American History

General American History

Today in American History

American Memory from the Library of Congress
memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html

The Library's online history collections organized by both subject area and alphabetical by topic.

American Originals: Treasures from the National Archives
www.archives.gov/exhibit_hall/american_originals_iv/impact.html

"American Originals" is a changing exhibit that has presented the nation’s greatest documentary treasures in the Rotunda of the National Archives Building since December 1995. This online edition brings selected milestone documents from the exhibit directly to you.

Chronology of U.S. Historical Documents
www.law.ou.edu/hist

An online collection of documents that have had an important impact on American History. Organized chronologically from 1215 (The Magna Carta) to the present.

Our Documents
www.ourdocuments.gov

Presented by The National Archives, this site presents 100 milestone documents chosen "to reflect our diversity and our unity, our past and our future, and mostly our commitment as a nation to continue to strive to "form a more perfect union."

History Central
www.historycentral.com

Good general History site with links covering both World and American History topics. Key American History areas include: A history of American Presidential Elections (with specific information on each election), a section on historical primary source Documents featuring over 600 primary documents in American History and History Maker Biographies covering Presidents, First Ladies, Civil War and Revolutionary War Generals, as well biographies of the 500 most important people of the 20th century.

Internet Public Library: Presidents of the U.S.
www.ipl.org/div/potus

A very well organized site containing extensive information on all United State Presidents and their administrations. Background information, election results, cabinet members, notable events, and some points of interest are included for each of the presidents. Links to biographies, historical documents, audio and video files, and other presidential sites are also available.

National Park Service: Links to the Past
www.cr.nps.gov/history.htm

According to the National Park Service, more than half of the 386 park areas that they administer have been set aside as symbols and evidence of our history and prehistory. This site provides some interesting Historical information as it relates to these areas and their impact on History.

RootsWeb
www.rootsweb.com/roots-l/usa.html#Statelist

RootsWeb.com is the oldest and largest free online community for genealogists. The site contains extensive interactive guides and numerous research tools for tracing family histories. This link here connects you to their extensive directory of Local History sites and Genealogy links organized by State.

The History Place
www.historyplace.com

The History Place describes itself as "a private, independent, Internet-only publication based in the Boston area that is not affiliated with any political group or organization. The Web site presents a fact-based, common sense approach in the presentation of the history of humanity, with great care given to accuracy." Topic areas include American Revolution, U.S. Civil War, American Presidents, World War 2 and the Vietnam War. Some interesting photographs and limited number of personal histories as well.

African-American History

This Month in African American History

African-American Mosaic
www.loc.gov/exhibits/african/intro.html

A Library of Congress Resource Guide

African-American Web Connection
www.aawc.com/aawc.html

Site offers categorized and extensive links to Afro centric websites.

African American World
www.pbs.org/wnet/aaworld/

Your online guide to African American History and Culture presented by the Public Broadcasting System (PBS). From Sojourner Truth to Jacob Lawrence, discover the courage and talent that shaped the African American experience.

Africans in America
www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia

Resources from the PBS series includes documents, essays, and teacher's resources.

American Memory from the Library of Congress
memory.loc.gov/ammem/browse/ListSome.php?category=African%20American%20History

A link to the Library's collection of African American material available online.

American Slave Narratives : An Online Anthology
xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/wpa/wpahome.html

A collection of interviews with former slaves who discuss their lives before and after freedom.

Art About Florida - The Highwaymen
www.floridahighwaymenpaintings.com/

In the 1950's, a small number of African Americans in the Fort Pierce area dedicated their talents and livelihoods to painting the Florida landscape. this site tells their story through words and through their art.

Black Archives of Mid-America
www.blackarchives.org

A database of more than 800 online images that chronicle the African-American experience in the Mid-West.

Black Facts Online
www.blackfacts.com

"...an Internet Search Page that lets you look up Black History information for any day of the year or just by looking for matching words. Black Facts is designed to make it easy to find out interesting and inspiring facts about events impacting people of African descent."

Black History Hotlist
www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/BHM/bh_hotlist.html

A large site with many links about Black History Month, slavery and history, leaders, news, and poetry.

CNN: Black History Month
www.cnn.com/EVENTS/black_history/29days.html

CNN offers a site celebrating Black History Month called "A Legacy of Black Talent". Included here are 27 short profiles (one for each day of February) of men or women who have made a lasting contribution, ranging from literature, music and the arts to science and technology.

