Black History
Jump-start Your Research
This small, highly selective set of articles is recommended by Oxford editors to help students get started doing research in this massive biography collection and The Oxford Companion to United States History encyclopedia content that supports it. Browse the biographies on the American National Biography Online, or start with an overview article.
Recommend the American National Biography Online to your librarian to gain access.
























Overview/Background Articles
- African Americans
- African American Religion
- Slavery
- Antislavery
- Civil War
- Civil Rights Movements
- Brown v. Board of Education
Sports
- Cool Papa Bell
- Roy Campanella
- Wilt Chamberlain
- Florence Griffith-Joyner
- Joe Louis
- Jesse Owens
- Satchel Paige
- Walter Payton
- Jackie Robinson
- Sugar Ray Robinson
- Wilma Rudolph
Business and Industry
- Charles Banks
- Warren Clay Coleman
- Barney Launcelot Ford
- Elizabeth Freeman
- Reginald Lewis
- Annie Malone
- John Mitchell, Jr.
- Madam C. J. Walker
Black Leaders and Civil Rights Activists
- Ralph Abernathy
- Frances Albrier
- Ella Josephine Baker
- Mary Bethune
- Cinqué
- Frederick Douglass
- W. E. B. Du Bois
- Shirley Graham
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
- Asa Philip Randolph
- Harriet Tubman
- Booker T. Washington
Science/Technology/Invention
- Benjamin Banneker
- Bessie Coleman
- Charles Richard Drew
- Thomas Fuller
- Percy Lavon Julian
- John P. Parker
- Norbert Rillieux
Music and Other Performing Arts
- Cannonball Adderley
- Alvin Ailey
- Josephine Baker
- Count Basie
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
- Thomas Dorsey
- Duke Ellington
- Helen Humes
- Mahalia Jackson
- Otis Redding
- Paul Robeson
- Muddy Waters
- Clarence Williams
- Edith Goodall Wilson
- Flip Wilson