AP African American Studies Resource Archive | Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

Wooden staff in the form of a kneeling female figure holding a stylized snake in an inverted U over her head, topped by a pair of opposing triangles in a bowtie or double-ax form. Female figure has white beads around her neck and staff is pigmented in red, blue, and white.

Yoruba osé Ṣàngó

Mid-20th Century

Take a closer look at an example of syncretic cosmologies.

Primary Source

A wood sculpture, painted black, in the form of a standing female figure with arms at sides apart from torso, hands on hips, and feet and legs apart; on her head there is a double-ax motif.

Yorùbá Oshe Shango Ceremonial Wand

19th or 20th Century

View this contemporary piece honoring a traditional Yoruba god.

The interior of the Dexter Avenue Memorial Baptist church, with light streaming in through multicolored stained-glass windows.

Young Black adults less Protestant than their elders

2021

Compare generational statistics of religious affiliation among Black Americans.

Secondary Source

A green book cover with gold text reading "Harriet, the Moses of Her People"

Harriet, the Moses of Her People

1886

Read an authorized description of Tubman’s escape written by a White woman who had interviewed Tubman.

Primary Source

Title page of The Refugee: or the Narrative of Fugitive Slaves in Canada

Harriet Tubman’s reflection in The Refugee

1856

Read Tubman’s memories of enslavement and freedom in her own words.

Primary Source

An engraving of a bust of a bearded Black man wearing a black suit, white shirt, and dark bow tie, in three-quarter view looking toward the left

“An Address to the Slaves of the United States”

1843

Explore this speech, rejected by the National Colored Convention.

Primary Source

Title page of My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass

“Treatment of Slaves on Lloyd’s Plantation”

1855

Read Frederick Douglass’s recollection of plantation life in Maryland from his second autobiography.

Primary Source

An engraving showing two dozen armed Black men in the foreground hidden along a forested path and hillside watching a group of White men in military dress coming down the path in the distance

“The Maroons in Ambush . . . in Jamaica”

1801

View this depiction of a maroon revolt in Jamaica.

Work of Art

A dark abstract painting of a mask with horns

“Les Fétiches”

1938

View Loïs Mailou Jones’s painting, which brought Négritude from literature to art.

Work of Art

A black-and-white photograph of Marcus Garvey, a Black man wearing a dark suit, light-colored vest, white shirt, and dark tie, sitting in a wooden chair next to a desk filled with papers, holding a handkerchief in his right hand and a gavel in his left.

Marcus Garvey at His Desk

1924

View this photograph of Marcus Garvey, the founder and leader of the Universal Negro Improvement Association.

Primary Source

A handwritten copy of the Thirteenth Amendment

The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments

1865, 1868, and 1870

Read the three Reconstruction Amendments.

Primary Source

A black-and-white engraving of Solomon Northup, a Black man wearing a white hat, shirt, and pants, sitting on a box, a broomstick leaning against his left arm. Below the image, the name Solomon Northup in handwriting and the words "In his plantation suit"

Solomon Northup Remembers the New Orleans Slave Market

1853

Read an excerpt from Northup’s autobiographical account, Twelve Years a Slave.

Primary Source