Resources for Black History Month

Resources to Support Black History Month:

• Teaching the complete history of African Americans
• Teaching Tolerance
• Black History Month: Digital Resources to Support Representation in Teaching and Learning – In 1990, Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop wrote an article entitled “Windows, mirrors and sliding doors” that provided a powerful analogy for the role that children’s books play in a child’s early development. This message extends beyond books to all media sources. To listen to Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop talking about the meaning behind the article, check out this video. To access digital resources that focus on the representation of African Americans in teaching and learning, check out this infographic.
• Black History Month: Influential Science and Technology Leaders – From capturing the very first satellite images from space to contributing to the creation of Global Positioning Systems (GPS), African Americans have been leaders in technology advancement throughout history. To learn more, check out this article.
• Black History Month: Influential Computer Science Leaders – From co-creating IBM’s first personal computer to laying the foundation for modern video games, web design, animation, and graphics, African Americans have been leaders in computer science throughout history. Check out this infographic to learn more.
• Black History Month: Digital Resources to Support Inclusive Teaching Practices – In the article Black History Month: Teaching the Complete History from Learning for Justice, the author Coshandra Dillard explores how to “go beyond trauma and struggle to examine the liberation, civic engagement, creativity and intersecting identities of Black people during Black History Month”. Educators can do this by using inclusive teaching practices and ensuring that they are using strategies to teach in culturally responsive ways. Check out this infographic to explore resources for inclusive teaching practices.
• Learning for Justice
• Resources on the Maine DOE Website for African American and Ethnic Studies
• Immigrant Learning Center: Black History Month: Seven Famous Black Immigrants
• EDSITEment! – Guide to Black History Month Teaching Resources, African American History Month lesson plans, and 2015 blog post.
• Smithsonian – Black History Teaching Resources and Learning Lab Collections about the Civil Rights Movement
• The Newseum– Hundreds of free online historical newspapers, videos and lesson plans that draw connections to civil rights struggles.
• ReadWorks– Level readings that support Black History Month.
• iCivics – The Nashville Sit-Ins(DBQuest), Jim Crow, and the Road to Civil Rights and MORE
• KidCitizen – Rosa Parks: A Proud Daughter(K-2)
• Facing History and Ourselves – Eyes on the Prize(documentary series w/ teacher guide)
• The National Museum of African American History and Culture has a collection of resources for Celebrating Black History Month.
• Facing History and Ourselves has a Black History Month Resource Collection.
• Share My Lesson has a robust collection of Black History Month lesson plans and resources.
• Scholastic provides 13 ways to celebrate Back History Month with ideas for 3rd-12th grade classrooms.
• NCSS – Black History Month Resources
• The following organizations have resources dedicated to teaching about African American History:
  • NEA
  • Teaching History.org
  • PBS Newshour Extra
  • ADL
  • Colonial Williamsburg
  • Bill of Rights Institute
  • Facing History and Ourselves
• Teaching Activities for African American Studies Zinn Education Project – A coordinated effort of Teaching for Change and Rethinking Schools
• The Do’s and Don’ts of Teaching Black History (Teaching Tolerance) – How do you ensure that students get the most out of black history and Black History Month?
• Education World Teacher Resources – Celebrate Black History month with education that works.
• Scholastic Black History Month – Teaching Resources
• 20 Pertinent Classroom Resources for Black History Month (PBS Newshour)
• Smithsonian’s History Explorer – Black History Month
• Edutopia – Teaching Black History in Culturally Responsive Ways

Maine Related Resources for Black History:

• The Atlantic Black Box Project – Atlantic Black Box has launched a public history project that relies on an “enlightened crowd-sourcing” model.
• Maine Calling: Maine’s Role in the Slave Trade
• Black History in Maine: The Stories and Contributions of Maine’s Black Individuals and Communities
• Abyssinian Meeting House – This short article gives a brief introduction to an important local landmark.
• Portland Freedom Trail – If you are located near Portland or have the ability to take a field trip, you can take students on a walking tour of the Portland Freedom Trail.
• Slavery and Maine (Grades 6-12 Primary Source Set)
• Library of New England Immigration – resources in immigration to Maine

Malaga Island:

• Explore Malaga Island (Maine State Museum)
• Othered: Displaced From Malaga – Educators from the University of Southern Maine along with others have compiled a collection of research and essays that contributed to this resource that tells the history of the people of Malaga Island.
• Malaga Island: A Story Best Left Untold
• Malaga Island/Maine Coast Heritage Trust – Malaga Island was once home to a mixed-race fishing community forcibly removed by the state in 1912. Now a public preserve and important Maine historical site, we encourage all to learn the story of Malaga and those who called the island home.
• Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy – Check out this review of a young adult historical novel by Gary D. Schmidt about two children and the events related to Malaga Island.

