Africans in America http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/ PBS Online. This well-produced site was created as a companion to the Public Broadcasting Company series, Africans in America, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. It traces the history of Africans in America in four chronological parts: "The Terrible Transformation" (1450-1750) deals with the beginning of the slave trade into America and slavery¹s growth in the early 18th century; "Revolution" (1750-1805) discusses the justifications for slavery in a new nation that was supposed to represent equality and freedom; "Brotherly Love" (1791-1831) traces the development of a wide abolition movement in the North; and "Judgment Day" (1831-1865) depicts the debates over slavery, strengthening of sectionalism, and the Civil War. Each section begins with a roughly 1500-word narrative that offers links to images and documents related to the topic. A Resource Bank lists all the primary documents and images offered within that section. The site offers a total of more than 200 primary documents, more than 75 images and maps, and approximately 25 brief (150-word) descriptions by historians of specific aspects of the history of slavery, servitude, abolition, and war in America. Teacher guides offer ideas for questions, activities, and lessons for elementary and secondary students. The lack of a search engine or comprehensive index makes the site a bit difficult to navigate, but it is certainly worth the trouble. This site is ideal for researching and teaching African-American history up to the Civil War. College survey teachers will find it particularly useful for providing anecdotes for lectures and material for discussion. Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES. Third Person, First Person: Slave Voices http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/slavery/ The Digital Scriptorium, Special Collections Library, Duke University. An exhibit of primary source material relating to slavery from the late 18th century to emancipation in the 19th century. Reproduces or describes 33 documents, such as a broadside announcing a reward for the return of a runaway slave, a map delineating slave labor on an indigo plantation, a New York bill of sale for the purchase of a slave in 1785, and an 85-page memoir written in 1923 by Elizabeth Johnson Harris, an African-American woman from Georgia who relates stories and experiences of her parents and grandparents, who had been slaves. The site "showcases the kinds of rare materials that under scrutiny reveal the ambitions, motivations, and struggles of people often presumed mute." Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES. Virginia Runaways Project http://www.wise.virginia.edu/history/runaways/ Virginia Center for Digital History, Thomas Costa, Associate Professor of History, University of Virginia¹s College at Wise. Provides full transcriptions and images of more than 2,200 newspaper advertisements regarding runaway slaves, mostly from the Williamsburg Virginia Gazette, between 1736 and 1776. Includes ads placed by owners and overseers for runaways as well as ads for captured runaway or suspected runaway slaves placed by sheriffs and other governmental officials. In addition, the site¹s creators have included ads for runaway servants and sailors as well as military deserters, to offer "a unique look at the lower orders in eighteenth-century Virginia." Searchable by any words appearing in ads. Users can click on the name of a slave within an ad to find links to all other ads listing that name. The site also provides approximately 40 links to related primary material‹including letters, laws, court documents, planters¹ records, and literature. Additional material includes 10 photographs of a recreated slave dwelling, information on currency and clothing of the time, a gazetteer with seven maps of the region, a 13-title bibliography, and three K-12 teaching guides using the ads. At present, this site includes 40 ads from a Norfolk newspaper; plans are set to digitize additional ads that appeared through 1790 from five more Virginia and two Maryland newspapers. A component of the Virtual Jamestown site (see "History Matters" entry for more information on the larger site). A valuable source for those studying slave culture, Virginia society in the eighteenth century, and the use of print culture to support the institution of slavery. Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES. African-American Women http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/collections/african-american-women.html The Digital Scriptorium, Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University. Writings of three African-American women of the 19th century are offered in this site. Features scanned images and transcriptions of an 85-page memoir by Elizabeth Johnson Harris (1867-1923), a Georgia women whose parents had been slaves, along with 13 attached pages of newspaper clippings containing short prose writings and poems by Harris; a 565-word letter written in 1857 by a North Carolinia slave named Vilet Lester; and four letters written between 1837 and 1838 by Hannah Valentine and Lethe Jackson, slaves on an Abingdon, Virginia, plantation. The documents are accompanied by three background essays ranging in length from 300 to 800 words, six photographs, a bibliography of seven titles on American slave women, and eight links to additional resources. Though modest in size, this site contains documents of value for their insights into the lives of women living under slavery and during its aftermath in the South. Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES. The Underground Railroad http://www.nationalgeographic.com/features/99/railroad/ National Geographic. In the 19th century the "Underground Railroad", a secret network of Northern abolitionists, guided hundreds of escaped slaves to Canada and freedom. This creative, interactive site places visitors in the shoes of a Maryland slave pondering escape to Canada in 1850. The visitor is allowed to choose whether to escape or remain enslaved; if they choose to escape they are led into one of the Underground Railroad escape routes through Wilmington, Delaware, and Philadelphia to Rochester, New York, and across Lake Erie into Canada. Along the way they are introduced to several prominent abolitionists such as Harriet Tubman, Quaker businessman Thomas Garrett, and escaped slave Frederick Douglass. Some of the stops along the escape route are accompanied by audio clips of African-American spirituals, bloodhounds in pursuit of escaped slaves, and the sound of a train. The site also includes a map of Underground Railroad routes; a timeline of African slavery in the New World from 1500 to 1865; and portraits and brief (100-word) biographies of 12 major figures in the Underground Railroad, such as Lucretia Mott, John Whittier, and William Still. A link to classroom ideas provides nine class projects for high school students. There are also links to seven related websites and a bibliography of 18 scholarly works. A forum allows visitors to post comments or questions about the Underground Railroad or the website, but because the forum link is not monitored or edited the discussion threads¹ usefulness is uneven. Though this innovative site contains no primary documents, it is an ideal beginning for students interested in slavery and abolition and for teachers seeking background and classroom project ideas on the Underground Railroad. Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO. Freedmen and Southern Society Project http://www.history.umd.edu/Freedmen/ Freedmen and Southern Society Project. Features 44 primary documents relating to the emancipation of African American slaves between 1861 and 1865. Includes a letter by General William T. Sherman explaining why he refused to return fugitive slaves to their owners; an 1864 letter from Annie Davis, a Maryland slave, to President Abraham Lincoln asking him to clarify her legal status; a description by a Union general of a bloody battle at Milliken¹s Bend, Louisiana, where a brigade of black soldiers fought; and documents from the federal and Confederate governments relating to significant events. The documents‹transcribed from originals housed at the National Archives‹are accompanied by sentence-long annotations, as well as an authoritative chronology of events leading to legal emancipation. This site is part of a larger effort underway by the Freedmen and Southern Society Project, "supported by the University of Maryland and by grants from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission and the National Endowment for the Humanities" to publish the multivolume, "Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867." Resources Available: TEXT. Exploring Amistad at Mystic Seaport http://amistad.mysticseaport.org/discover/do-amistad.htm Mystic Seaport; The Museum of America and the Sea. In 1839 a group of recently-captured African slaves being transported from Havana, Cuba, to Puerto Principe in the West Indies revolted, took control of their ship the Amistad, and, after two months at sea, sailed into United States waters. Eventually, U.S. courts granted the Africans their freedom and abolitionist groups helped them return to Africa. The events surrounding this remarkable incident are presented in this website, an online exhibit created by the Mystic Seaport Museum in Mystic, Connecticut. The site provides an historical overview of the themes, people, and contexts from the Amistad incident in a series of 250- to 500-word essays authored by scholars of the Amistad incident and African-American history. Six timelines chronicle the events related to the Amistad¹s voyage, the Atlantic Slave Trade, Africa, the West Indies, the United States, and the Courts. The site¹s online library contains over 500 items, including newspaper articles, personal papers, court records, and government papers, as well as 11 maps and nautical charts and 28 images depicting the themes, people, and places related to the incident. Another valuable resource is the teaching section, which includes ideas for using the Amistad incident in elementary, secondary, and college classrooms. The site is keyword searchable, easy to navigate, and offers a bibliography of over 80 scholarly works on the Amistad incident, abolitionism, and the slave trade in the 19th century. Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES. American Slave Narratives http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/wpa/wpahome.html Bruce Fort, Ph.D. candidate, University of Virginia. This site contains selections from 13 interviews with former slaves conducted between 1936 and 1938 by journalists working for the New Deal Federal Writers¹ Project of the Works Progress Administration. Each selection is accompanied by a brief biographical sketch of the interviewee, a photograph or drawing of the interviewee taken at the time of the interview, and in one instance, an audio component. Includes guidelines for reading slave narratives, a bibliography of 16 scholarly works on the history of slavery, and 21 links to related sites in general American history, southern history, and African-American history. A useful sample of first-hand testimony on American slave experience and culture. Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO. Excerpts from Slave Narratives http://vi.uh.edu/pages/mintz/primary.htm Steven Mintz, University of Houston. Excerpts selected from 46 slave narratives are arranged in 11 chronological and thematic categories. Topics include 18th-century bondage and 20th-century sharecropping, as well as the religious practices, family life, emancipation, and childhood experiences of slaves throughout the antebellum period. Excerpts range from 150 to 2,000 words. Resources Available: TEXT. Slave Movement During the 18th and 19th Centuries http://dpls.dacc.wisc.edu/slavedata/index.html Data and Program Library Service, University of Wisconsin-Madison. This site offers downloadable raw data and documentation on 11 topics related to the 18th- and 19th-century slave trade, including records of slave ship movement between Africa and the Americas 1817-1843, the 18th-century Virginia slave trade, and slave trade to Jamaica 1782-1788 and 1805-1808. Data sets contain information such as port of departure, vessel and owner information, number of slaves carried, origins of slaves, and ports of arrival. Each data set includes a 250-word description explaining bibliographic information, file inventory, and methodology, as well as a codebook that guides users in reading the data. The data is provided without analysis, and the site carries a warning that data analysis is tedious, time-consuming work that requires specialized data sorting software. The site would be particularly useful in controlled assignments for college-level survey or advanced high school students¹ research into slavery and the slave trade. Resources Available: TEXT. 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