Electronic Highways

Black History Month: an Online Celebration

In 1976, a month-long celebration was inaugurated to bear witness to the progress, richness and diversity of African-American achievement. There are numerous resources on the Internet commemorating these accomplishments, most notably, The Encyclopaedia Britannica Guide to Black History (http://blackhistory.eb.com/). This site is a rich resource with a comprehensive timeline of historical events and prominent people from 1516 to the present. Since its critically acclaimed premiere in February 1997, it has been revised and redesigned, with added features, including new and updated articles and improved navigation.

The Timeline section traces the yearly historical events and contributions of African Americans in politics, business, literature, music, religion, entertainment, sports and education. Examining five centuries of Black heritage through five distinct time periods, Eras in Black History takes you from the slave revolts of early America through the successes of the civil-rights movements. Each era is divided by topic/profession, with biographies and photographs of notable people and descriptions and documents of historic events. Additionally, you can browse through the expanded Articles A to Z page, which is divided into two alphabetical sections ("Biographies" and "Events & Institutions") and contains links to more than 600 informative articles.

The Encyclopaedia Britannica Guide to Black History is illustrated with hundreds of photographs and other images, as well as historical film clips in the Quicktime format. See Billie Holiday performing "Fooling Myself" from 1957 or hear Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. deliver his "I Have a Dream" speech at the March on Washington in 1963. Audio recordings in the .au and .wav formats are filled with voices of African-American people in all areas of American life. The Study Guide for Students, which is organized around six classroom activities, will introduce you to the people behind these voices and the events that have affected their lives. The guide includes teacher recommendations, technical tips and scholastic bibliographies. The students' activities are interactive, inviting them to locate, evaluate and compare sources of information on the Internet. The Related Internet Links and Bibliography sections provide additional source material and areas for continued study.

Another source for African-American history and culture is The African-American Mosaic (http://lcweb.loc.gov/exhibits/african/intro.html). This Library of Congress resource offers, in exhibition format, an illustrated sample of the library's holdings in four areas: colonization, abolition, migration and the Works Progress Administration. In 1998, the library plans to mount a major exhibition and cultural program examining the impact of African-American history and tradition.

The Amistad Research Center is the largest independent African-American archives, library and museum in the United States dedicated to preserving African-American ethnic history and culture. The center has emerged as the first institution created to document the civil rights movement and this site (http://www.arc.tulane.edu/) features an extensive range of research materials, providing details in Gopher format to the Manuscripts Collection (over 10 million documents), African-American Art (400 paintings, drawings and sculptures), African Art (100 pieces), Media (oral history interviews, as well as video and audio programs for researchers' use), Historical Exhibits (25 traveling exhibits) and a Library Collection (over 25,000 volumes).

For assistance in connecting to the World Wide Web , contact the ASCIT Help Desk at 645-3542.

-Sue Neumeister and Lori Widzinski, University Libraries