African American Studies:

• Teaching Hard History: American Slavery – Most students leave high school without an adequate understanding of the role slavery played in the development of the United States—or how its legacies still influence us today. In an effort to remedy this, Teaching Tolerance developed a comprehensive guide for teaching and learning this critical topic at all grade levels.
• Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture
• Facing History and Ourselves (Race in U.S. History Resources)
• African American Perspectives: Materials Selected from the Library of Congress Rare Book Collection
• Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture
• The River Road African American Museum
• The National A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum
• On This Day in Racial Injustice by the Equal Justice Initiative – The Equal Justice Initiative designed A History of Racial Injustice as a set of tools for learning more about people and events in American history that are critically important but not well known.
• The Google Arts and Culture Institute – resources, collections, stories, and items related to African American history and culture that are part of the Google Arts and Culture Institute collections.
• EDSITEment! Lesson Plans – The National Endowment for the Humanities has a website called EDSITEment! that you can search for lesson plans and so many additional resources. Here is what they have for lessons related to African American history and culture.
• Common Sense Education: Best African American History Apps and Websites
• Smithsonian Learning Lab: African American History
• EVERFI’s 306: African American History Digital Curriculum

Civil Rights Movement:

• Selma: The Bridge to the Ballot – This film tells the story of a courageous group of students and teachers who, along with other activists, fought a nonviolent battle to win voting rights for African Americans in the South.
• Selma March 55th Anniversary in 2020 (Teaching Tolerance) – 2020 marks the 55th anniversary of the Selma-to-Montgomery march for voting rights.
• Beyond the Bus – Beyond the Bus, a special publication of the Teaching the Movement initiative, brings together key elements from several resources Teaching Tolerance has developed to help educators recognize and fill instructional gaps when teaching about the civil rights movement.
• Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Movement 1954-1985 – Individuals, groups and nations have responded to injustice throughout history.
• Choices in Little Rock – Choices in Little Rock is a teaching unit that focuses on efforts to desegregate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957—efforts that resulted in a crisis that historian Taylor Branch once described as “the most severe test of the Constitution since the Civil War.”.
• Civil Rights Historical Investigations – In this resource students trace the development of the civil rights movement in the United States from the 1950s to the 1970s.
• Library of Congress: Civil Rights History Project
• Library of Congress: Rosa Parks Papers – The Library of Congress offers classroom materials to help teachers effectively use primary sources from the Library’s vast digital collections in their teaching about Rosa Parks and the Civil Rights movement.
• Created Equal – The NEH Created Equal project uses the power of documentary films to encourage public conversations about the changing meanings of freedom and equality in America.
• PBS Learning Media: Civil Rights – In 1954, the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education declared segregated schools unconstitutional and sparked a decade of groundbreaking civil rights activism and legislation.
• Selma Online – This website by the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University is a free, online teaching platform that seeks to transform how the civil rights movement is taught in middle and high schools across the country.
• The Road to Civil Rights (a lesson plan from iCivics)
• National Civil Rights Museum
• Five Essential Practices from Teaching the Civil Rights Movement
• Race and Civil Rights in the Nation – The Nation has put together a five-part Journey Through History on Race and Civil Rights:
  • Part I, From the Memphis riots of 1866 to the first anti-lynching conference, in New York City, in 1919.
  • Part II, From the “Red Summer” of racial violence in Chicago, in 1919, to Rosa Parks’s bus protest, in 1955.
  • Part III, From the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957 to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968.
  • Part IV, From the ban on segregation in housing, in 1968, to freedom for Nelson Mandela, in 1990.
  • Part V, From the LA riots of 1992 to the release of Selma, in 2015.
• Students “Sit” for Civil Rights – On February 1, 1960, four African American college students challenged racial segregation by sitting down at a “whites only” counter lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C. Politely asking for service, their request was refused. When asked to leave, they remained in their seats. Their sit-in inspired others to engage in nonviolent protests, which drew attention to the inequalities in civil rights at the time. Learn more about these sit-ins and books to use with your students.
• Social Justice Books – a Teaching for Change Project
• Curated Booklists – Teaching for change has carefully selected the best multicultural and social justice books for children, young adults, and teachers on more than 70 topics. Reviews and selections on the booklists come from the See What We See coalition and are generated at Teaching for Change.

