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

A bird's-eye-view map of Memphis, Tennessee, with riverboats in the Mississippi River foreground

The Memphis Sound

with Charles Hughes

Learn how Memphis became a major cultural and musical hub.

Video

A collage of three photographs on a dotted orange background. Clockwise from left: A black-and-white photograph of Bo Diddley, a Black man wearing a dark shirt with ornamental stripes on the sleeves and a dark hat. He is playing a guitar with a rectangular head while singing into a microphone; A black-and-white photograph of Sister Rosetta Tharpe, a Black woman in a dark colored dress, looking upward with her guitar hanging by its strap on her shoulder; and a color photograph of Little Richard, a Black man

Bo Diddley, Little Richard, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe

with Charles Hughes

Learn more about these three trailblazing musicians.

Video

A black-and-white engraving of Black men and women in states of ecstatic prayer (kneeling, prostrating, some with arms outstretched) at the feet of a preacher standing in a canopied dais with right arm raised.

The Origins of African American Musical Traditions

with Portia K. Maultsby

Explore the building blocks of African American music and performance.

Video

Drawing of various sections of the cicada.

Benjamin Banneker’s Study of the Cicada

1800

Read Banneker’s derivation of the seventeen-year cycle of the cicada, one of the first scientists to make this observation.

Primary Source

A printed flyer for "THE BLACK ARTS PARADE!!," featuring a two-sided mask in the top right of the flyer.

Building the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School

1965–1966

View early documents from a center for the Black Arts movement in Harlem, founded by the poet LeRoi Jones (aka Amiri Baraka).

Primary Source

Jackie Robinson

with Jason Butler, Taína Quiñones, and Sandra Trenholm

Explore a comic book about Jackie Robinson’s rookie year and letters written by Richard Nixon and Robert Kennedy to Jackie Robinson about the Civil Rights Movement.

Video

AP African American Studies Resource Library

The Memphis Sound

with Charles Hughes

Bo Diddley, Little Richard, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe

with Charles Hughes

The Origins of African American Musical Traditions

with Portia K. Maultsby

Benjamin Banneker’s Study of the Cicada

1800

Building the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School

1965–1966

Jackie Robinson

with Jason Butler, Taína Quiñones, and Sandra Trenholm

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