“Africans in America,” companion to a 6-hour PBS special (2000), http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/home.html
America's journey through slavery is presented in four parts. Each era includes a historical narrative, a resource bank of images, documents, stories, biographies, and commentaries, and a teacher's guide for using the content of the website and television series in the classroom.
“Slavery and the Making of America,” http://www.slaveryinamerica.org and “Roads to Freedom” Interactive Exhibition, http://www.pbs.org/wnet/slavery/ companion websites to a 4-hour PBS special (2005)
These websites document the history of American slavery from its beginnings in the British colonies to its end in the Southern states and the years of post-Civil War Reconstruction. Drawing on a wealth of recent scholarship, they challenge the notion that slavery was exclusively a Southern enterprise. At the same time, by focusing on the remarkable stories of individual slaves, they offer new perspectives on the slave experience and testify to the active role that Africans and African Americans took in surviving their bondage and shaping their own lives.
“Voices from the Days of Slavery,” American Memory Project of the Library of Congress http://rs6.loc.gov/ammem/collections/voices/
The almost seven hours of recorded interviews presented here took place between 1932 and 1975 in nine Southern states. Twenty-three interviewees, born between 1823 and the early 1860s, discuss how they felt about slavery, slaveholders, coercion of slaves, their families, and freedom. Several individuals sing songs, many of which were learned during the time of their enslavement. All known recordings of former slaves in the American Folklife Center are included in this presentation. Some are being made publicly available for the first time and several others already available now include complete transcriptions.
“Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1938,” American Memory Project of the Library of Congress http://rs6.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/snhome.html
The website contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and assembled and microfilmed in 1941 as the seventeen-volume Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves. This online collection is a joint presentation of the Manuscript and Prints and Photographs Divisions of the Library of Congress and includes more than 200 photographs from the Prints and Photographs Division that are now made available to the public for the first time. Born in Slavery was made possible by a major gift from the Citigroup Foundation.
“In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience,” the Schomburg Center for Research and Black Culture at the New York Public Library, http://www.inmotionaame.org
In Motion focuses on self-motivated activities of peoples of African descent to remake themselves and their worlds. It covers thirteen defining migrations that formed and transformed African America, including the two forced migrations of the transatlantic slave trade and the domestic slave trade. This site uses images, texts, maps, and educational materials to explore the histories of the African Diaspora.
“The Cultural Landscape of the Plantation,” companion site to the Library of Congress exhibition “Back of the Big House,” http://www.gwu.edu/~folklife/bighouse/intro.html
This website derives from the Library of Congress exhibition “Back of the Big House: The Cultural Landscape of the Plantation” curated by John Michael Vlach. It brings together the images of plantation buildings from the Library of Congress collections and matches them with testimonies of former slaves recorded in the 1930s. It examines the images and presents the testimony from an anthropological and folkloristic perspective, focusing on such topics as the sociology of the quarters, the making and uses of the slaves’ houses, the skills demonstrated in constructing a plantation landscape, slave religion, and slave resistance.
“Liberian Letters,” University of Virginia, http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/subjects/liberia/
This site features more than 50 letters from freed American slaves living in nineteenth-century Liberia, West Africa, to their former masters and associates in Virginia. It contains original handwritten pages and printed transcriptions of letters written by former slaves who had acquired literacy as domestic servants, artisans, and supervisors of plantation production. The resources include a list of emigrants, topographical and residential maps, links to relevant websites, a history of the American Colonization Society, and other resources. The letters point to issues of cultural identity, manumission, relationships between masters and slaves (and ex-slaves), and family ties.
“The Atlantic Slave Trade and Life in the Americas,” The University of Virginia, http://hitchcock.itc.virginia.edu/Slavery/index.php
This website provides 1,235 images, gathered by Jerome Handler and Michael Tuite (Digital Media Laboratory, University of Virginia) that depict all manner of slave life from enslavement and forced migration to daily life on plantations and in cities in the Western Hemisphere. It provides a comparative perspective on slave experience, with maps, images, and documents showing such various themes as slave-trading, housing, work patterns, urban scenes, recreation, child care, domestic life, and escape from bondage.
“Gullah Net: Explore Gullah Culture in South Carolina with Aunt Pearlie Sue,” an interactive website by Knowitall.org, a program of ETV and the South Carolina Dept. of Education, http://www.knowitall.org/gullahmusic/content/overview.html
The Gullah Music Web site was created to introduce children to the evolution of African music in America through Gullah history and culture. Gullah is the name of the descendents of enslaved Africans who lived on the Sea Islands of South Carolina, Georgia, and northern Florida. It is also the language spoken by the islanders. Designed specifically for younger learners, Aunt Pearlie Sue and her sidekick stick Reverend Leroy take visitors on a musical journey with an interactive map to listen and learn how African music influenced many styles of music in America. There are fun activities that explore work songs, spirituals, play songs and the blues. Check out the teachers section for additional Gullah resources and classroom connections.
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