Resources for Black History Month

2024 Theme: African Americans and the Arts

This year’s Association for the Study of African American Life and History Black History Month theme highlights the important contributions of African Americans in visual arts, dance, music, literature, cultural movements, and more. Explore different facets of African American history and culture with resources from JMRL and various other sources on this page.

Staff created book lists

Other JMRL resources

Digital Collections in the Digital Library
Events in the Calendar

the roland e. beauford sr. african american collection

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

Resources for historical research

Virginia Untold: The African American Narrative A project from the Library of Virginia to provide access to and encourage conversation around its pre-1865 African American history and genealogy records. View records and help transcribe them. Tell the untold story.

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.

Television News of the Civil Rights Era 1950-1970 Television News of the Civil Rights Era, 1950-1970, contains films from the nightly news from two local television stations in Virginia–WDBJ (CBS) Roanoke and WSLS (NBC) Roanoke. This rare footage includes full speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy, Richard M. Nixon, the governors of the Commonwealth of Virginia, as well as original footage of school desegregation, public meetings, local debates over civil rights matters, and interviews with citizens.

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.

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.