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

Augusta Savage, a Black woman, smiling and looking to her left as she holds a small sculpture of an antelope or similar creature in her hands.

Searching for Augusta Savage

with Jeffreen M. Hayes

Learn more about Savage’s art amid the New Negro movement and Harlem Renaissance.

Video

Vinyl record with a brown Columbia records label, adorned with red, white, and blue banners, and the title and artist ("Hope I'll Join the Band," Fisk University Jubilee Singers.)

Songs of the Fisk Jubilee Singers

1909–1924

Listen to early recordings of spirituals recorded and popularized by the Fisk Jubilee Singers.

Video

A black-and-white photograph of James Weldon Johnson, a Black man wearing a light colored blazer, white shirt, and dark bow tie, seated at a desk, turning left toward the camera. He is holding a telephone in his left hand.

“Lift Every Voice and Sing” as a Hymn to America

by Noelle Morrissette

Explore the meaning and the impact of James Weldon Johnson and John Rosamond Johnson’s hymn.

Essay

A black-and-white photograph of a Black man wearing a light-colored suit and dark bowler hat walking with a cane in his right hand; in the background is rubble of buildings destroyed in the Tulsa Race Massacre.

Tulsa after the Greenwood Massacre

1925–1926

View silent film scenes of Tulsa’s Black institutions and organizations in the mid-1920s.

Video

A black-and-white still from a film of a graduation procession of Black men in black caps and gowns with Black women in white dresses behind them.

Graduation Ceremony at Langston University

1925

Watch a silent film of a graduation procession at the only HBCU in Oklahoma.

Video

A color photograph of six standing (and one seated) Black men in suits and ties, in front of a metal sign on a wooden easel reading "Alpha Phi Alpha [in Greek letters]: Gamma Iota Lambda."

Alpha Phi Alpha Records

1956-1979

View a collection of photographs and documents from a New York chapter of this “Divine Nine” Black Greek Letter Organization.

Primary Source

A black-and-white photograph of a parade; Black women, most wearing white dresses and hats, march in formation in rows of about twenty. Between two groups of women there is a row of four Black men in dark suits, ties, and hats, holding up large American flags. In the first group of women, one woman holds up a sign reading, "YOUR HANDS ARE FULL OF BLOOD."

Negro Silent Protest Petition on Lynching

1917

Read a response from Black leaders to White supremacist violence, two years before Red Summer.

Primary Source

A film still of a Black man wearing a light-colored cap and a dark jacket holding a box labeled "Mme. C. J. Walker's Vegetable Shampoo, Indianapolis. Ind., USA."

The Madam C. J. Walker Company on Film

1926

View silent film scenes of Walker’s business empire.

Video

A hand-colored portrait of Sissieretta Jones, a Black woman also known here as The Black Patti and the Greatest Singer of Her Race, wearing a gold necklace and earrings and a white dress covered with medals and ribbons.

“UNLADYLIKE2020: Sissieretta Jones”

with Julianna Margulies

Explore the career of the first African American woman to headline at Carnegie Hall.

Video

“UNLADYLIKE2020: Gladys Bentley”

with Lorraine Toussaint and Lisa Wilkerson

Learn more about this trailblazing pianist, musician, and drag entertainer.

Video

Title page for The Urban League Bulletin magazine.

The National Urban League and the Great Migration

with Marc H. Morial

Learn more about the impact of the National Urban League over its more than 100-year history.

Video

A color postcard depicting a brick courthouse with a cupola and entrance pediment in Meridian, Mississippi.

The Story of a Freed Mother and Daughter

by Brenda E. Stevenson

Examine one family’s story in the context of Reconstruction.

Essay