Research Guides: Black Lives Matter: Historical Contexts

Introduction to Historical Contexts

To understand where we are, we need to understand how we got here.

Below are some resources that cover the full range of the African American Experience. Dive into the the timeline, the subtopic pages, or link out to the other library guides to do your own research.

Slavery and the Abolitionist Movement

Reconstruction Era and Jim Crow Laws

The Great Migration and Black Wall Street

Black Lives Matter Movement

1620s - 1860s

1830s - 1870s

1860s - 1870s

1860s - 1960s

1906 - 1921

1910s - 1970s

2013 - present

Civil Rights Movement

early 1900s - late 1960s

Resources to Get Started

The 1619 Project by Nikole Hannah-Jones
The New York Times Magazine's award-winning "1619 Project" issue reframed our understanding of American history by placing slavery and its continuing legacy at the center of our national narrative. This new book substantially expands on that work, weaving together eighteen essays that explore the legacy of slavery in present-day America with thirty-six poems and works of fiction that illuminate key moments of oppression, struggle, and resistance. The essays show how the inheritance of 1619 reaches into every part of contemporary American society, from politics, music, diet, traffic, and citizenship to capitalism, religion, and our democracy itself.
Life upon These Shores:Looking at African American History, 1513-2008 by Henry Louis Gates
Traces African American history from the arrival of the conquistadors to the election of Barack Obama. Informed by the latest, sometimes provocative scholarship and including more than seven hundred images--ancient maps, fine art, documents, photographs, cartoons, posters--Life Upon These Shores focuses on defining events, debates, and controversies, as well as the signal achievements of people famous and obscure.

Black Freedom Struggle in the United States: A Selection of Primary Sources
A curated selection of primary sources for teaching and learning about the struggles and triumphs of Black Americans. Developed with input from Black history scholars and advisors, this resource is freely available on the web and to libraries for anyone studying U.S. Black history.
158 Resources to Understand Racism in America
These articles, videos, podcasts and websites from the Smithsonian chronicle the history of anti-black violence and inequality in the United States
The Case for Reparations by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
Charlottesville Syllabus: Readings on the History of Hate in America
The history of racism and ethnic hate in America is long and deep. What are the cultural, economic, and political currents that led us here? As Audre Lorde wrote in 1991: “Racism cuts a wide and corrosive swath across each of our lives.” This small selection of articles reminds us of the complexity of this statement. As always, free access to the underlying scholarship cited in the stories is available to everyone.
Historical Foundations of Race
The term “race,” used infrequently before the 1500s, was used to identify groups of people with a kinship or group connection. The modern-day use of the term “race” is a human invention. The National Museum of African American History & Culture, Smithsonian Institute, reviews how the concept of race became woven in the fabric of US history and identity.

History of White Supremacy and Institutionalized Racism

Institutionalized Racism: A Syllabus
The United States has seen escalating protests over the past week, following the death of George Floyd while in custody of the Minneapolis police. Educators everywhere are asking how can we help students understand that this was not an isolated, tragic incident perpetrated by a few bad individuals, but part of a broader pattern of institutionalized racism. Institutional racism—a term coined by Stokely Carmichael (later known as Kwame Ture) and Charles V. Hamilton in their 1967 book Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America—is what connects George Floyd and Breonna Taylor with Ahmaud Arbery, Philando Castile, Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Emmett Till, and the thousands of other people who have been killed because they were black in America.

Right in Michigan's Grassroots by JoEllen M. Vinyard
Throughout the twentieth century, Michigan became home to nearly every political movement in America that emerged from the grassroots. Citizens organized on behalf of concerns on the "left," on the "right," and in the "middle of the road." Right in Michigan's Grassroots: From the KKK to the Michigan Militia is about the people who supported movements that others, then and later, would denounce as disgraceful---members of the Ku Klux Klan during the 1920s, the followers of Father Charles Coughlin in the 1930s, anti-Communists and the John Birch Society in the post- World War II era, and the members of the Michigan Militia who first appeared in the 1990s.
Beneath the Surface of White Supremacy by Moon-Kie Jung
From the birth of the United States to the contemporary police shooting death of an unarmed Black youth, Beneath the Surface of White Supremacy investigates ingrained practices of racism, as well as unquestioned assumptions in the study of racism, to upend and deepen our understanding.