Here’s a document that I’ve compiled for Black History Month, 2016.  You can find it here.

Go on an adventure into the rich history of the State, Long Island Region, and Local History of African Americans who lived labored, loved, invented, composed, played, contributed, fought, and died here.   Here you’ll find topics raging from slavery, manumission (freedom papers), abolition, emancipation, the Underground Railroad, daily life, the struggle against denigration and segregation, and for civil rights, education, dignity, equality.  Jupiter Hammon (America’s first black poet), Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Gerrit Smith, John Brown, Booker T. Washington, Samuel Bolton (the pickle king of Long Island), Lewis Lattimer, Hugh Mulzac, Martin Luther King, Jr., Louis Armstrong, Jr., Jackie Robinson, Whoopie Goldberg, all appear here, and are just the most visible part of the history of the State and Long Island.  All have left signature impressions, whether living here, or just passing through.   Take a look at the  classified links for readings, videos, listenings, that follow, that can only begin to hint at the local African American experience and tremendous contributions to our locale, made from the roots in the contact and colonial eras to our own day.