Celebrating Black History Month 2022
Black History Month is a time to celebrate the achievements and history of African Americans. The library has put together this guide to showcase just a few of the many resources available both in the library and online.
Photo of Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Gwendolyn Brooks from the 1982 Yellow Jacket Annual.
Poetry.org's "About Gwendolyn Brooks"
A selected list of books @rmclib that include poems by Gwendolyn Brooks
"To Prisoners" is a video, based on her poem of the same name, "that examines the plight of unjustly incarcerated prisoners" by Harvard University professor Elisa New.
Events and Studies in U.S. History
Biographies, Autobiographies, Memoirs
Fiction, Poetry and Folktales
Arts and Entertainment
Children's Books
Vevo/YouTube's Playlist for Black History Month, 2022
A mix of audio and video
Playlists from Naxos Music Library
A great selection of classical, jazz, and folk music by Black composers. Use the buttons in the player to start and control the music.
You may be prompted to sign in with your R-MC credentials depending on your location and network connection.
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Naxos Black Composers, Pt. 1
Four hours of music from the Naxos Music Library, including Ellington, Joplin, Dett, and many more. -
Naxos Black Composers, Pt. 2
Three more hours from the Naxos Music Library, including Johnson, Walker, Baker, and more!
In January 2022 Maya Angelou becomes the first Black woman to be featured on a U.S. quarter. Read more in this NPR article.
Black History in Film
From Porgy and Bess
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Black Film Archive This link opens in a new windowBlack Film Archive celebrates the rich, abundant history of Black cinema. We are an evolving archive dedicated to making historically and culturally significant films made from 1915 to 1979 about Black people accessible through a streaming guide with cultural context.
Academic Video Online provides access to hundreds of films that document Black History. Be sure to sign in with your Randolph-Macon credentials to view films in their entirety.
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Black History - AVON
Film biographies, interviews, histories, important events, and movements, find them all at Academic Videos Online. -
The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross
The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross is an award-winning six-part Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) public television series written and presented by Harvard University scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. It aired for the first time in the fall of 2013. -
John Lewis: Good Trouble
An intimate account of legendary U.S. Representative John Lewis’ life, legacy and more than 60 years of extraordinary activism. After Lewis petitioned Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to help integrate a segregated school in his hometown of Troy, Alabama, King sent “the boy from Troy” a round trip bus ticket to meet with him. From that meeting onward, Lewis became one of King’s closest allies. He organized Freedom Rides that left him bloodied or jailed, and stood at the front lines in the historic marches on Washington and Selma. He never lost the spirit of the “boy from Troy” and called on his fellow Americans to get into “good trouble” until his passing on July 17, 2020.
Links
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African Americans and Jim Crow: Repression and Protest, 1883-1922 This link opens in a new windowPrimary source materials on African-Americans during the Jim Crow era in American history.
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African Americans and Reconstruction: Hope and Struggle, 1865-1883 This link opens in a new windowPrimary source materials on African-Americans during the Reconstruction era in American history.
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African American Heritage - NARALearn more through records, photographs, writings, and social media postings.
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National Museum of African American History and Culture
Exhibits and online collections at your fingertips. -
African American History MonthA compilation of federal government agencies that brings together their collections of African American resources.
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Virginia Untold - The African American Narrative"Providing users with access to an expanded collection of resources for researching African American history in Virginia.'
Contribute!
Take part in helping to preserve and make African American resources more widely available by transcribing documents from the past.
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National Archives and Records Adminstration
"The National Archives holds a wealth of material documenting the African American experience. Explore our records documenting African American History and help transcribe these records to make them more searchable and discoverable in the Catalog." -
Smithsonian Institution Records"The African American story is central to our nation’s history. Collections documenting the contributions of African Americans in countless fields, along with the struggles and achievements inherent to their stories, can be found in the records of every Smithsonian museum. Help us make these collections more accessible through transcription."
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Library of Virginia - Virginia Untold
"The names of millions of African Americans--free and enslaved--who lived, worked, worshiped, loved, and died in Virginia, are buried deep in the archival records and manuscript collections housed at the Library of Virginia. Virginia Untold: African American Narrative seeks to find these long silent voices. Whether contained in local court and state government records, private papers and business records, or newspapers and journals from the time, the untold narrative of a people is waiting to be discovered."