Encyclopedia Britannica Guide to Black History
search.eb.com/blackhistory

This site presents a vast array of articles, hundreds of images, and a wide assortment of audio clips, film clips, and multimedia presentations. The timeline traces two millennia of black history, and the browse features enable the visitor to pinpoint the central people, places, topics, and events covered in black history.

Encyclopedia Britannica Guide to Black History: Biographies A-Z.
search.eb.com/blackhistory/browse?browseId=252286

Entries for over 500 African Americans from Hank Aaron to Whitney M. Young, Jr.

Frederick Douglass Papers
memory.loc.gov/ammem/doughtml/doughome.html

2,000 items from the Library of Congress' American Memory collection

Freedmen’s Bureau Online
www.freedmensbureau.com/

Includes selected extracts from the records of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, including records of operations, records relating to murders and outrages, freedmen’s marriage certificates, records relating to freedmen’s labor, monthly reports of destitute discharged soldiers and their families.

Gale: Black History Month
www.gale.com/free_resources/bhm

Includes timelines of important events and biographies.

Presented by the U.S. Department of State. Contains links featuring various areas of History, Arts and Literature, links to online articles and Exhibits and Museums that highlight the African American experience in America.

InfoPlease.com: Black History Month
www.infoplease.com/spot/bhm1.html

Features links covering History, Timelines, Contemporary Issues and an assortment of Special Features covering subjects from African American Quotations, Negro Baseball League to African American Literature and the Harlem Renaissance.

Internet Public Library: African-American History Resources
www.ipl.org/div/subject/browse/hum30.55.85.15

A very well organized site filled with links to sites covering African American History, biographies and text of significant speeches made by prominent African Americans, plus other areas of interest including Black Facts, Black Film Research and historical information on African American Sheet Music (1850-1920).

Jacksonville Public Library: Black History Month Web Page
jaxpubliclibrary.org/coll/aacoll

Prepared by Librarians from Jacksonville Public Library's newest collection - The African American Collection! This site contains a wonderful array of links focused on African American History, Biography, Science and other topics. Also presents information about Black History and prominent African Americans in Florida, as well as links to African American resources available through The Jacksonville Public Library. The African American Collection will be housed on the 4th Floor of the New Main Library when it opens in 2005.

Kwanzaa An African-American Celebration
globalindex.com/kwanzaa/

Lists and explains the seven principles of Kwanzaa, defines terms, and tells what the holiday colors represent.

Martin Luther King: MLK Online
www.mlkonline.net

“Your One Stop Source” for Martin Luther King on the net.

National Civil Rights Museum
www.civilrightsmuseum.org/

Take a virtual tour of the museum in Memphis.

National Underground Railroad Freedom Center
www.freedomcenter.org

Celebrating the historic themes of the Underground Railroad as they relate to contemporary society through commemoration, education and inspiration.

Roadmap to African-American and Multicultural Resources
people.sfcollege.edu/sherry.dupree/RESORLIK.HTM

This site offers a range of resources, connecting the user to pages where both primary and secondary documents, databases, archives, libraries, maps, images and more can be accessed. The focus covers what is available for the United States with an emphasis on Florida and Central America.

The HistoryMakers
thehistorymakers.com

The objective of this site is to build awareness about African Americans that have made significant contributions to American life, society and culture, through stories that focus on slavery, the abolitionist movement, the civil rights movement, music sports and entertainment. A timeline of important events and birthdays of significant African Americans is also included.

Time: Celebrating Black History
www.pathfinder.com/time/reports/blackhistory/index.html

Time magazine has created an online site to celebrate Black History. It features an in-depth profile of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a Reading Room containing Time Magazine articles on black culture and extraordinary achievers in education, business, sports and entertainment, and Chats, an area that features transcripts of TIME.com's exclusive online conversations with newsmakers like Toni Morrison and Angela Davis, plus many others.

