On February 1, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln approved a joint
resolution to submit the proposed 13th Amendment, abolishing
slavery, to the state legislatures. While the history of Black
Americans involves so much more than slavery, it is imperative
that students fully understand the institution of slavery, its
dissolution and the aftermath in order to understand today’s
racial inequity.
We have compiled some meaningful collections of resources
for Black History Month. These resources may be of interest
to educators in the classroom, unions, and families and
communities.
FOR EDUCATORS
Teaching hard history: American slavery
AFT’s Share My Lesson
Here are some lesson plans to work with children from
pre-Kindergarten through 12th grade to teach the history of
slavery in America to better understand racial inequity. In
response to a
report by the Southern Poverty Law Center showing schools are
failing in teaching about slavery, this collection includes
lessons about Juneteenth and the Gettysburg Address, with a
podcast from SPLC as well as the New York Times’
1619 Project, which reframes the legacy of slavery.
Virtual events at Smithsonian celebrate Black History
Month
The Smithsonian
The Smithsonian celebrates Black History Month with virtual
programming this year. There are offerings for all ages,
including a social media campaign on uplifting the Black family,
Joyful Fridays with art for children, an
African Americans In STEM Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon, and a
program on how
the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the economy and the African
American community.
The African American mosaic at the Library of Congress
Library of
Congress
This resource guide to the Library of Congress’ African American
collection offers access to the collection’s materials on
colonization, abolition, migrations, and the Works Progress
Administration. Included are ex-slave narratives, personal
stories of colonization, histories of important abolitionists,
and writers and artists of the federal projects in the 1930s
documenting the move north.
Learn about a preeminent labor unionist and civil rights activist
A Philip Randolph Institute
This site provides biographical information and other resources
about Randolph, who organized the first predominantly African
American union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. His
activism led to Franklin D. Roosevelt issuing an executive order
to ban discrimination in the defense industries in World War II,
and Randolph also helped plan and organize the 1963 March on
Washington.
Black workers, unions, and the labor movement
UC Berkeley Labor Center
This site includes African American labor history guides,
articles, books, and films. Topics covered included how unions
have brought gains for workers of color, immigrants and women in
California, the impact of the Great Recession on public
employment, the job losses in the public sector due to the
COVID-19 pandemic, and the ongoing fight for a decent minimum
wage.
6 elementary school lessons on civil rights and labor
SCRIBD
Here’s an elementary school curriculum — Civil Rights and
Labor: Joint Struggles for Justice — with six lessons on
the similarities and differences between the fight for labor
rights and for civil rights. Students will discuss and write
about the role of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the U.S. labor
movement and examine some parallels between the country in
the 1960s and today.
4 DVDs on Black labor history and civil rights
California Newsreels
DVDs from California Newsreel offer a way to learn about
different aspects of labor history and the civil rights struggle.
-
Oh Freedom After While is about the1939 interracial
sharecroppers strike in Missouri.
-
A. Philip
Randolph: For Jobs and Freedom chronicles labor
activist Randolph’s efforts to make society more equitable.
- Randolph is also featured Miles
of Smiles, about the first Black trade union — the
Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, which he fought for more
than a decade.
- The hour-long documentary, At The River I
Stand, chronicles the fight for working people,
highlighting the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers strike and the
assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
3 books about Black workers, race and labor
-
Black Freedom Fighters in Steel
Ruth Needleman’s book tells the story of five black organizers,
long-distance runners who were indispensable to building the
steel workers union as well as the civil rights movement in
northwest Indiana.
-
Servitude to Service:
African-American Women as Wage
Earners
Teachers can access Rita G. Komen’s book as a download from the
OAH Magazine of History. The book examines the employment
position of African-American women in the South.
-
For Jobs and
Freedom: Race and Labor in America since 1865
Robert H. Ziegler’s book analyzes the position of African
American workers in the U.S. economy and social order over the
past century and a half in this comprehensive study focusing on
black workers’ efforts to gain equal rights in the workplace.
It deals extensively with organized labor’s complex and
tumultuous relationship with African Americans.
10 historic Black teachers who revolutionized the system
Scoonews
These educators, who fought white supremacy and helped change
society, include Septima Poinsette Clark, who Martin Luther King,
Jr. called the “Mother of the Movement for her work in literacy
and for voting rights as well as to get Black teachers hired at
universities. There’s also psychology professor Edmund Gordon,
who founded the federal Head Start program and the Institute for
Urban Education at Columbia University’s Teachers College, and
Fanny Jackson Coppin, the first African American principal and
school superintendent who advocated higher education for women.
FOR HOME, FAMILY & BEYOND
26 little-known Black history facts you may not have
learned in school
Oprah
Magazine
This list of Black history facts covers literature, history,
sports, and entertainment with items like the first Black woman
to get a college degree in 1850 from Oberlin, Phyllis Wheatley
being the first African American to publish a book of poetry in
1773, and that from 1810 to 1850, an estimated 100,000 enslaved
people escaped to the North on the Underground Railroad.
10 podcasts that bring me happiness as a Black listener
Marie Claire
Here are 10 podcasts with Black voices offering connection, humor
and resources. There’s everything from finding a sense of peace
and creating stillness with Black Girl in Om, to
The Friend
Zone where they explore mental health, because “who the hell
wants a musty brain?” to two New York Times reporters discussing
news and culture in
Still Processing.
14 African American inventors to remember this Black History
Month
Oprah Magazine
You may have heard of some of the inventors here like George
Washington Carver, who not only invented peanut butter (for which
we offer a heartfelt thank you), but also created new products
from peanuts and sweet potatoes including ink, dye, and soap, and
Madame CJ Walker, the first Black woman millionaire, who created
a line of hair products. But there are lots of others including
the chemist who gave us a drug to treat glaucoma, an
ophthalmologist who invented a a device to remove cataracts, and
a telecommunications researcher whose work led to the touch-tone
phone, fiber optic cables, and caller ID.
44 of the best books by Black authors you should read in your
lifetime
Oprah Magazine
This list of books by includes Ta-Nehisii Coates’ 2015 National
Book Award winner,
Between the World and Me, a letter to his son about
being Black in America, Octavia Butler’s
Kindred, where a young woman in 1976 Los Angeles is
transported to a Maryland plantation during the Civil War, and
the best-selling book of 2018, Michelle Obama’s memoir, Becoming, where
she writes about her marriage and life in the White House and out
of it.
8 ways to celebrate Black History Month from the New York Times
New York Times
The author lists a series of cultural events to honor Black
History Month. Among them is Atlanta honoring the memory of
Representative
John Lewis, a giant in the civil rights movement with a
living memorial made
up of shrubs, daffodil fields and more than 300 blooming
trees. She mentions two movies by Black directors about
important moments in history, “Judas and the Black
Messiah” and “One Night in
Miami,” and the books, “The
Motherlode: 100+ Women Who Made Hip-Hop,” by Clover
Hope, and “Four
Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America,
1619-2019,” where 90 writers each examine a five-year period
in history.
