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Keyword searches should use words that would be found in speeches and written documents. This often includes legal terms and professional names, for example, suffrage is used more often than voting. Below is a compilation of keywords you may find helpful in searching the American Memory collections and other materials.

Jackie Robinson Tuskegee Airmen Harlem Renaissance Langston Hughes Zora Neale Hurston

Joe Louis Louis Armstrong Ella Fitzgerald George Washington Carver

Buffalo Soldiers (also see 9th and 10th Calvary) Benjamin O. Davis Mary McLeod Bethune Matthew Perry

Web Sites

African American Odyssey contains a wide array of important and rare books, government documents, manuscripts, maps, musical scores, plays, films, and recordings. See the Special Presentation, African American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship for information on equal rights from the early national period to the twentieth century.

African American Perspectives: Pamphlets from the Daniel A. P. Murray Collection, 1818-1907 presents a panoramic and eclectic review of African-American history and culture, from the early nineteenth through the early twentieth centuries. Among the authors represented are Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Benjamin W. Arnett, Alexander Crummel, and Emanuel Love. Progress of a People is a Special Presentation of African American Perspectives, 1818-1907.

American Variety Stage: Vaudeville and Popular Entertainment, 1870-1920 is a multimedia anthology selected from various Library of Congress holdings. This collection illustrates the vibrant and diverse forms of popular entertainment, especially vaudeville, that thrived from 1870-1920.

Creative Americans: Portraits by Carl Van Vechten, 1932-1964 consists of 1,395 photographs taken by American photographer Carl Van Vechten (1880-1964) between 1932 and 1964. The bulk of the collection consists of portrait photographs of celebrities, including many figures from the Harlem Renaissance.

Jackie Robinson and Other Baseball Highlights, 1860s-1960s tells the story of Jackie Robinson and baseball in general. The Special Presentation, Baseball, the Color Line, and Jackie Robinson, 1860s-1960s, is a timeline that tells the story of the segregation and later integration of the sport.

Other Resources:

Bearden, Romare. A History of African American Artists: From 1792 to the Present. New York: Pantheon Books, 1993.

Cooper, Michael L. Playing America's Game: The Story of Negro League Baseball. New York: Lodester Books, 1993.

Estell, Kenneth. The African American Almanac Sixth Edition. Washington DC: Gale Research Center, 1994

Falkner, David. Great Time Coming: The Life of Jackie Robinson, from Baseball to Birmingham. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995.