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Black History Month

This guide provides a starting point to learn about Black History Month which is celebrated annually during the month of February.

BLACK HISTORY MONTH

Welcome to the Black History Month LibGuide!  

In this guide, you will find information and resources about Black History Month.  

If you don't find what you're looking for or have any questions contact the library.

The History of Black History Month

Books

Black Music Black Poetry

Black Music, Black Poetry offers readers a fuller appreciation of the diversity of approaches to reading black American poetry. It does so by linking a diverse body of poetry to musical genres that range from the spirituals to contemporary jazz. The poetry of familiar figures such as Paul Laurence Dunbar and Langston Hughes and less well-known poets like Harryette Mullen or the lyricist to Pharaoh Sanders, Amos Leon Thomas are scrutinized in relation to a musical tradition contemporaneous with the lifetime of each poet.

First Black Marines

If what I saw today (Negroes in U.S. Marine uniforms) is an indication of how the war is going - America is in deep trouble.' These words, spoken by a member of an exclusive upper-Midwestern country club and heard by a black employee, essentially summed up the sentiments of many Americans in 1942. For it was the first time in military history that the Marine Corps had decided to open its doors to Negroes. To this day, some fifty years later, too few people are aware of the contribution and sacrifice of black Marines to the World War II effort. This was the motivating force, which occasioned the writing of this treatise - principally to refute the notion that 'America was in deep trouble.' The reader will find between these pages documentation of the highest order; sources of information from various perspectives, all converging on a common theme.

African American History Day by Day

The proof of any group's importance to history is in the detail, a fact made plain by this informative book's day-by-day documentation of the impact of African Americans on life in the United States.

Africans in Colonial Louisiana

Although a number of important studies of American slavery have explored the formation of slave cultures in the English colonies, few books have undertaken a comprehensive assessment of the development of the distinctive African-Creole culture of colonial Louisiana. This culture, based upon a separate language community with its own folklore, musical, religious and historical traditions, was created by slaves brought directly from Africa to Louisiana before 1731. It still survives as the acknowledged cultural heritage of tens of thousands of people of all races in the southern part of the state.

Presidents and Black America

Presidents and Black America: A Documentary History is the first of its kind to document all of the Presidents and their complex relationships with African Americans, from the earliest days of the Republic through the start of the Obama administration. Scholars and students will be able to follow trends and contradictions in those relationships; such as acceptance and rejection of slavery, the struggle for political rights and economic opportunity, policies of tokenism, the rebuff to affirmative action, and the growth of black political power and influence.This reference will incorporate primary and secondary documents ranging from speeches, executive orders, statutes, and correspondence, to articles and editorials from contemporary African American and mainstream publications, political cartoons, and congressional debates. Many of the documents will contradict established opinions about individual Presidents.(For example it is fairly widely-known that Andrew Johnson was an avowed white supremacist but less well-known that Woodrow Wilson tried to segregate previously-integrated government offices.) Chapter introductions with historical data on the respective Presidents and short head notes place the documents in context.

Free Black Communities and the Underground Railroad

This enlightening study employs the tools of archaeology to uncover a new historical perspective on the Underground Railroad. Unlike previous histories of the Underground Railroad, which have focused on frightened fugitive slaves and their benevolent abolitionist accomplices, Cheryl LaRoche focuses instead on free African American communities, the crucial help they provided to individuals fleeing slavery, and the terrain where those flights to freedom occurred.   This study foregrounds several small, rural hamlets on the treacherous southern edge of the free North in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. LaRoche demonstrates how landscape features such as waterways, iron forges, and caves played a key role in the conduct and effectiveness of the Underground Railroad. Rich in oral histories, maps, memoirs, and archaeological investigations, this examination of the "geography of resistance" tells the new powerful and inspiring story of African Americans ensuring their own liberation in the midst of oppression.

The 21st-Century Black Librarian in America

The 1970 and 1994 editions of The Black Librarian in America by E.J. Josey singled out racism as an important issue to be addressed within the library profession. Although much has changed since then, this latest collection of 48 essays by Black librarians and library supporters again identifies racism as one of many challenges of the new century. Essays are written by library educators, library graduate students, retired librarians, public library trustees, veteran librarians, and new librarians fresh out of school with great ideas and wholesome energies. They cover such topics as poorly equipped school libraries and the need to preserve the school library, a call to action to all librarians to make the shift to new and innovative models of public education, the advancement in information technology and library operations, special libraries, recruitment and the Indiana State Library program, racism in the history of library and information science, and challenges that have plagued librarianship for decades. This collection of poignant essays covers a multiplicity of concerns for the 21st-century Black librarian and embodies compassion and respect for the provision of information, an act that defines librarianship. The essays are personable, inspiring, and thought provoking for all library professionals, regardless of race, class, or gender.