The African American Experience in Cyberspace: A Resource Guide to the Best Web Sites on Black Culture and History

by Abdul Alkalimat

Overview

The World Wide Web is the greatest source of information used by students and teachers, media and library professionals, as well as the general public. There is so great a flow of information that it is necessary to have a tool for guiding one to the best and most reliable sources. This important new guide to the African American experience in cyberspace fills this need for people in all areas of Black Studies and Multiculturalism. There is no search engine list that can match the quality of sites to be found in this book. Alkalimat provides an easy to use directory to the very best websites that deal with the African American Experience. The first section covers every aspect of African American history, while a second section deals with a diverse set of topics covering society and culture. Each chapter has a brief essay, extensively annotated on the five best sites for each topic, and then a group of good sites and a short bibliography. This book is designed for a course at the high school or college level. This book should be kept near every home computer that people use to surf the web for Black content. Most people have found out that the major corporations and governments have been the dominant uploaders of information into cyberspace. This volume is different because it is a serious introduction to the full democratic use of the web. These websites will introduce people to the people who are serious about ending the digital divide because they are busy uploading information about the most excluded and marginalized people, the African American community. Many of these sites are being established by Black Studies academic programmes, as well as community based organizations and institutions.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780745322223
Publisher:	Pluto Press
Publication date:	02/20/2004
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	4.92(w) x 6.97(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Abdul Alkalimat is a founder of the field of Black Studies and Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. A lifelong scholar-activist with a PhD from the University of Chicago, he has lectured, taught and directed academic programs across the US, the Caribbean, Africa, Europe and China. His activism extends from having been chair of the Chicago chapter of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the 1960s, to a co-founder of the Black Radical Congress in 1998.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

General

The fullness of the African American experience is the content of Black history, with every aspect of what has happened to the African American people included, from the very visible elites to the day-to-day life of the majority of people. This point is critical as much historical writing, and certainly popular summations in the media, often tends to stress the activities of the elites and ignore the day-to-day routines of the masses. The fact is that the day-to-day activities of the overall community can often reveal more about the historical moment than speeches by leaders.

The main point about the Black experience online is whether the content takes you inside the Black experience so that one gets access to the activities of the masses of people and whether one can "share" the Black experience from within its own subjectivity. When this can be accomplished, based on the documentation of the Black voice, then online content is authentic. The key is to take actual experience into cyberspace rather than create a virtual reality that makes no attempt to represent our actual historical experience.

Online content is usually text based, but necessarily augmented by cultural information in all forms of multi-media presentation. This is the magic of cyberspace, to be inclusive of all forms of information that encodes the actual experiences – the sights, sounds, texts, and motion (but not yet the smells and tastes). Some institutions are digitizing Black history and making it available in cyberspace as a project inclusive of the experiences of a town, or a period of history, or the life of a person or institution. They have a holistic conception of what they are doing.

In this chapter you will find two kinds of general sites about Black history, the annotated webliography and the online archive. The webliography is a listing of URLs, links to pages with content. This is the new version of a card catalogue, a guide to specific collections of material based on choices made by the organizers. But rather than having to go to another physical place to see the material it can be accessed by navigation using a keyboard or a mouse, all connecting to cyberspace. The online archive is actual content placed on the web based on original primary documents being digitized and placed in cyberspace. In this sense the webliography is a guide to online content, and an online archive contains content.

H-Net

Humanities and Social Sciences Online

Michigan State University

www2.h-net.msu.edu

The Internet has created a new way to study history – the virtual seminar. The use of email communications enables people to maintain an asynchronous dialogue, much like a seminar. H-Net leads the way in the humanities and social sciences.

There are many lists that directly and indirectly involve African Americans. The main one is H-Afro-Am, a list edited by Abdul Alkalimat with about 1,500 subscribers (11/2002). There are discussion lists that focus on Africa, with a general site H-Africa, and also ten specific sites that focus on arts, research, literature and film, politics, Hausa, Lusophone, South Africa, and West Africa.

Overall there are more than 100 lists, including 100,000 subscribers in over 90 countries. There are many useful features that H-Net offers you: book reviews and online discussions with authors, announcements of events and conferences, jobs in research and teaching about Black history, and a series of essays on teaching and technology. Their general site is lively and easy to navigate. H-Net is one click away, so it is easy to ask questions and get free subscriptions to their information networks and discussion lists.

They define their identity and their goals:

An international consortium of scholars and teachers, H-Net creates and coordinates Internet networks with the common objective of advancing teaching and research in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. H-Net is committed to pioneering the use of new communication technology to facilitate the free exchange of academic ideas and scholarly resources ...

The goals of H-Net lists are to enable scholars to easily communicate current research and teaching interests; to discuss new approaches, methods and tools of analysis; to share information on electronic databases; and to test new ideas and share comments on the literature in their fields.

