act for the Better Ordering and Governing of Negroes and Slaves."

South Carolina Slave Code

1740

Read excerpts from this slave code enacted in a British colony.

Primary Source

Sepia photographic portraits of a man and a woman; the woman is wearing a white shirt with checked trim and an earring; the man is bare-chested, with well-defined musculature. Both have traditional scarification on their cheeks.

“Escrava Mina” and “Escravo Mina”

1864

View two photographs of enslaved people in Brazil.

Primary Source

A color photograph of a row of ten female Grandassa models with natural, afro-style hair wearing dresses made from brightly colored African-inspired motifs. Three men standing on a small podium behind the models are wearing patterned dashiki shirts. The dark blue wall behind them is covered with posters advertising Black theater performances, shows, and celebrations.

Naturally ’68 at the Apollo Theater

ca. 1968

View a photograph from a key convergence of artists and models amid the Black is Beautiful movement.

Primary Source

An engraving showing two dozen armed Black men in the foreground hidden along a forested path and hillside watching a group of White men in military dress coming down the path in the distance

“The Maroons in Ambush . . . in Jamaica”

1801

View this depiction of a maroon revolt in Jamaica.

Work of Art

Three young Black men wearing tracksuits and white gloves dancing as another young Black man inverts his body on a piece of cardboard. Behind them is a graffitied wall.

Breakdancers in New York

1984

View an example of b-boy culture from 1980s New York.

Primary Source

A dark abstract painting of a mask with horns

“Les Fétiches”

1938

View Loïs Mailou Jones’s painting, which brought Négritude from literature to art.

Work of Art

Masthead of The Liberator, featuring a depiction of an enslaved family next to an auctioneer, whose lectern reads "Slaves Horses & Other Cattle to be sold at 12 OO."

The Question of Naming in “The Liberator”

1831

Explore responses to questions of Black identity and nomenclature in the famed abolitionist newspaper.

Primary Source

Front page of The Colored American newspaper

“Why We Should Have a Paper”

1837

Read the founding manifesto of The Colored American newspaper.

Primary Source

A black-and-white engraving of Solomon Northup, a Black man wearing a white hat, shirt, and pants, sitting on a box, a broomstick leaning against his left arm. Below the image, the name Solomon Northup in handwriting and the words "In his plantation suit"

Solomon Northup Remembers the New Orleans Slave Market

1853

Read an excerpt from Northup’s autobiographical account, Twelve Years a Slave.

Primary Source

A handwritten diary entry in cursive

The Capture of Black Seminoles

1836

Read Gen. Thomas Jesup’s diary entries from the Second Seminole War.

Primary Source

An engraving of a stately building with a rotunda topped with a Haitian flag

“Lecture on Haiti”

1893

Read an excerpt from Frederick Douglass’s lecture on the importance of Haiti in the abolition of slavery.

Primary Source