Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Black History Month Resource: Black Past.org, Remembered and Reclaimed

AfriClassical is pleased to announce its cooperation with:

Black Past.org, Remembered and Reclaimed:

An Online Reference Center for African American History Developed by Quintard Taylor, The Scott & Dorothy Bullitt Professor of American History, University of Washington, Seattle

WEBSITE DESCRIPTION
January 1, 2008

URL: www.blackpast.org

BlackPast.org is broadly conceived to provide reference information on all aspects of African American history. The website of approximately 2,000 pages is free and ungated. New features are being added to the site every day so please visit it often.

BlackPast.org includes:

1) An online encyclopedia featuring over 1,200 entries which describe people, places and events in African American history. These entries are written by more than 200 professional historians and students of history including many who are the leading experts on the subjects of their profiles. Their contributions make this website one of the largest online encyclopedias on the world wide web devoted exclusively to African American history.

2) More than 1,200 photos and illustrations on the historical experience of people of African ancestry.

3) The complete text of over 100 speeches by African Americans between 1789 and 2004.

4) Over 100 full text Primary Documents—court decisions, laws, organizational statements, treaties, government reports and executive orders which help describe the African American past.

5) Seven major timelines that show the history of people of African ancestry from 5,000 B.C.E. to today.

6) Three bibliographies that list the major books on African American history categorized by subfield and time period. The largest of these bibliographies, the one on general African American history, has over 1,200 entries.

7) Four “Gateway” Pages with links to 50 digital archive collections, 75 African American museums and research centers, 12 genealogical research websites and over 400 other website resources on African American history.

8) A Multimedia section which audio tapes from the 1963 Open Housing Hearings conducted by the Seattle City Council. Open Housing was the most intensely debated political question in Seattle in 1963 and 1964. These tapes are provided by the Seattle Municipal Archives exclusively to blackpast.org to host. They provide a view of the debate in 1963.

This section also houses one minute clips from various documentaries including Quilombo Country: AfroBrazilian Villages in the 21st Century, The Carl Maxey Story, In Pursuit of Social Justice: An Oral History of the Early Years of Diversity Efforts at the University of Washington and Rising From the Rails: The Story of the Pullman Porters. These clips provide a glimpse of the various documentaries now available or soon to be available on African American history. Eventually clips spanning all of African American history across the United States will be located here.

9) Perspectives on African American History features descriptions and discussions of important but little known events or episodes in African American history or commentary about developments often by individuals who participated in or witnessed them. Many of these accounts are instant primary sources.

Website Statistics: This is the combined total for bothBlackPast.org and the Taylor Faculty Website which carried this information before Feb. 1, 2007. The first group shows “Life of the Site” statistics. The second group displays the statistics for 2007 only.

Number of Visits Since Jan. 1, 2006 1,293,985
Number of Hits Since, Jan. 1, 2006 17,378,020
Number of Nations originating Visits Since 2006 104

Number of Visits for 2007 821,722
Number of Hits for 2007 11,422,706

BlackPast.org will make accessible to a world wide audience both new and existing information that heretofore has been scattered across the Web. It is rapidly becoming the “Google” of African American history.

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