Virginia Center for Digital History

University of Virginia

www.vcdh.virginia.edu

This center is the leading research facility for the digitization of historical materials about the Black experience. It is based at the University of Virginia, and is connected to other units on that campus that are also engaged in such work, including the Carter G. Woodson Institute for Afro-American Studies. The Woodson Institute is led by Dr. Reginald Butler and assisted by Dr. Scott French. Dr. William Thomas directs the VCDH, and is also the co-author of The Civil War on the Web: A Guide to the Very Best Sites.

There are six nationally important research projects and websites from this center that deserve close study by all serious students of the Afro-American Experience. What is particularly interesting is the institutional focus on the self-organization of the Black community and the freedom struggle.

Valley of the Shadow: This project has digitized material from two communities on opposite sides of the Civil War – Augusta County, Virginia and Franklin County, Pennsylvania. This is the most complete research site on the Civil War, including easy navigation and detailed site mapping throughout. They include the role of Blacks and provide wonderful curriculum support. This is a model for all future work to bring history back to life.

Virginia Runaways Project: This project is digitizing all newspaper ads from the 18th century about runaway slaves in Virginia. The ads are displayed plus the full text and related information.

Profit Historical District: This is a website to document a small all-Black community established near Charlottesville, Virginia after the Civil War. There are five sections: oral history, census data, primary documents including personal papers and letters, a photo gallery, and a community contact page.

Race and Place: An African American Community in the Jim Crow South. This site contains information about Charlottesville, Virginia from the 1880s to the 1950s. There are six sections: personal papers, newspapers, images, maps, political materials, and oral histories. This site is well laid out with a search function on each page.

J. F. Bell Funeral Home Record 1917–1969 (Charlottesville, Va.): This project was co-sponsored with the local Afro-American Genealogy Group. This site includes everyone buried by this funeral home, including last name, place of birth, place of death, and burial place.

Investigating Massive Resistance in Charlottesville (1954–1964): This site was developed for the Center for Technology and Teacher Education at the University of Virginia.

African American World

Public Broadcasting System

www.pbs.org/wnet/aaworld

This is a wonderfully comprehensive site that serves as a companion to the programming of the Public Broadcasting System and National Public Radio. This site is user friendly and accessible for the general public, all ages. They have joined forces with Encyclopaedia Britannica and included over 300 articles about individuals and topics relevant to the Black experience.

PBS/NPR have the customary practice of building a web page to accompany all major programming. They have consistently developed Black programs that cover historical subjects through the fields of art, culture, social issues, politics, and education. They use excellent primary source material in all forms: text, images, sound, and video. This site is excellent for educational purposes at all grade levels. There is a curriculum section with course plans for grades from 3 to 12.

There are six basic sections to this site: timeline, reference room, kids, classroom, community, and resources.

1. Timeline: there are four sections within which items are listed chronologically, with links to relevant material (1400s–1865, 1866–1953, 1954–71, 1972–present).

2. Reference room: this space includes links to a selection of the best programs that have been aired on PBS and NPR, as well as individual profiles and articles on a wide range of topics.

3. Kids: this space provides online activity for children in elementary and secondary schools.

4. Classroom: this site contains curriculum materials for grades from 3 to 12.

5. Community: this page provides an opportunity for dialogue in four general categories (history, arts in action, newsmakers, and roots), and everyone can join the online discussion.

6. Resources: this page contains a webliography to continue your search with the recommendations.

This website is a virtual museum of popular culture and historical documentation.

The African American Mosaic: A Library of Congress Resource Guide for the Study of Black History and Culture

www.loc.gov/exhibits/african/intro.html

This is a site based on a publication by the same name. Its contents have been drawn from the permanent collection of the Library of Congress. There are four basic topics covered by the site: colonization, abolition, migration, and the WPA.

The colonization section is focused on Liberia, the American Colonization Society, and portraits of individuals including Joseph Jenkins Roberts (1809–1876), a Black man who became the first president of Liberia and fought against slavery. The abolition section focuses on key individuals and documents of key abolitionist activities. Some of the people include William Lloyd Garrison, John Brown, Frederick Douglass, Wendell Phillips, and Susan B. Anthony. The migration section is outstanding as it presents the fullest account of Nicodemus, Kansas to be found anywhere. This was one of the main destination points for the out-migration from the South after the end of the Reconstruction in the 19th century. There are many documents about Chicago as well, the main destination of migration in the 20th century. The WPA section is about the writers of the Works Progress Administration, a wonderful publication about Black history (Cavalcade of the American Negro), and the narratives of ex-slaves collected as part of the research carried out by the WPA.

United States Historical Census Data Browser

University of Virginia/University of Michigan

fisher.lib.virginia.edu/census

In this digital age every study of the Black experience should be accompanied with relevant statistics so that what is being focused on can be viewed in relation to the entire population and not simply one part of it. The census statistics about Black people are available on the web and therefore everyone can have access to the relevant statistics to discuss the Black experience.

