More

Black History

The ANB features thousands of articles on Black people who have shaped the course of the nation. The guide below represents a curated selection of essays loosely categorized by chronology or topic, where you can learn, to start, about the brutal experiences of enslavement, as well as the limited nature of freedom, in colonial America. Continuing through into the nineteenth century, the African Americans included here led the charge against slavery, fought against the Confederacy during the Civil War, and attempted to remake the nation anew during Reconstruction.

But the victory of Reconstruction proved pyrrhic, as white supremacy only tightened as the nineteenth century turned to the twentieth. Nevertheless, African Americans continued to fight back, forming new organizations like the NAACP and using the written word to “uplift the race” during these difficult years. African American art flourished during the period known as the Harlem Renaissance, but the Great Depression intensified the poverty disproportionately experienced by Black people.

World War II marked a turning point. Black veterans returned from fighting fascism abroad to find that they had to continue to fight for freedom at home. The long history of Black activism culminated in a civil rights movement that ended segregation and codified voting rights. Yet African Americans still struggled economically and, by the end of the twentieth century, were dramatically overrepresented in prison due to mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines.

The United States elected its first Black president, Barack Obama, in 2008, but after his two terms Donald J. Trump won the presidency by campaigning on racial resentment. This tension—Black progress versus the attempts of powerful white people to roll it back—in many ways encapsulates African American history. Through it all, however, as the essays below show, African Americans reshaped American politics, music, scholarship, and even sports. African American history is American history. Use the essays below to shape your research.

Josephine Baker

Slavery and Freedom in Early America

Antebellum Abolitionism

The Civil War and Reconstruction

Writing, Activism, and Economic Uplift during the Rise of Jim Crow

The New Negro and the Harlem Renaissance

Depression and War

The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s

Politics after the Voting Rights Act

Black Literature since 1930

American Music

Sports Icons