Black History Month
February
Resources for Black History Month
Sources collected by the Department of Social Sciences
Southern Maine Community College
This page contains links to a variety of resources celebrating and giving historical context to the history of black people in America, with a special emphasis on their experience in Maine.
History
How Clara Battease became Mary Heuston is an independence story. Her interview provides a unique record of the efforts African Americans in Maine made to secure safety and self-determination in a slaveholding republic.
The Black Guards were African American Army soldiers sent to guard the railways of Maine during World War II, from 1941 to 1945. The purpose of their deployment was to prevent terrorist attacks along the railways, and to keep Maine citizens safe during the war.
This exhibition examines the day-to-day lives of the soldiers in three locations in Maine who stood watch during a time of racial segregation in the country and the military—a watch that embodied the incongruity of loyal citizen-soldiers who straddled the complex transitions of racism—a citizenship that was exercised as a matter of convenience during war-time.
At the Virginia Museum of History and Culture in Richmond’s exhibit on 400 years of African American history, curator Karen Sherry described the first Africans who were bought to the Virginia colony as slaves in 1619.
Psychology
Pioneers in the Field of Mental Health
Check out this site for information on contributions by Black Americans to the field of mental health, statistics about mental health in the Black population, voices in the Black community on the topic of mental health, and links to resources.
The 1840 census marked the first time the government asked questions about mental health. But twenty-one years before the Civil War, with over two million slaves in America, this question will uphold a racist and pernicious lie that was already spreading at that time.
Politics
Vanguard
How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All
In Vanguard, historian Martha S. Jones offers a new history of African American women’s political lives in America. She recounts how they defied both racism and sexism to fight for the ballot, and how they wielded political power to secure the equality and dignity of all persons.
How to Deconstruct Racism One Headline at a Time
Baratunde Thurston explores the phenomenon of white Americans calling the police on black Americans who have committed the crimes of ... eating, walking or generally "living while black." In this profound, thought-provoking and often hilarious talk, he reveals the power of language to change stories of trauma into stories of healing -- while challenging us all to level up.
Black Lives Matter
#BlackLivesMatter was founded in 2013 in response to the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s murderer. Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, Inc. is a global organization in the US, UK, and Canada, whose mission is to eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes. By combating and countering acts of violence, creating space for Black imagination and innovation, and centering Black joy, we are winning immediate improvements in our lives.
Arts and Literature
Good Movies to Watch
The Thirteenth
Selma
Hidden Figures
The Banker
One Night in Miami
The Hate You Give
The Secret Life of Bees
Good Books to Read
"How to be an Antiracist" by Ibram X. Kendi
"Their Eyes Were Watching God" by Zora Neale Hurston
"I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou
"The Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison
"The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness" by Michelle Alexander
A very cool virtual tour of the exhibit!
African American artist Ashley Bryan is one of Maine’s cultural treasures. A noted painter, printmaker, illustrator, author, puppet maker, and storyteller, Bryan, who turned 97 on July 13, came to Maine as a member of the first class to attend Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 1946. He began to summer regularly in the Cranberry Isles, a group of islands off Mount Desert Island, in the late 1940s, and has lived on Little Cranberry Island year-round since the late 1980s. In 2019, Henry Isaacs and Donna Bartnoff Isaacs, longtime friends and neighbors of Bryan’s on Little Cranberry Island, donated over fifty works of art including paintings, drawings, and prints, and numerous other items including copies of his books. The core of this exhibition is drawn from this generous gift.
