Focus on
Blaxploitation Cinema
The recent success of Django Unchained illustrates the enduring legacy of Blaxploitation cinema, a genre that has influenced a wide range of filmmakers while also stirring up controversy regarding onscreen depictions of African Americans.
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DISPATCHES FROM
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
There are few resources that are more valuable to the student of history than original correspondence, which provides a voice to those who are often left out of mainstream secondary sources.
| Lesson Plans | Country Profiles | Focus On |
|---|---|---|
| Use the Oxford African American Studies Center to bring online learning into the classroom. | Vital statistics and reference articles on countries that have been central to the history of Africans and African Americans. | Explore photo essays on important events, people, and themes in African American history. |
GUEST SCHOLAR
Jeannette Brown
The book African American Women Chemists was inspired not only by the accomplishments of the scientists profiled, but by the mentors who guided them.
What's New
- 21 new Primary Source Documents
- 68 new online-only AANB articles
- 28 new online-only African biographies
- Interview with legal scholar Larry Gibson, author of Young Thurgood: The Making of a Supreme Court Justice (Prometheus Books, 2012)
- New lesson plans on the myth of Medea in African American literature and the competing philosophies of Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois
- New teacher resource page on the new Common Core State Standards in K-12 public schools
- Guest editorial by Jeannette Brown on women of color in the field of science.
- Visit the What’s New page for more details
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Feature
- Spring/Summer 2013 Highlights
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- Dictionary of African Biography: 28 new biographies, including Firmus, a 4th century revolutionary, and Rachid al-Ghannouchi, a leader of the Arab Spring in Tunisia.
- African American National Biography: 68 new biographies, including jazz greats Freddie Hubbard, Bobby Hutcherson, and Roscoe Mitchell; athlete and famous Olympics protester John Carlos; snake handler and entertainer Willa Mae Buckner; and Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Dennis Bell, among others.
- Updates to biographies of Richie Havens and Mumia Abu Jamal.
- Primary Sources: 21 letters with scholarly commentary, including a Petition for a Government Pension by Harriet Tubman (1898), a Correspondence between Benjamin Banneker and Thomas Jefferson (1791), a Letter from Frederick Douglass to William Lloyd Garrison (1846), and a Pledge of Loyalty from the Freed Slaves of Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose (1738). See the full list here.
- Interview with Larry Gibson
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Larry S. Gibson is a professor of law at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, where he teaches evidence, election law, and race and the law. His book, Young Thurgood: The Making of a Supreme Court Justice (Prometheus Books 2012), describes the environment, people, and events that shaped Thurgood Marshall's attitudes, work habits, and priorities in his formative years.
- Lesson Plans
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North Carolina teacher Matthew North presents a high school level lesson plan that explores the competing philosophies of Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois. In addition, an undergraduate lesson plan by Professor Michele Valerie Ronnick (Wayne State University) traces the ancient myth of Medea in W.E.B. Du Bois's first novel, Quest of the Silver Fleece (1911).
- Teacher Resources
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In 2012, 45 U.S. States and the District of Columbia adopted the new Common Core State Standards in K-12 public schools, emphasizing critical thinking and analytic reading in social studies. In the latest installment of Teacher Resources, Sarah Thomson, M.Ed., shows how educators can use AASC to create history lessons aligned with the new standards.
- Guide to Reference Works
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This new feature allows you to scroll through the tables of contents for each of the major reference works on the Oxford African American Studies Center, including the African American National Biography, Africana, Black Women in America, the Encyclopedia of African American History, as well as the newly added Dictionary of African Biography and the Encyclopedia of African Thought.
What's Inside
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Over 10,000 articles from Oxford's authoritative reference program — with primary source documents, images, maps, chart and tables, and much more!
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Search and Browse features allow you to focus and refine results by era and subject category.
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Primary Source Documents, with specially written commentaries, take you through the personal and public histories of African Americans.
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Charts and tables provide information on everything from demographics to government and politics to business and labor to education and the arts
