First Blacks in The Americas

The African Presence in The Dominican Republic

Links

In this sub-section, a list of active links will be found connecting to other online resources addressing the issues of Blackness and/or slavery in the Americas.

UNIVERSITY-BASED DEPARTMENTS, CENTERS AND INSTITUTES

African-American Resource Center--University of Pennsylvania - This is a resource center dedicated to enhancing the quality of life of faculty, staff, and students at the University of Pennsylvania with a particular focus on those of African descent.

Africana Studies and Research Center--Cornell University - The Center is a site of critical and theoretical dialogues related to topics such as the philosophy of "Africana Thought." The department, whose research is supported and enabled by its John Henrik Clarke Library, has advanced toward a more central engagement with gender and sexuality in areas such as Africana women's studies and Black queer studies. 

Afro-Latin American Research Institute at The Hutchins Center--Harvard University - supports research on the history and culture of people of African descent the world over and provides a forum for collaboration and the ongoing exchange of ideas. It seeks to stimulate scholarly engagement in African and African American studies both at Harvard and beyond, and to increase public awareness and understanding of this vital field of study.

Department of African American Studies--Northeastern University - The Department of African American Studies is an interdisciplinary department with a mission of teaching and conducting research in social sciences and humanities fields on the historical and contemporary experience of Africans and African Americans. The Department offers a major, combined majors, two minors, and a host of elective courses based in interdisciplinary approaches to the study of history, culture, language, political systems, and behaviors of peoples of African ancestry in the United States, the Caribbean, Africa, and throughout the African Diaspora.

Department of African American Studies--Pennsylvania State University - The Department of African American Studies is a meeting ground for scholars, students and thinkers committed to the study of African American and African-descended peoples in the Americas.

Department of Africana Studies--University of Pittsburgh - The Department of Africana Studies at the University of Pittsburgh is devoted to the critical and systematic examination of the cultural, social, political, and historical experiences of Africans on the continent and in the diaspora.

Department of Afro-American Studies--University of Wisconsin-Madison - The Department of Afro-American Studies is committed to bringing academic research to the broadest possible audience, within and beyond the walls of the university. We believe that the deepest understanding of the complex reality of race in America requires a truly interdisciplinary approach, one that draws on history and literature, the social sciences and the arts.

The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition--Yale University - It is dedicated to the investigation and dissemination of knowledge concerning all aspects of chattel slavery and its destruction. 

The Harriet Tubman Resource Centre on the African Diaspora--York University - This is a digital research facility that focuses on the history of the African diaspora and the movement of Africans to various parts of the world, particularly the Americas and the Islamic lands of North Africa and the Middle East. The Tubman Centre includes a digital library and repository. 

The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database--Emory University - This database offers and interactive map that displays information and links related to the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

USC Center for Black Cultural and Student Affairs (CBCSA) - The CBCSA is a department that works toward creating an optimal learning environment for students of African descent at the University of Southern California.

OTHER INSTITUTIONS AND RESOURCES

The Origins of American Slavery -- AP Central--The College Board - This site provides an essay written by Dr. Philip D. Morgan from Princeton University related to slavery and the slave trade.

African Diaspora - Institute of Cultural Diplomacy - This site offers a brief introduction of the African diaspora across the world. It provides a table illustrating the world’s top twelve countries with members of the African Diaspora. The Dominican Republic ranks number 5 in the chart. 

African Diaspora Consortium - The mission of the "African Diaspora Consortium (ADC)" is to impact the educational, economic, and artistic outcomes and opportunities of Black populations across the African Diaspora. It focuses its attention and develops partnerships in countries (e.g., the Caribbean region, Europe, Latin America, and North America) where African descendants were historically and culturally dispersed during the transatlantic slave trade and/or different migration periods.

African Americans and Slavery - This website provides links to academic essays, books, maps, videos, newspaper articles from the 19th century with pictures and descriptions.

American Beginnings: The European Presence in North America 1492-1690 - This is a section of the National Humanities Center‘s website sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities. It contains primary resources in U.S. history and literature thematically organized with notes and discussion questions.  

Black in Latin America--PBS - A series hosted by Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. on the African legacy in several Latin American countries including the Dominican Republic. The series looks at issues of race and culture in Latin American and Caribbean countries where historically African influenced music and beliefs systems co-exist alongside European cultural motifs.

International Decade of People of African Descent--United Nations - The International Decade for People of African Descent, proclaimed by General Assembly resolution 68/237 and to be observed from 2015 to 2024, provides a solid framework for the United Nations, Member States, civil society and all other relevant actors to join together with people of African descent and take effective measures for the implementation of the programme of activities in the spirit of recognition, justice and development.

Lowcountry Digital History Initiative - African Laborers for a New Empire: Iberia, Slavery, and the Atlantic World - This online exhibition examines the beginnings of Iberian expansion into the Americas in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when political and religious leaders in Spain, Portugal, and colonial Spanish America established arguments supporting the use of enslaved Africans—and limiting other forms of coerced labor—in ways that would greatly influence the development of slavery in the Atlantic World.

National Archives - This section of the National Archives website provides pdf versions of federal records documenting the history of American slavery and freedom from the founding period of the federal government in the late eighteenth-century through the modern Civil Rights era. In particular, records of the U.S. District Courts, U.S. Customs Service, and the Freedmen's Bureau yield insights into this topic.

Oxford African American Studies Center - The Oxford African American Studies Center combines edited reference works with technology to create a comprehensive collection of scholarship available online to focus on the lives and events which have shaped African American and African history and culture.

Parallel Histories: Spain, the United States, and the American Frontier / Historias Paralelas: España, Estados Unidos y la Frontera Americana - This is a bilingual, multi-format English-Spanish digital library site that explores the interactions between Spain and the United States in America from the fifteenth to the early nineteenth centuries. A cooperative effort between the National Library of Spain, the Biblioteca Colombina y Capitular of Seville and the Library of Congress, the project is part of the Library of Congress Global Gateway initiative to build digital library partnerships with national libraries around the world.

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture -- In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience -   This site provides information about the transatlantic slave trade as well as other topics related to the African-American migration experience. It includes images, maps and educational materials.  

Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive - A thematically organized, four-part historical archive devoted to the scholarly study of slavery from a multinational perspective. This is part of the Gale Digital Collections and suscription is required to access the database.

Slavery and Remembrance - A collaboration of UNESCO’s Slave Route Project, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, and dozens of sites and museums across the globe, Slavery and Remembrance aims to broaden the understandings of a shared past shaped by slavery and slave trade. 

Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture - This new museum, the Smithsonian’s 19th, is the only national museum devoted exclusively to the documentation of African American life, art, history and culture.

The Slave Route--La Ruta del Esclavo--UNESCO - Launched in 1994 in Ouidah, Benin, “the Slave Route project: Resistance, Liberty, Heritage” contributes to a better understanding of slavery in the world. It is connected to the action plan of the International Decade for people of African Descent (2015-2024).

Understanding Slavery Initiative (USI) - The Understanding Slavery initiative (USI) is a national learning project which supports the teaching and learning of transatlantic slavery and its legacies using museum and heritage collections. 

Videoteca Chango Prieto - This site contains audiovisual resources compiled by Soraya Aracena over the years as part of her ethnographic fieldwork research into Afro-Dominican culture. It showcases musical genres and dances from a diverse ethnic heritage that includes Haitians, West Indians, Cubans and descendants of slaves in the Dominican Republic; carnival celebrations, death rituals; harvest celebrations— a legacy of freemen community from the U.S that settled in what is today known as Samaná Province in the northeast; folk medicine, fashion, art, children’s games, body decoration and much more.