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

Ruins of a large brick cathedral (the roof no longer present), with a green tree at right.

Kongo, Christianity, and the Diaspora

with John K. Thornton

Learn more about Kongolese cultural practices merging with Christianity and evolving across the Atlantic.

Video

Barbara Smith, a Black woman, wearing a polka dot (white dots on black fabric) shirt and speaking into a lectern microphone. In her left hand, she is holding a pamphlet entitled "United States of All."

“The Combahee River Collective Statement”

1977

Read this foundational document of Black feminism.

Primary Source

Gwendolyn Brooks, a bespectacled Black woman, wearing a brown and magenta floral shirt and a brown head cover.

“We're the Only Colored People Here”

1945

Read a short story that would grow into Gwendolyn Brooks’s novel Maud Martha (1953).

Primary Source

A typed title page of a book.

Establishing the Freedmen's Bureau

1865

Read the legislation creating the "bureau of refugees, freedmen, and abandoned lands" amid the US Civil War.

Primary Source

A poster with a drawing of a Black aviator wearing a brown uniform and gray flight vest. Above the aviator is the phrase "Keep us flying!" in italics. Below is "BUY WAR BONDS" in a blue box.

“Should I Sacrifice to Live ‘Half-American?’”

1942

Read the letter to the editor of the Pittsburgh Courier that spawned the Double V movement.

Primary Source

Masthead of the Southwestern Christian Advocate newspaper.

Clarissa Reed Searches for Her Family

1883

Read a formerly enslaved woman’s plea for information about her lost parents and siblings.

Primary Source

President Barack Obama, standing wearing a black suit, white shirt, and striped gray and white tie, awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Maya Angelou, seated wearing a black dress, sparkly necklace and earrings, and sunglasses, as other honorees (including Sylvia Mendez) sit and look on.

Maya Angelou at the Library of Congress

1984

Listen to Maya Angelou read from her work, including her poem “Still I Rise,” and Dunbar’s “We Wear the Mask.”

A color lithograph poster for the musical film Space is the Place featuring Sun Ra and the Arkestra. Sun Ra is depicted in the center of the poster wearing a headdress and collar resembling that of an Egyptian pharaoh. The headdress is topped by a large golden orb with long extensions on either side. On either side of Ra is a yellow and red flaming sun. Above and below him are the words [SUN RA / IN / SPACE IS THE PLACE] small planets are scattered among the lettering.

Poster for “Space is the Place”

1974

View an example of Sun Ra’s Afrofuturist art.

Primary Source

Three Black men in suits and two Black women in dresses protesting, as other people protest in the background. The woman on the right, Maya Angelou, is holding a sign, the bottom of which reads "W.E.B. Du Bois."

Maya Angelou, Julian Mayfield, and Others in Ghana

1963

View an example of African American activism in Ghana.

Primary Source

Two Black women wearing light-colored coats look into a glass vitrine case with the title "Arthur A Schomburg, 1874–1938." Atop the case is a matted photograph of Arturo [Arthur] Schomburg.

“The Negro Digs Up His Past”

1925

Read this essay by Afro-Latino historian and collector Arturo Schomburg.

Primary Source

Cover of A Red Record, with the title written in red on a yellowed piece of paper.

“A Red Record”

1895

Read an excerpt from Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s analysis of lynchings in the US at the end of the nineteenth century.

Primary Source

Metal of a shirtless man wearing shorts and holding a spear. His let wrist has a chain that has been broken.

Commonalities and Differences in Maroon Communities

with Ana Lucia Araujo

Understand how maroon communities emerged and sustained themselves across the African diaspora.

Video