This image was included as the 1847 sheet music cover illustration for "A Collection of Negro Melodies as Sung by A. F. Winnemore & His Band of Serenaders. Arranged for the Piano Forte by Augustus Clapp." The sheet music was written for minstrel shows. According to Dictionary.com a minstrel show is " a popular stage entertainment featuring comic dialogue, song, and dance in highly conventionalized patterns, performed by a troupe of actors, traditionally comprising two end men and a chorus in blackface and an interlocutor: developed in the U.S. in the early and mid-19th century." In other words, minstrel shows were musical and theatrical productions performed by whites who painted their faces black so that they looked like African American slaves. These shows were meant to entertain white audiences by making fun of black slaves, and the songs and dances that black slaves performed as part of their entertainment and religious traditions. This image depicts African Americans as worry-free and slap-happy people. However, the lives of freedmen and slaves were far from such a reality. The image also depicts the racist stereotypes of blacks by whites in the nineteenth century. This image is important as it contextualizes the early interpretation of "Jim Crow" in the mid-1800s. That is, "Jim Crow" was first used to describe the happy-go-lucky caricature of African Americans and the minstrels show genre that made fun of African Americans. The term "Jim Crow" gained popularity and was used after Reconstruction in the 1880s, 1890s, and early 1900s to refer to the segregation laws which mandated that whites and blacks be separated in public spaces. See also http://www.pbs.org/wnet/ historyofus/web07/segment6.html

Stephen Foster was a famous American songwriter in the nineteenth century who composed blackface minstrel songs. This PBS site provides information about minstrel shows in the nineteenth century from a definition, to the popularity of the shows, to their relation to African American culture. From the PBS site: Learn more about the history and legacy of the blackface minstrel show in these excerpts of interviews with historians Dale Cockrell, Eric Lott, Deane Root, Fath Ruffins, and Josephine Wright, writers Ken Emerson and Mel Watkins, and performers Nanci Griffith and Thomas Hampson.

Resources include:
1. About Stephen Foster
2. Listen to Foster's songs
3. How did blackface minstrelsy begin?
4. Why did it spread in the 1830s?
5. What was a blackface minstrel show?
6. Who went to the shows?
7. How were the minstrel shows racist?
8.Was blackface minstrelsy only about caricaturing blacks?
9. How did class frictions relate to blackface minstrelsy?
10. How did class issues relate to the race issues?
11. Although blackface minstrelsy was racist, did it have any benefit for African Americans?
12. What's the connection between blackface minstrelsy and rock and roll?
13. What legacy did blackface minstrelsy create for American culture today?
14. Should we change Foster's songs to remove their racist aspects, or not perform them?

For more information about African American Jubilee singers see http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/singers/.
While the above music sheet and illustration were used by whites to satirize African American Jubilee Singers, this website provides information about actual African American Jubilee Singers after the Civil War. The website describes a group of ex-slaves that traveled the United States and Europe to perform concerts to raise money for their school, Fisk University, in Tennessee. The music detailed the group’s religious experiences and their lives as slaves.

Resources for this Web site include:
1. "Jubilee Singers" film
2. Listen to Jubilee Songs
3. Read an excerpt from Andrew Ward's "Dark Midnight When I Rise"
4. Timeline
5.  Jubilee Singers: Frederick J. Loudin, Maggie Porter, Thomas Rutling, Ella Sheppard, George Leonard White
6. Fisk University

Photograph by Jack Delano in May 1940 from the Library of Congress. This image shows a sign that reads, "COLORED WAITING ROOM." Below the sign an African American man and woman wait for the bus in the designated area. This image shows the reality of Jim Crow Laws, or segregation laws, in North Carolina well into the twentieth century.

This site provides student and teacher resources for exploring Jim Crow Laws and segregation from the 1870s through the 1950s. This website was originally created for the PBS series, "The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow."

Resources include:
1. Jim Crow First Hand Narratives
2. Lesson Plans
3. Jim Crow Gateway - More online sources
4. Image Gallery
5. Jim Crow and Literature
6. Jim Crow Inside the South
7. Jim Crow History Resources

Explore the history of African Americans from the Jim Crow era to the Civil Rights Movement. This website is maintained by PBS in partnership with NPR.

Resources include:
1. Timeline of the Jim Crow era with links to descriptions of important people, places, and events.

Behind the Veil is an archive at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University that documents African American experiences during the Jim Crow Era. The website provides an in-depth overview of the project, as well as teacher resources and primary online documents.

Resources include:
1. Project Overview
2. Educator Resources
3. Excerpts of Narrative Accounts of African Americans who lived through the Jim Crow era from the book "Remembering Jim Crow"
4. Oral Interviews - A selection of 100 oral interviews that chronicle the lives of African Americans who lived during the Jim Crow era. From the Duke University Libraries' Digital Collections web site.

This site provides a sample of Jim Crow laws in various states.

Resources include:
1. Sample of Jim Crow Laws
2. Teacher Resources
3. Speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

This Web site provides information related to the era of Jim Crow, from the Freedmen's Bureau to accounts of African American' daily lives. This site is maintained by UC Berkeley and is a part of the university's digital library collection.

Ohio State University's Web site explores the subjects of sharecropping, lynching, race, voting restrictions, and Jim Crow during the Election of 1912. This site also provides primary visual resource materials that were published in popular magazines and newspapers.

Resources include:
1. The Race Problem
2. Race Relations in the South: Sharecropping, Lynching, Jim Crow
3. Race in the Election of 1912

Fifty years after the landmark Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education which mandated the desegregation of American schools, National Public Radio (NPR) presents a series of reports that examine the legacy of the decision as well as school busing in America.