Current statistical information is available from the Bureau of the Census, www.census.gov. This site is user friendly and has news releases, topical fact sheets, as well as the full details of the general reports on population down to the census tract level. When some information is reported about the census in the press, you can get more details at this site including all Census Bureau press releases.

Now we have a site that will enable you to compile statistical data from all of the census reports from 1790 to 1960. It clearly states what it offers: "This site allows you to browse the data files for each decade and choose from the lists of variables. You can produce lists of data by state or county that can be sorted, calculate proportions, or graph any of the variables."

This site is excellent for high school and college students.

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

New York City Public Library

www.nypl.org/research/sc/sc.html

The Schomburg Center is located in Harlem, New York. Howard Dodson is the Director and its most active researcher. This is the preeminent public library research institution specializing in the Black experience, covering the entire globe. It is named after Arturo Schomburg, anAfro-Puerto Rican, bibliophile and activist, who sold his collection to the NewYork Public Library System. Its website contains the usual information about what services are offered in its capacity as a public library facility, and general comments on its holdings. One important feature is its listing of programs and exhibitions. The Harlem Renaissance lives in the spirit and vitality of their program. The website contains a lot of valuable digital content.

Digital Schomburg

African American Women Writers of the 19th Century: African American Women Writers of the 19th Century is a digital collection of some 52 published works by 19th century black women writers. A part of the Digital Schomburg, this collection provides access to the thought, perspectives and creative abilities of black women as captured in books and pamphlets published prior to 1920. Afull text database of these 19th and early 20th century titles, this digital library is keyword-searchable. Each individual title as well as the entire database can be searched to determine what these women had to say about "family," "religion," "slavery," or any other subject of interest to the researcher or casual reader. The Schomburg Center is pleased to make this historic resource available to the public.

Images of African Americans from the 19th Century: This is a collection of images selected to accompany the African American Women Writers of the 19th Century website. The photographs and drawings are organized in the following categories: civil war, culture, education, family, labor, politics, portraits, reconstruction, religion, slavery, and social life.

Finding Aids: This is unique material for the serious student of African American History. This site contains 96 finding aids to collections held at the Schomburg Center. These collections cover 278 years from 1724 to 2002. Finding Aids is an inventory of an archival collection of personal or organizational papers.

Online exhibitions

The African Presence in the Americas: This is basically an online general survey course from 1492 to 1992. There are images and text. This material is useful for grades 6–12.

Harlem 1900–1940 An African American Community: This is a series of short essays with graphics on several topics concerning Harlem: activism, arts, business, community, sports, writers, and intellectuals.

The Schomburg Legacy. Documenting the Global Black Experience for the 21st Century: These materials reflect the archival holdings of the Center, including text and graphics.

Library of Congress

www.loc.gov/exhibits

The African American Mosaic: A Library of Congress Resource Guide for the Study of Black History and Culture

The African American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship

The Library of Congress is the national library of the United States. In this role it has built two web portals of information about Black people by digitizing primary documentation from its collection about the experience of the African American people.

The African American Mosaic is a digital presentation of a publication that focused on four historical moments of the African American experience. Colonization is the first section and it contains material on Liberia and the American Colonization Society. The second section is about the abolitionist, and the third is about the great migration with a focus on Nicodemus, Kansas and Chicago, Illinois. The final section is about the WPA experience.

The African American Odyssey is a set of five digital libraries in addition to a general introduction that surveys the entire African American experience. The collections cover the following: Frederick Douglass, Jackie Robinson, slave narratives, African American pamphlet collection (1824–1909), and slavery and the courts (1740–1860).

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "The African American Experience in Cyberspace"
by .
Copyright © 2004 Abdul Alkalimat.
Excerpted by permission of Pluto Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

	Foreword	vii
	Introduction: The Black Experience in Cyberspace	1
Part 1	Guide to the Best History Sites
	Overview	9
1.	General	10
2.	Africa	22
3.	Slave Trade	34
4.	Slavery	43
5.	Emancipation	53
6.	Rural Life	64
7.	Great Migrations	73
8.	Urban Life	80
9.	De-industrialization Crisis	88
10.	Information Society	95
Part 2	Guide to the Best Society and Culture Sites
	Overview	105
11.	Family and Heritage	106
12.	Health	114
13.	Education	123
14.	Food	132
15.	Women	139
16.	Politics and Civil Rights	148
17.	Religion and the Church	159
18.	Business	171
19.	Labor	180
20.	Science and Technology	188
21.	Military	197
22.	Law	206
23.	Language and Literature	214
24.	Music	226
25.	Performing Arts	236
26.	Visual and Applied Arts	245
27.	Gays and Lesbians	253
28.	Media	260
29.	Sports	268
30.	Internet Communications	277
	Index	281