Elementary Booklist Black History

• Africville By Shauntay Grant and Eva Campbell (Illustrator)
• Beautiful Shades of Brown: The Art of Laura Wheeler Waring By Nancy Churnin and Felicia Marshall (Illustrator)
• Before She Was Harriet By Lesa Cline Ransome, James E. Ransome
• Buzzing with Questions By Janice N. Harrington
• Carter Reads the Newspaper By Deborah Hopkinson, Don Tate (Illustrator)
• Child of the Civil Rights Movement By Paula Young Shelton, Raúl Colón (Illustrator)
• Circle Unbroken: A Story of a Basket and Its People By Margot Theis Raven, E. B. Lewis (Illustrator)
• Down on James Street By Nicole McCandless and Byron Gramby (Illustrator)
• Dream Builder: The Story of Architect Philip Freelon By Kelly Starling Lyons
• Ellen’s Broom By Kelly Starling Lyons
• The Escape of Robert Smalls By Jehan Jones-Radgowski
• Farmer Will Allen and the Growing Table By Jacqueline Briggs Martin, Eric-Shabazz Larkin (Illustrator), Will Allen (Afterword by)
• Freedom’s School By Lesa Cline-Ransome, James E. Ransome (Illustrator)
• Going Down Home with Daddy By Kelly Starling Lyons
• The Great Migration: Journey to the North By Eloise Greenfield, Jan Spivey Gilchrist (Illustrator)
• Harlem’s Little Blackbird By Renee Watson, Christian Robinson (Illustrator)
• Hip Hop Speaks to Children: A Celebration of Poetry with a Beat By Nikki Giovanni, Alicia Vergel De Dios (Illustrator), Damian Ward (Illustrator)
• A History of Me By Adrea Theodore and Erin Robinson (Illustrator)
• It Jes’ Happened By Don Tate, R. Gregory Christie (Illustrator)
• Little Melba and Her Big Trombone By Katheryn Russell-Brown
• Love to Langston By Tony Medina, R. Gregory Christie
• Maritcha: A Nineteenth-Century American Girl By Tonya Bolden
• Me and Momma and Big John By Mara Rockliff, William Low (Illustrator)
• Milo’s Museum By Zetta Elliott
• My Story, My Dance By Lesa Cline Ransome, James Ransome
• New Shoes By Susan Lynn Meyer
• No Mirrors in My Nana’s House By Ysaye M. Barnwell, Synthia Saint James (Illustrator)
• The Oldest Student: How Mary Walker Learned to Read By Rita Lorraine Hubbard and Oge Mora (Illustrator)
• Opal’s Greenwood Oasis By Quraysh Ali Lansana, Najah-Amatullah Hylton and  Skip Hill (Illustrator)
• Opening the Road: Victor Hugo Green and His Green Book By Keila V. Dawson and Alleanna Harris (Illustrator)
• Papa’s Free Day Party By Marilyn Nelson and Wayne Anthony Still (Illustrator)
• A Ride to Remember By Sharon Langley and Amy Nathan
• Sing a Song: How “Lift Every Voice and Sing” Inspired Generations By  Kelly Starling Lyons
• Sit-In: How Four Friends Stood Up by Sitting Down By Andrea Davis Pinkney, Brian Pinkney (Illustrator)
• Someday Is Now: Clara Luper and the 1958 Oklahoma City Sit-ins By Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich, Jade Johnson (Illustrator)
• So Tall Within: Sojourner Truth’s Long Walk Toward Freedom By Gary Schmidt, Daniel Mintor (Illustrator)
• Sprouting Wings: The True Story of James Herman Banning, the First African American Pilot to Fly Across the United States By Louisa Jaggar,  Shari Becker,  and Floyd Cooper (Illustrator)
• Steamboat School By Deborah Hopkinson
• Sugar Hill: Harlem’s Historic Neighborhood By Carole Boston Weatherford, R. Gregory Christie (Illustrator)
• Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt By Deborah Hopkinson
• Take a Picture of Me, James Van Der Zee! By Andrea Loney, Keith Mallett (Illustrator)
• Tea Cakes for Tosh By Kelly Starling Lyons
• This Is the Rope: A Story from the Great Migration By Jacqueline Woodson
• Thurgood By Jonah Winter, Bryan Collier
• Uncle Jed’s Barbershop By Margaree King Mitchell
• When the Beat Was Born: DJ Kool Herc and the Creation of Hip Hop By Laban Carrick Hill, Theodore Taylor (Illustrator)
• William Still and His Freedom Stories: The Father of the Underground Railroad By Don Tate
• Zora Hurston and the Chinaberry Tree By William Miller, Cornelius Van Wright
• Ruby Bridges Goes to School – My True Story by Ruby Bridges
• Sojourner Truth’s Step-Stomp Stride By Andrea Davis Pinkney  Illustrator Brian Pinkney
• Great Black Heroes: Five Brilliant Scientists By Lynda Jones  Illustrator Ron Garnett
• Great Black Heroes: Five Notable Inventors By Wade Hudson  Illustrator Ron Garnett
• Five Brave Explorers By Wade Hudson  Illustrator Ron Garnett
• Henry’s Freedom Box By Ellen Levine  Illustrator Kadir Nelson
• 28 Days: Moments in Black History that Changed the World By Charles R. Smith, Jr.  Illustrator Shane W. Evans
• Granddaddy’s Gift By Margaree King Mitchell  Illustrator Larry Johnson
• The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind By William Kamkwamba , Bryan Mealer  Illustrator Elizabeth Zunon
• Amistad By Patricia C. McKissack  Illustrator Sanna Stanley
• Gordon Parks By Carole Boston Weatherford  Illustrator Jamey Christoph
• Delivering Justice: W.W. Law and the Fight for Civil Rights By James Haskins  Illustrator Benny Andrews
• Talkin’ About Bessie By Nikki Grimes  Illustrator E. B. Lewis
• Rosa By Nikki Giovanni  Illustrator Bryan Collier
• Duke Ellington: The Piano Prince And His Orchestra By Andrea Davis Pinkney  Illustrator Brian Pinkney
• Champion By Jim Haskins  Illustrator Eric Velasquez
• Martin Rising: Requiem for a King By Andrea Davis Pinkney & Brian Pinkney  Illustrator Andrea & Brian Pinkney