Resources include:
1. Dale Cushinberry: School Life Before and After 'Brown' - Interview with Dale Cushinberry who was " a student at an all-black school in Topeka from 1952 to 1956 — before and after the Brown v. Board of Education ruling. He's now the principal of Highland Park High School in Topeka."
2. Interviewing Thurgood Marshall - Marshall was the "first African American to serve as a U.S. Supreme Court justice."
3. Museum Exhibit Explores Impact of 'Brown' - Reporter Allison Keyes walks us through an exhibit at the California African American Museum that explores the impact of the Brown decision. May 20, 2004.
4. Busing's Turbulent Legacy in Boston, Mass. - Boston's desegregation battles began 20 years after Brown with the 1974 order by a federal judge to bus black and white students across town to achieve racial balance. But the result was years of violence and lingering questions about the objectives of this grand experiment. The Tavis Smiley Show senior editor Phillip Martin reports.
5. 'Brown' Plaintiff John Stokes' Virginia Student Strike - Brown v. the Board of Education was actually an umbrella lawsuit including a number of cases challenging school segregation, and not just the case originating in Topeka, Kan. John Stokes was one of the plaintiffs covered under the Brown litigation. He helped lead a student strike of an all-black school because of wretched building conditions. As a result, a federal school integration case known as Davis v. Prince Edward County, Virginia was filed, and became a part of Brown. NPR's Tavis Smiley talks with Stokes.

Click here to see a list of more interviews about Brown v. the Board of Education and its legacy provided by NPR

This Web site provides an online exhibit of the legacy of Brown v. the Board of Education. From the LOC web site: On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court issued a decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, declaring that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." This decision was pivotal to the struggle for racial desegregation in the United States. This exhibition commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of this landmark judicial case.

Resources include:
1. Exhibition Overview
2. A Century of Racial Segregation
3. Brown v. Board of Education
4. The Aftermath
5. Exhibition Resources
6. Reading Materials for Teachers and Students

"Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000" is a is a resource for students and scholars of U.S. history and U.S. women's history. This Web site provides DBQs about women in U.S. history. The following DBQ is related to women and the anti-lynching campaign during the Jim Crow era.

Resources include:
1. Southern Women in the Anti-Lynching Campaign
2. More DBQs about Women and U.S. History

Charlotte Hawkins Brown was born in Henderson, North Carolina in 1883. Brown was an American educator who founded the Palmer Memorial Institute for African American students in 1902. This Web site is maintained by NCHistoricSites.org and describes the life, influence, and accomplishments of Brown. This site also includes a section on the experiences of Brown during the Jim Crow era as she traveled by railroad in the U.S.

Resources include:
1. Lives on the Railroad: Experiencing Jim Crow Travel
2. The Early Life of Miss Charlotte Hawkins
3. What One Young African American Woman Could Do: The Story of Dr. Charlotte Hawkins Brown and the Palmer Memorial Institute
4. Teaching Materials for Charlotte Hawkins Brown
5. More information...

This PBS Web site provides a synopsis of the debate between W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington over the strategies for improving black social and economic conditions in America. This site also provides a list of other primary resource materials including speeches, interviews, writings, and photos of the two men.

Resources include:
1. Synopsis of the Debate and Primary Resources
2. See also "Booker T. Washington, 1856-1915" from PBS's American Experience

This PBS Web site provides a synopsis of the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in 1865, and its influence on segregation during Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era.

Resources include:
1. Rise of the Ku Klux Klan
2. The Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s
3. The Relation of the Citizens' Council to the Ku Klux Clan

This PBS site provides information about Jim Crow Laws and the Freedom Riders, including a synopsis, images, and interviews with people who lived during the Jim Crow era.

This Web site is maintained by the Smithsonian Institute and provides resources related to Jim Crow in America, including a synopsis and primary visual resources.

Resources include:
1. Jim Crow Laws
2. White Only: Jim Crow in America
3. The Ku Klux Klan

This Web site is maintained by the Library of Congress and provides primary visual resources related to Jim Crow in America. A teacher's guide is provided which outlines ways that teachers can use visual resources in their classroom to engage students in discussion.

Resources include:
1. Primary Visual Resources
2. Teacher's Guide for Jim Crow in America Visual Resources
3. More Visual Resource Tools and Guides for Teachers and Students

This Web site is maintained by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and provides resources about "Early African American Perspectives on the Wilmington Race Riots of 1898."

Resources include:
1. Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 Overview
2. J. Allen Kirk's 1898 book, A Statement of Facts Concerning the Bloody Riot in Wilmington, N.C. Of Interest to Every Citizen of the United States
3. David Bryant Fulton's Hanover
4. Charles Chesnutt's The Marrow of Tradition

This Web site is maintained by the North Carolina Office of Archives & History and provides information about the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot. The Web site describes the mission of the site and Commission as follows: "In 2000, the General Assembly established the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission to develop a historical record of the event and to assess the economic impact of the riot on African Americans locally and across the region and state."

Resources include:
1. 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission Established by General Assembly
2. 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Report with Maps and Photos
3. PowerPoint Presentation about Wilmington Race Riot

This PBS Web site is part of the American Experience project and documents the experiences of nine African American boys who were falsely accused of raping two women in Alabama in 1931. The site includes primary resources, descriptions of people and events, and a teacher's guide for the Scottsboro Case.

Resources include:
1. PBS Film Description
2. Letter, Articles, and Speeches about the Scottsboro Case
3. Voices from Scottsboro
4. Scottsboro Timeline
5. Maps
6. People and Events
7. Teacher's Guide to the Scottsboro Case

For more information about this trial see "Famous American Trials The Scottsboro Boys Trials, 1931 - 1937" on the University Of Missouri-Kansas City School Of Law website: http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/ projects/FTrials/scottsboro/scottsb.htm.