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Recommended Open Educational Resources for African American History
African American History
"This open textbook gives an overview of African American history from African origins and the transatlantic slave trade to the contemporary Black Lives Matter movement."
Slavery to Liberation: The African American Experience (First Edition)
"Slavery to Liberation: The African American Experience gives instructors, students, and general readers a comprehensive and up-to-date account of African Americans’ cultural and political history, economic development, artistic expressiveness, and religious and philosophical worldviews in a critical framework."
Soul Liberty
"That churches are one of the most important cornerstones of black political organization is a commonplace. In this history of African American Protestantism and American politics at the end of the Civil War, Nicole Myers Turner challenges the idea of black churches as having always been politically engaged."
African-American History: Modern Freedom Struggle
"This course introduces the viewer to African-American history, with particular emphasis on the political thought and protest movements of the period after 1930, focusing on selected individuals who have shaped and been shaped by modern African-American struggles for freedom and justice."
African American History: From Emancipation to the Present (2010)
"The purpose of this course is to examine the African American experience in the United States from 1863 to the present (2010). Prominent themes include the end of the Civil War and the beginning of Reconstruction; African Americans’ urbanization experiences; the development of the modern civil rights movement and its aftermath; and the thought and leadership of Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X."
Black Matters: Introduction To Black Studies
"Interdisciplinary survey of people of African descent that draws on the overlapping approaches of history, literature, anthropology, legal studies, media studies, performance, linguistics, and creative writing."
Exodusters: African American Migration to the Great Plains
"When Reconstruction ended in 1877, southern whites used violence, economic exploitation, discriminatory laws called Black Codes, and political disenfranchisement to subjugate African Americans and undo their gains during Reconstruction. Kansas and other destinations on the Great Plains represented a chance to start a new life. Kansas had fought to be a free state and, with the Homestead Act of 1862, the region offered lots of land at low cost. As a result, between the late 1870s and early 1880s, more than 20,000 African Americans left the South for Kansas, the Oklahoma Territory, and elsewhere on the Great Plains in a migration known as the “Great Exodus.”
Introduction to African American History
"AMH 2091 is an introductory-level survey course that provides an overview of the major events and developments in African American history, from Africa to the present."
MERLOT Collections
This links to OER African American History resources available through MERLOT.
OER Commons
This links to African American History resources on OER Commons.
Video Tour of the African American Heritage Trail
"This video playlist is a guided tour of the African American Heritage Trail, in Florence, Massachusetts, which shares the contributions and legacy of Sojourner Truth, as well as the many abolitionists, Underground Railroad agents, and former enslaved people who called Florence home in the 19th century. Each video is dedicated to a different site on the trail and includes biographical information about key figures in Florence's history."
