Black History

Founded in 1965, the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History has for over half a century been a leading institution dedicated to the African American experience.

List of featured activities and musical performances this month at Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation.

The Manuscript Division has one of the nation's most valuable collections for the study of African-American history and culture.

"Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves."

Search the LOC's digital collections for primary sources, photographs, and more.

This title covers iconic primary documents from the 1600s to the present. Each entry offers the full text of the document as well as an in-depth, analytical essay that places the document in its historical context. Among the sources included are important legislative documents such as the Reconstruction era amendments; critical Supreme Court decisions; and iconic speeches and writings by leaders such as Sojourner Truth, Booker T. Washington, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Barack Obama.

The MIT Black History Project has archived over 3,000 pieces of history related to the black experience at the Institute dating back to the 1870s.

Explore our collection of records documenting this vast history within the National Archives catalog.

View a vast collection of online resources.

"On May 17, 1954, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren delivered the unanimous ruling in the landmark civil rights case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas."

Explore the origins and forced relocations of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic world. The SlaveVoyages website is a collaborative digital initiative that compiles and makes publicly accessible records of the largest slave trades in history. Search these records to learn about the broad origins and forced relocations of more than 12 million African people who were sent across the Atlantic in slave ships, and hundreds of thousands more who were trafficked within the Americas. Explore where they were taken, the numerous rebellions that occurred, the horrific loss of life during the voyages, the identities and nationalities of the perpetrators, and much more.