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

Image of a Benjamin Banneker postal stamp featuring a portrait of Banneker with a smaller, full-body illustration of Banneker with a telescope in the foreground.

African American Scientists

with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Learn more about some of the most notable African American scientists and their discoveries, from Benjamin Banneker to Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Video

The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks

with Jeanne Theoharis

Learn how examining Rosa Parks’s life challenges perceptions of her as an accidental actor in the civil rights movement.

Video

Photograph of Prof. Keisha Blain, a Black professor, smiling while wearing a white jacket over a textured green shirt, black glasses, and gold earrings.

Fannie Lou Hamer’s Enduring Message to America

with Keisha N. Blain

Explore Fannie Lou Hamer’s life and civil rights organizing career.

Video

Matthew Delmont smiling while wearing a light blue checked shirt.

The Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad

with Matthew F. Delmont

Learn more about the history of World War II from the perspective of African Americans.

Video

A Black pilot in aviation gear sits in the cockpit of his plane, looking over his shoulder.

The Life and Death of Roger Romine: A Tuskegee Airman Gone Too Soon

by Lisa Bratton

Read about the life of Robert Romine, member of the Tuskegee Airmen, an elite but segregated branch of the military in World War II.

Essay

Black and white photo of a middle-aged Black woman with shoulder length hair and wearing a large white flower pin being sworn in as the borough president of Manhattan.

Constance Baker Motley: A Trailblazer in the Legal Profession

by Gary L. Ford, Jr.

Read about the life and work of Constance Baker Motley, the only woman who argued desegregation cases in courts in the racially segregated South during the Civil Rights Movement from 1946 to 1964.

Essay

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

A black-and-white photograph of Marcus Garvey, a Black man wearing a dark suit, light-colored vest, white shirt, and dark tie, sitting in a wooden chair next to a desk filled with papers, holding a handkerchief in his right hand and a gavel in his left.

Marcus Garvey at His Desk

1924

View this photograph of Marcus Garvey, the founder and leader of the Universal Negro Improvement Association.

Primary Source

Title of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) pamphlet on "Structure and Leadership."

“Women in the Movement”

1964

Read this anonymously written memo calling out gender inequality and tokenism in the SNCC.

Primary Source

Langston Hughes, a Black man, wearing a dark suit, dark tie, and white shirt.

“The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain”

1926

Read Langston Hughes's essay on the limits placed on Black poets and writers during this period.

Primary Source

Wooden staff in the form of a kneeling female figure holding a stylized snake in an inverted U over her head, topped by a pair of opposing triangles in a bowtie or double-ax form. Female figure has white beads around her neck and staff is pigmented in red, blue, and white.

Yoruba osé Ṣàngó

Mid-20th Century

Take a closer look at an example of syncretic cosmologies.

Primary Source

Seven Black women with Afros raising their right fists.

Black Panther Women in Oakland, CA

1968

View an example of women organizing and protesting in the Black Panther Party.

Primary Source

AP African American Studies Resource Library