Black History Month

Below you will find a selected list of websites that contain valuable information about the African American experience in the United States.

"We should emphasize not Negro History, but the Negro in history. What we need is not a history of selected races or nations, but the history of the world void of national bias, race hate, and religious prejudice." --- Carter Woodson (on founding Negro History Week, 1926)

The Gordon Avenue Library has a special African-American collection.  The Roland E. Beauford Sr., African American Collection,  includes a selection of the best books and other materials, fiction and non-fiction, by or about African Americans.

Special Programs

Documentary Film Series: Central Library | Feb 23 | 7pm
TRACES OF THE TRADE: A STORY FROM THE DEEP NORTH by producer/director Katrina Browne
The filmmaker discovers that her New England ancestors were the largest slave-trading family in U.S. history. She and nine cousins retrace the Triangle Trade and gain powerful new perspectives on the black/white divide. more info


Regional Author Series: African-American Cemeteries Central Library | Feb 5 | 2pm
Lynn Rainville, anthropological archaeologist, founding director of the Tusculum Institute, and research professor in the humanities at Sweet Briar College, talks about her research into African-American cemeteries. Her purpose is to better understand enslaved, free black, and post-bellum communities as evidenced through their mortuary practices.

Skin is Just the Cover | Feb 19 | 2pm
A family program best for school age children and older. Join inspirational speaker Alex-Zan (Charles Alexander) as he describes his experiences in 1959 when Venable Elementary and Lane High School were desegregated. He will show today's students how to triumph over getting "Locked Out" to become "Locked In."


Selection of Films at JMRL with Black History Themes

  • Locked out: the fall of massive resistance
    The story of the tragedies and triumphs of the children of Virginia who found themselves on the front lines of a cultural war that desegregated Virginia's public schools and forever altered American history.
  • Flying for freedom: untold stories of the Tuskegee Airmen
    Recounts the story of how some of the best pilots, mechanics and servicement in the United States military during World War II had to fight a battle against discrimination at home in order to be able to fight the war abroad.
  • Black wheels: history of blacks in NASCAR and other motor sports
    Showcasing the often overlooked achievements of African-Americans in motor sports, this groundbreaking program showcases Black influence from the invention of stock car racing in the 1920's through today.
  • Faubourg Tremé: the untold story of Black New Orleans
    Long ago during slavery, Faubourg Tremé was home to the largest community of free black people in the Deep South and a hotbed of political ferment. This film presents the area's mysterious and neglected past. Shot largely before Hurricane Katrina and edited afterwards, the film is both celebratory and elegiac in tone.

PBS shows about Black History - during February

Selected Books

Adult Fiction written by African-American Writers: a selection of books in the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library

LIFE UPON THESE SHORES: chronicles the most important figures and events, both famous and overlooked, in African-American history.

AMERICAN UPRISING: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt.

Books on African American History

Top 10 Nonfiction

Top 10 Black History Books for Youth

Top 10 Black History Audio


  • African American Heritage in Virginia
    A Virginia Foundation for the Humanities initiative designed to encourage tourism to African American heritage sites and organizations in Virginia while increasing knowledge of the African-American experience.
  • The African-American Migration Experience
    Compiled by The New York Public Library and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. The Web site is organized around thirteen defining migrations that have formed and transformed African America and the nation. Each migration is presented through five units and the site presents more than 16,500 pages of texts, 8,300 illustrations, and more than 60 maps.
  • The Africana Heritage Project: Researching African American Genealogy, History and Culture
    The mission of this project is to rediscover precious records that document the names and lives of slaves, freed persons and their descendants, and make that information available on this free, public access website.
  • Afro-American Sources in Virginia: A Guide to Manuscripts
    Presents the information derived from a survey of the resources in Virginia repositories, describing the principal collections of interest to scholars concerned with the Afro-American experience.
  • Encyclopedia Britannica’s Guide to Black History
  • Explorations in Black Leadership
    This site features a collection of interviews of leaders in the black community. Conducted chiefly by Julian Bond, national chairman of the NAACP and professor of history at the University of Virginia, these oral histories focus on issues of black leadership and the transformational role of the civil rights movement in America.
  • Freedman's Bureau - Virginia
    Established in the War Department by an act of March 3, 1865, the Bureau supervised all relief and educational activities relating to refugees and freedmen, including issuing rations, clothing and medicine. The Bureau also assumed custody of confiscated lands or property in the former Confederate States, border states, District of Columbia, and Indian Territory.
  • The Geography of Slavery in Virginia
    This is a digital collection of advertisements for runaway and captured slaves and servants in 18th- and 19th-century Virginia newspapers. Building on the rich descriptions of individual slaves and servants in the ads, the project offers a personal, geographical and documentary context for the study of slavery in Virginia, from colonial times to the Civil War. One of the projects of the Virginia Center for Digital History.
  • Race and Place: An African-American Community in the Jim Crow South - Charlottesville, Virginia
    Race and Place is an archive about the racial segregation laws, or the 'Jim Crow' laws from the late 1880s until the mid-twentieth century. The focus of the collection is Charlottesville in Virginia. The archive contains photos, letters, two regional censuses and a flash map of the town of Charlottesville. This research effort is a collaborative project of the Virginia Center for Digital History and the Carter G. Woodson Institute of African and Afro-American Studies.
  • Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture
    Another project of the Virginia Center for Digital History. The funding for this site was provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts.
  • Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database
    Information on almost 35,000 slaving voyages that forcibly embarked over 10 million Africans for transport to the Americas between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. It offers researchers, students and the general public a chance to rediscover the reality of one of the largest forced movements of peoples in world history.