Stamp on Black History: A Black History Tour
library.thinkquest.org/2667/Stamps.htm

This site is available via The ThinkQuest Library; a free educational resource featuring over 5,500 websites created by students around the world as part of a competition. This particular site offers insights on the contributions made by Black Americans profiled on United State postage stamps. These stamps show black Americans as explorers, settlers, slaves and as patriots in vigorous pursuit of freedom, liberty and equality. this site uses the postage stamps in an attempt to tell a story of a way of life developed by black people in a white society

Colonial America

Colonial America, 1600-1775
falcon.jmu.edu/~ramseyil/colonial.htm

A very detailed site covering many different aspects and topics concerning the American Colonial Period in U.S. History. Site contains maps, lesson plans, bibliographies and curriculum content materials that are more teacher related. Other areas such as Primary Resource Documents, Timelines, States, Cities Histories, Colonial Williamsburg, Everyday Life in the Colonies are great resources for students.

Internet Public Library: Colonial America
www.ipl.org/div/pf/entry/48454

The Librarians maintaining the Internet Public Library developed a guide designed to help students of all ages find resources on colonial American history and culture by using both internet and print resources. The primary focus of this site is to find resources that detail life in colonial America leading up to but not including the American Revolution.

The American Revolution
revolution.h-net.msu.edu

This site was created by H-Net, Humanities and Social Sciences Online and also serves as the official companion site to PBS' documentary series Liberty! It offers a detailed bibliography section covering many different types of resources, a section containing important essays on the American Revolution, as well as a strong Resources area with links and selected online sites noted.

The History Place: American Revolution
www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/revolution

Offers a detailed timeline covering dates and key events from explorations and the beginning of the settlement of North America through 1790 and t he birth of the United States.

American Civil War

The American Civil War Page
sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war

This site is maintained by the University of Tennessee and contains a sizeable directory of links about various topics concerning the Civil War. The directory is divided into 13 main subject headings to help the user find information more easily.

Civil War Campaign and Battle Maps
www.dean.usma.edu/history/web03/atlases/american_civil_war/index.htm

Battle maps organized chronologically for all the major campaigns and available for review online through the History Department, United State Military Academy (West Point).

Internet Public Library: Civil War History
www.ipl.org/div/pf/entry/48451

This link offers users a Pathfinder or a detailed listing of print and online sources they might use to find quality information about the Civil War, either for serious research or for just looking up a quick fact.

Official Records - War Of the Rebellion
cdl.library.cornell.edu/moa/browse.monographs/waro.html

A tremendous resource for anyone doing military research on the Civil War. The Official Records consists of 128 volumes of wartime paperwork, battle reports, and correspondence, but is extremely difficult to use in print form. This site, part of Cornell University's Making of America Digital Library Collection, enables the user to keyword search the Records, making the whole information collecting process much easier. The full Official Records set is also available in printed form in the Genealogy Department at Jacksonville's Main Downtown Library.

United States Civil War Center
www.cwc.lsu.edu/

The Center operates as a Special Collections Department of the Louisiana State Library System, and acts as a clearinghouse for Civil War related information on the Web. To date, the Center has indexed over 9,000 links. This information is organized under three main areas: Civil War Information for articles, Civil War Resources for links, databases, images or other forms of information, and a small section on History Institutes.

Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in The Civil War
valley.vcdh.virginia.edu

This site seeks to approach the study of the Civil War in a slightly different way - by detailing life in two American communities, one Northern, one Southern, from the time of John Brown's Raid through the Reconstruction Era. The site contains thousands of original letters and diaries, newspapers, speeches, census and church records left by the people of Augusta County, Virginia and Franklin County Pennsylvania that reflect their feelings and experiences during these turbulent years.

Westward Expansion

Westward Ho!

The American Studies Department of The University of Virginia offers two books online that cover the early westward expansion of the United States:

The Journals of Lewis & Clark
xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/JOURNALS/toc.html

Details the Journey of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and their "Corps of Discovery" as they trekked across the continent to the Pacific from 1804 to 1806.

The Oregon Trail
xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/OREGON/oregon.html

An 1846 account by Historian Francis Parkman of his travels along the Oregon Trail.

The Oregon Trail
www.isu.edu/~trinmich/Oregontrail.html

A more detailed site with sections covering Historic places along the Trail, Fantastic Facts about The Trail, and Trail Archives, complete with full text of Trail diaries and books.

PBS: The American West
www.pbs.org/weta/thewest

Created as a companion to the Ken Burns' documentary of the same name, this PBS website offers a multimedia guided tour by proceeding chapter-by-chapter through each episode in the series. Also offered are selected documentary materials, archival images and commentary, as well as links to background information and other resources used to make the documentary. Other areas offer the user additional information and resources on the people, places, events that makes The American West such a fascinating subject for many.