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

Two maps of Africa identifying the territory of empires ca. 1000 BC–AD 1000 and ca. AD 1000–AD 1900, along with a timeline of these empires

Kingdoms and Empires in Africa, ca. 1000 BC–AD 1900

by Michael Siegel, Rutgers Cartography

Visualize the geography and chronology of African kingdoms and empires through this map.

Thematic Map

Color-coded map of Africa noting different vegetation zones

Vegetation of Africa

by Exploring Africa, Michigan State University

Visualize the varied vegetation zones of the African continent.

Thematic Map

A watercolor showing enslaved people picking cotton with an overseer nearby

Painting of a Plantation

ca. 1860

Explore an artist’s depiction of enslavement.

Secondary Source

A Black man wearing a dark coat speaking into a bullhorn megaphone held in his left hand, while his right arm is outstretched with a clenched fist. A crowd looks on and raises their right fists in the air. There is a sign reading "Viva La Huelga" in the left midground.

Black Student Union Strike for Black Studies at San Francisco State College

1968

See the student protests that led to the first Black Studies department and gave rise to the field of African American studies.

Primary Source

A yellowed four-fold pamphlet featuring the photograph (at top left) of Stanley Dones, a Black man wearing a dark jacket, white shirt, and dark tie, placing his right hand upon his chin.

Black Land Ownership in the Jim Crow Era

with Alison Rose Jefferson and Sandra Trenholm

Explore the history of the Black-owned Eureka Villa housing development in 1920s California.

Video

A port in a medieval city, with Black and White people on boats and walking about on land

“Chafariz d’El Rei” [The King’s Fountain]

ca. 1570–1580

Explore the role of Africans in Portugal in the sixteenth century through this painting and essay.

Work of Art

Map of the United States with arrows noting migration corridors from the South to the Northeast, Midwest, and West.

The Great Migration, 1900–1929

by Michael Siegel and Rutgers Cartography

Explore the first wave of the Great Migration through this map.

Thematic Map

Map of the United States with arrows noting migration corridors from the South to Northeast, Midwest, and West.

The Second Great Migration

by Michael Siegel and Rutgers Cartography

Visualize the second wave of the Great Migration on this map.

Thematic Map

Map of the southern United States from Texas to Maryland showing in red the main inland and seagoing routes of the internal movements of enslaved people, from New York and Philadelphia in the Northeast to Galveston, Texas, and New Orleans, Louisiana.

The Domestic Slave Trade, 1808–1865

by Michael Siegel and Rutgers Cartography

Explore data and geographical trends of the domestic slave trade in the nineteenth century.

Thematic Map

A handwritten document in cursive in Spanish

Juan Garrido’s Probanza

1538

Read the narrative of a Congolese man’s experience in Mexico with the Spanish conquistadors.

Primary Source

A detail from a watercolor image showing a Black man in gray sixteenth-century dress holding a pony's reins and a spear; in front of him is a taller White man in red and orange pantaloons and jacket, carrying a helmet with a feather

Juan Garrido on a Spanish Expedition

1579

View this image that is believed to be Garrido alongside Hernán Cortés.

Primary Source

Map of the Americas with an inset map of the Caribbean and a list of countries providing the number of enslaved Africans who arrived in each country

African Arrivals in the Americas, 1501–1867

by Michael Siegel and Rutgers Cartography

Visualize the impact of the displacement of Africans resulting from the transatlantic slave trade.

Thematic Map