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

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.

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Dark orange cover for a pamphlet edition of two speeches by Frederick Douglass

“West India Emancipation”

1857

Read Frederick Douglass’s first use of the phrase “If there is no struggle there is no progress.”

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A printed certificate with names, date, and location written in

Land Order for Richard Brown

1865

View an example of the short-lived promise of “forty acres and a mule.”

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Masthead of The Liberator, featuring a depiction of an enslaved family next to an auctioneer, whose lectern reads "Slaves Horses & Other Cattle to be sold at 12 OO."

The Question of Naming in The Liberator

1831

Explore responses to questions of Black identity and nomenclature in the famed abolitionist newspaper.

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A handwritten copy of the Thirteenth Amendment

The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments

1865, 1868, and 1870

Read the three Reconstruction Amendments.

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Front page of The Colored American newspaper

“Why We Should Have a Paper”

1837

Read the founding manifesto of The Colored American newspaper.

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A black-and-white engraving of Solomon Northup, a Black man wearing a white hat, shirt, and pants, sitting on a box, a broomstick leaning against his left arm. Below the image, the name Solomon Northup in handwriting and the words "In his plantation suit"

Solomon Northup Remembers the New Orleans Slave Market

1853

Read an excerpt from Northup’s autobiographical account, Twelve Years a Slave.

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A handwritten diary entry in cursive

The Capture of Black Seminoles

1836

Read Gen. Thomas Jesup’s diary entries from the Second Seminole War.

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An engraving of a stately building with a rotunda topped with a Haitian flag

“Lecture on Haiti”

1893

Read an excerpt from Frederick Douglass’s lecture on the importance of Haiti in the abolition of slavery.

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An engraving of President Thomas Jefferson, a White man with white hair, wearing a white shirt and dark jacket.

Virginia Asks to Send Rebels to Sierra Leone

1802

Read an outline by Thomas Jefferson for a plan to send rebellious enslaved people to Sierra Leone in Africa.

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The title of The Christian Recorder newspaper

A Mother Searching for Her Children

1866

View this newspaper advertisement placed by a mother who was sold away from her family.

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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.

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