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

A printed certificate with names, date, and location written in

Land Order for Richard Brown

1865

View an example of the short-lived promise of “forty acres and a mule.”

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A handwritten copy of the Thirteenth Amendment

The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments

1865, 1868, and 1870

Read the three Reconstruction Amendments.

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The title of The Christian Recorder newspaper

A Mother Searching for Her Children

1866

View this newspaper advertisement placed by a mother who was sold away from her family.

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Title of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) pamphlet on "Structure and Leadership."

“Women in the Movement”

1964

Read this anonymously written memo calling out gender inequality and tokenism in the SNCC.

Primary Source

A typed document on letterhead for the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands.

Freedmen’s Bureau, “Circular No. 9”

1867

Read the Freedmen’s Bureau’s circular helping to ensure freedpeople's voting rights.

Primary Source

A typed letter from the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands.

Freedmen’s Bureau, “Circular No. 8”

1866

Read this order from the Freedmen’s Bureau protecting sharecroppers’ labor rights.

Primary Source

The first page of sheet music for "Lift Every Voice and Sing."

“Lift Every Voice and Sing”

1900

Read the lyrics composed by James Weldon Johnson for what has become known as the Black National Anthem.

Primary Source

Cover of the Messenger magazine for March 1920, featuring two torches held by disembodied hands on either side of a wreath, within which features the contents of that month's issue.

“Negroes, Leave the South!”

1920

Read an anonymous editorial calling on African Americans to move north, east, and west for safety and opportunities.

Primary Source

Portrait of Paul Laurence Dunbar, a young Black man, wearing a dark suit and tie and white shirt.

“We Wear the Mask”

1895

Read Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem, which poses a “mask” similar to Du Bois’s “veil.”

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“If We Must Die”

1919

Read Claude McKay’s defiant poem, in response to violence against African Americans following World War I.

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Langston Hughes, a Black man, wearing a dark suit, dark tie, and white shirt.

“The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain”

1926

Read Langston Hughes's essay on the limits placed on Black poets and writers during this period.

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The top of a print of five portraits in connected ovals, two portraits, then one portrait, then two portraits. In this crop, only the top three circles are visible. All five are of Black men who served in the US Congress immediately following ratification of the 15th Amendment during the Reconstruction era.

African American Members of Congress

1884

View this depiction of five African Americans elected to Congress.

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