The Young Sabot Maker
Henry Ossawa Tanner · 1895
Tanner's scenes of work and everyday life connect African American artistic achievement to his international career in France. His paintings provide an entry point into Black expatriate life and the freedom to pursue artistic identity across borders.
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1619
Nikole Hannah-Jones · 2019
The Pulitzer Prize-winning magazine project that reexamines the founding of the United States by centering the year 1619, when the first enslaved Africans arrived in Virginia.
Learn moreA Change Is Gonna Come
Sam Cooke · 1964
Cooke's soul classic became a rallying cry of the civil rights movement, expressing hope and resilience in the face of racial injustice — often called the greatest civil rights song ever written.
Learn moreAfrican American Life at the 1900 Paris Exposition
W. E. B. Du Bois and Thomas J. Calloway / 1900 Paris Exposition photographs · 1900
The photographs assembled for the 1900 Paris Exposition documented Black education, institutions, occupations, family life, and achievement for an international audience. They are unusually valuable for studying how Black communities represented themselves beyond the United States.
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American People Series #18: The Flag Is Bleeding
Faith Ringgold · 1967
Ringgold's American People series examined race, identity, and American life during the Civil Rights and Black Power era. The Flag Is Bleeding asks students to consider who is represented by national symbols and who gets to claim them.
Learn moreAugust Wilson's Century Cycle
August Wilson · 1982
Ten plays, each set in a different decade of the 20th century, chronicling the African American experience in Pittsburgh — the most sustained dramatic portrait of Black life in American theater.
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Michelle Obama · 2018
The former First Lady's memoir traces her journey from Chicago's South Side through Princeton and Harvard Law to the White House, addressing race, identity, and what it means to belong in America.
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