Black History Month Resources

In preparation for Black History Month, C-SPAN Classroom has aggregated a number of our resources relating to the history of African-Americans in the United States. Explore our C-SPAN Classroom Lessons and Bell Ringers to learn more about this history.

Want your students to view our Lessons and Bell Ringers at home or on their individual devices? Consider creating a generic class account, or use the following shared log-in credentials:

Username: students
Password: C-SPANCLASSROOM

Black History Month

• Bell Ringer: The African Slave Trade and the Middle Passage (6:27)
  
• Bell Ringer: The Domestic Slave Trade (3:35)
  
• Bell Ringer: The Nat Turner Rebellion (5:50)
  
• Bell Ringer: Solomon Northup: 12 Years a Slave (8:24)
  
• Bell Ringer: Harriet Tubman during the Civil War (2:33)
  
• Bell Ringer: The Freedman's Bureau (6:45)
  
• Bell Ringer: African Americans in WWI (10:03)
  
• Bell Ringer: W E B Du Bois (5:14)
  
• Bell Ringer: Segregated Societies (5:06)
  
• Bell Ringer: The Tuskegee Airmen (6:54)
  
• Bell Ringer: Important Figures in the Early Fight for Civil Rights (4:21)
  
• Bell Ringer: Jackie Robinson's Impact on the Civil Rights Movement (1:57)
  
• Bell Ringer: Remembering Brown v Board of Education (3:29)
  
• Bell Ringer: The 1963 March on Washington (11:59)
  
• Bell Ringer: The Life and Legacy of Fred Shuttlesworth (6:59)
  
• Bell Ringer: Photographs of the Black Panther Party (6:45)
  
• Lesson Plan: Dred Scott v Sandford (6 Clips)
  
• Lesson Plan: The Underground Railroad (7 Clips)
  
• Lesson Plan: The Great Migration (9 Clips)
  
• Lesson Plan: Langston Hughes (5 Clips)
  
• Lesson Plan: Booker T. Washington (4 Clips)
  
• Lesson Plan: A Historical Overview of Segregation (6 Clips)
  
• Lesson Plan: Brown v Board of Education (9 Clips)
  
• Lesson Plan: Key Events of the Civil Rights Movement (15 Clips)
  
• Lesson Plan: Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letter from Birmingham Jail (7 Clips)
  

Brown, Marvelyn, and Courtney Martin E. The Naked Truth: Young, Beautiful, and (HIV) Positive. New York: Amistad, 2008. Print.

Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. New York: Crown, 2010. Print.

Scott, Jill. The Moments, the Minutes, the Hours: The Poetry of Jill Scott. New York: St. Martin's, 2005. Print.

McQuillar, Tayannah Lee, and Freddie Johnson Lee. Tupac Shakur: The Life and times of an American Icon. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 2010. Print.

Myers, Walter Dean. Bad Boy: A Memoir. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2001. Print.

Henderson, Jeff. Cooked: From the Streets to the Stove, from Cocaine to Foie Gras. New York: William Morrow, 2007. Print.

Moore, Wes. The Other Wes Moore: The Story of One Name and Two Fates. New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2010. Print.

Lawrence-Lightfoot, Sara. I've Known Rivers: Lives of Loss and Liberation. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Pub., 1994. Print.

Haley, Alex. Roots: The Saga of an American Family. New York, NY: Vanguard, 2007. Print.

Publishing, Infobase. The Harlem Renaissance. New York: Infobase Pub., 2003. Print.

Walker, Alice. The Chicken Chronicles: Sitting with the Angels Who Have Returned with My Memories: Glorious, Rufus, Gertrude Stein, Splendor, Hortensia, Agnes of God, The Gladyses, & Babe: A Memoir. New York: New, 2011. Print.

Giovanni, Nikki. Evidence: Poems. S.l.: HarperCollins / William Morrow, 2009. Print.

Dungy, Camille T. Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry. Athens: University of Georgia, 2009. Print.

Oliver, Richard W., and Tim Leffel. Hip-hop, Inc.: Success Strategies of the Rap Moguls. New York, NY: Thunder's Mouth, 2006. Print.

Hills, Patricia. Painting Harlem Modern: The Art of Jacob Lawrence. Berkeley: University of California, 2009. Print.

Bearden, Romare, and Mary Corlett Lee. From Process to Print: Graphic Works by Romare Bearden. Petaluma, CA: Pomegranate Communications, 2009. Print.

Aronson, Marc. Race: A History beyond Black and White. New York: Ginee Seo /Atheneum for Young Readers, 2007. Print.

Tushnet, Mark V. Brown v. the Board of Education: The Battle for Intergration. Grolier: New York, 1995. Print.

Blake, John. Children of the Movement: The Sons and Daughters of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammad, George Wallace, Andrew Young, Julian Bond, Stokely Carmichael, Bob Moses, James Chaney, Elaine Brown, and Others Reveal How the Civil Rights Movement Tested and Transformed Their Families. Chicago: Lawrence Hill, 2004. Print.

Forbes, Flores A. Will You Die with Me?: My Life and the Black Panther Party. New York: Washington Square, 2007. Print.

Charnas, Dan. The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-hop. New York, NY: New American Library, 2010. Print.

Hands on the Freedom Plow Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois, 2010. Print.

Golden, Marita. Don't Play in the Sun: One Woman's Journey through the Color Complex. New York: Doubleday, 2004. Print.

Howard Zinn on Race. S.l.: Seven Stories, 2011. Print.

Williams, Mary E. Interracial America: At Issue. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven, 2001. Print.

Touré. Who's Afraid of Post-blackness?: What It Means to Be Black Now. New York: Free, 2011. Print.

Mabry, Marcus. White Bucks and Black-eyed Peas: Coming of Age Black in White America. New York: Scribner, 1995. Print.

Harper, Hill. Letters to a Young Sister: Define Your Destiny. New York, NY: Gotham, 2008. Print.

Haas, Jeffrey. The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther. Chicago, IL: Lawrence Hill /Chicago Review, 2010. Print. Fretz, Eric. Jean-Michel Basquiat: A Biography. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2010. Print.

The Pact. Perfection Learning Prebound, 2009. Print. Brown, Jeannette E. African American Women Chemists. New York: Oxford UP, 2012. Print.

Databases via GALILEO (password: option)

• Annals of American History – (http://www.galileo.usg.edu/express?link=zeba)

• includes the full text of primary documents in American history, including historical accounts, speeches, memoirs, poems, editorials, landmark court decisions, and cultural criticism.

• Civil Rights Digital Library – (http://www.galileo.usg.edu/express?link=crdl )

• a digital video archive delivering 30 hours of historical news film allowing learners to be nearly eyewitnesses to key events of the Civil Rights Movement

Black Lives Matter is a movement grounded in the creative labor and organizing genius of black women. In this session we explore the feminist underpinmngs of BLM, and connect to a broader history of black feminist thought and practice. Special attention will be paid to #SayHerName, a national organizing campaign created by the African American Policy Forum under the leadership of black feminist legal theorist Kimberle Williams Crenshaw.

• Read:
  *African American Policy Forum, Say Her Name: Resisting Police Brutality Against Black Women.
  *Audre Lorde, Poetry Is Not a Luxury
  *Audre Lorde, A Litany for Survival
  *Kimberle Crenshaw, Mapping the Margins

excerpted from the Black Lives Matter syllabus