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This material from Henry Louis Gates series, The African Americans: Many Rivers To Cross, describes the efforts of a famous all Black regiment during World War I. These black soldiers returning from World War I received a hero's welcome, by blacks and whites alike, in New York City.

Black founding fathers

A great short film on the Next Vista for Learning site. It is a short explanation of The Black Death and was created by a teacher in California. The video was a winning entry in one of Next Vista's video creation contests. An example of something I would like to emulate at my school.

"Bound for Glory: America in Color is the first major exhibition of the little known color images taken by photographers of the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information (FSA/OWI). Comprised of seventy digital prints made from color transparencies taken between 1939 and 1943, this exhibition reveals a surprisingly vibrant world that has typically been viewed only through black-and-white images."

Might be useful in showing your students that everything before the 1950s didn't happen in black and white. A humbly titled collection.

Many people overlook the connection between the Mongol empire and the Black Death. However, the great Eurasian empire may have been responsible for this epidemic.

A new PBS documentary For Love of Liberty : The Story of America's Black Patriots, details the military contributions of African Americans.

This one is at least recent - some good discussion and links after the article also.

Youtube Playlist Learn about the political, social, and economic changes in the Union and the Confederacy and the Civil War's long-term economic and intellectual impact. A New Birth of Freedom: The Civil War, 1861-1865 narrates the history of the American Civil War. While the course examines individual engagements and the overall nature of the military conflict, the focus is less on the battlefield than on political, social, and economic change in the Union and the Confederacy. Central to the account are the road to emancipation, the role of black soldiers, the nature of Abraham Lincoln's wartime leadership, internal dissent in both the North and South, the changing position of women in both societies, and the war's long-term economic and intellectual impact. We end with a look at the beginnings of Reconstruction during the conflict. This course is part of the series, The Civil War and Reconstruction, which introduces students to the most pivotal era in American history. The Civil War transformed the nation by eliminating the threat of secession and destroying the institution of slavery. It raised questions that remain central to our understanding of ourselves as a people and a nation - the balance of power between local and national authority, the boundaries of citizenship, and the meanings of freedom and equality. The series will examine the causes of the war, the road to secession, the conduct of the Civil War, the coming of emancipation, and the struggle after the war to breathe meaning into the promise of freedom for four million emancipated slaves. One theme throughout the series is what might be called the politics of history - how the world in which a historian lives affects his or her view of the past, and how historical interpretations reinforce or challenge the social order of the present. See other courses in this series: The Civil War and Reconstruction - 1850-1861 The Civil War and Reconstruction - 1865-1890 "The Civil War and Recons

An interactive map showing the spread of slavery. It gives you a variety of ways to look at the date (absolute numbers, percent of population, etc.) and also includes data for the free black population.

New-York Historical Society

Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and assembled and microfilmed in 1941 as the seventeen-volume Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves.

Yes, the glorious United States of the 1950s. Surely it was all good back then, unless, of course, you were female, or black ("negro"), or Catholic or Jewish, or disabled, or poor. Or, if you were young. Of course we know that American "tea partiers" (even they seem to have discovered that "teabaggers" wasn't the right term) are as weak in the history department as they are on economics knowledge, but they are hardly alone in their belief in some wondrous mythical past...

"Millions of Americans fought and died during the Civil War, and the legacy of the Civil War remains in the poetry and music left behind. Music was used extensively during the Civil War as a means of inspiring loyalty among the troops, and as a source of inspiration and motivation during marching. Poetry was written to encourage unity, to document the experiences of soldiers, and to share women's place in the war. Bands on both sides would frequently borrow songs and lyrics from the other side, using them as parodies. One such tune was "Dixie", though the song was created some period of time before the Civil War, it gained in popularity during this time. "Dixie" originally tells the story of a freed black slave yearning to return home to the simple life of the plantation, both the North and South however, created their own wartime versions. "The Battle Cry of Freedom" and "Home Sweet Home" also featured both Union and Confederate versions. "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "The Southern Cross," were poems that were later set to music."