The history of African-Americans in Champaign-Urbana has gone virtual! A new project, called eBlackChampaign-Urbana, is working to bring together the documentation of this important history online to find new ways to celebrate, remember and use it into the present and future. The eBlackChampaign-Urbana website (http://www.eBlackCU.net) features digitized newspaper clippings, photographs, church programs, obituaries, research papers, scrapbooks, maps and more on the local African-American experience. All are welcome to add to this database and use whatever content is in it for whatever purposes they wish.
Why a website? By 2012 most homes in the historic "North End" of Champaign and Urbana will have access to low-cost high-speed broadband Internet connectivity through the Urbana-Champaign Big Broadband (UC2B) initiative, http://uc2b.net. At the eBlackCU project we want to create the digital infrastructure to enable all past, present and future residents of Champaign-Urbana to become inspired by the rich heritage of the local African-American community and its struggles for equality in housing, education, employment, financing, as well as for an end to discrimination and racism. Through this project and others we hope to involve and engage everyone in the use of digital technology for life-long learning. The technology enables us to share this history across Champaign-Urbana, and across the globe, but everyone has to be an active participant in the technology for the project to matter.
The eBlackCU project is experimenting with the best ways to animate this archive of local history. Projects so far have included creating bibliographies/webliographies of local African-American history; creating research guides to primary so...
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...CU team. Front row (l to r): Rachel Harmon, Dominique Johnson, Deidre Murphy. Bak row: Project Director Noah Lenstra, Jaime Carpenter, Reginald Carr, Supervising Investigator Abdul Alkalimat and Jelani Saadiq.
Photo2 - Tinsley's Cleaners - located on North First Street in the 1950s and 1960s, one of many African-American owned businesses over the years in Champaign-Urbana.
Photo3 - The eBlackChampaign-Urbana logo.
Historical Facts
Did you know...
...that Champaign county has continuously had an African-American population since the late 1840s?
...that there were over ten African-American newspapers and newsletters in Champaign-Urbana throughout the Twentieth Century?
...that there have been African-American communities not only in Champaign-Urbana, but also in places such as Sydney, Homer, Broadlands, Rantoul and other places throughout Champaign County?
Harlem soon became known as the “capital of black America” as the amount of blacks in this community was very substantial. Many of the inhabitants of this area were artists, entrepreneurs and black advocates with the urge to showcase their abilities and talents. The ...
To Z of African Americans. New York: Facts on File, 2011. N. pag. African-American History Online. Web. 1 Mar. 2014. .
Emory Douglas was born and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan, until 1951 when he and his mother relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area. At the time San Francisco was the hub of African American organizations that arranged events aimed at overthrowing the social injustices within the Bay Area’s black communities. As a minor immersed within the community Douglas became captivated by Charles Wilbert White, an African American social realist artist whom created various monochrome sketches and paintings, “transforming American scenes into iconic modernist narratives.” Not long after, Douglas was incarcerated at the Youth Training School in Ontario, California where he spent countless hours working in the penitentiary’s printery. It was not until the mid-1960’s when Douglas registered in the City College of San Francisco, majoring in commercial art and graphic design. Soon after, Douglas went to a Black Panthers rally, where he encountered Bobby Seale and Huey Newton; during ...
David W. Blight's book Beyond the Battlefield: Race, Memory and the American Civil War, is an intriguing look back into the Civil War era which is very heavily studied but misunderstood according to Blight. Blight focuses on how memory shapes history Blight feels, while the Civil War accomplished it goal of abolishing slavery, it fell short of its ultimate potential to pave the way for equality. Blight attempts to prove that the Civil War does little to bring equality to blacks. This book is a composite of twelve essays which are spilt into three parts. The Preludes describe blacks during the era before the Civil War and their struggle to over come slavery and describes the causes, course and consequences of the war. Problems in Civil War memory describes black history and deals with how during and after the war Americans seemed to forget the true meaning of the war which was race. And the postludes describes some for the leaders of black society and how they are attempting to keep the memory and the real meaning of the Civil War alive and explains the purpose of studying historical memory.
The African-American Years: Chronologies of American History and Experience. Ed. Gabriel Burns Stepto. New York: Charles Scribner 's Sons, 2003.
This project has helped me in a way to make a decision on how important this upcoming election is to my heritage as a black man and to take full advantage of this opportunity.
understand is that the systems put in place in that era still effect black Americans, and racial issues were
Enslaved Families of Monticello (n.d.) Slavery at jefferson’s Monticello: paradox of liberty, Retrieved on March 16, 2012 from the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture
The main focus of this essay is on the discrimination against African Americans in Cleveland After World War I and why discrimination began to increase after the war. I first chose this topic because it has always been a topic that sparked my interest and I’ve always wanted to know more about the African American community. I figured when am I going to get a better opportunity to gain more knowledge on the topic of discrimination against African Americans then in an African American Studies class. I also think it is really important to know about the past history of our city and it is just as important to know about the people who were here many years before us especially the African American community. These things are important to know because they are what makes up Cleveland today especially because we live in a diverse city.
For in an extraordinary career spanning three crucial decades, the man and the history became one, so much so that it is impossible to deal with the history of black people without touching, at some point, the personal history of Carter Woodson, who taught the teachers, transformed the vision of the masses and became, almost despite himself, an institution, a cause and a month. One could go further and say that the scientific study of black history began with Woodson, who almost single-handedly created the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History and the prestigious Journal of Negro History. Not content with these achievements, he ventured into the field of mass education, creating the annual black history celebrations.
The image of African-American’s changed from rural, uneducated “peasants” to urban, sophisticated, cosmopolites. Literature and poetry are abounded. Jazz music and the clubs where it was performed at became social “hotspots”. Harlem is the epitome of the “New Negro”. However, things weren’t as sunny as they appeared.
In order to fully understand the importance of Historically Black Colleges and Universities as well as the importance of their preservation and need for continuation, one...
This time in the post World War II era, many African Americans had began to become a more urbanized center of population, around 1970. (Inmotionaame, pg. 1) The regular population included about 70 percent of just the natural population to live in more urbanized cities. (Inmotionaame, pg. 1) Soon African Americans dominated, having 80 percent of their community to live and take the same benefits in more urbanized centers of the Unites States. (Inmotionaame, pg. 2) Only about 53 percent of African Americans and others who seemed to migrate stayed in the same area around the South. (Inmotionaame, pg. 2)
African American Review 32.2 (1998): 293-303. JSTOR.com - "The New York Times" Web. The Web. The Web. 11 April 2012.
This article discusses the use of the Internet in the classroom and how it can be used to personalize education. The effectiveness of the Internet in the classroom is evaluated at the Henry Hudson Regional School in Highlands, New Jersey. A faculty member at the school explains that the Internet was introduced to their classrooms to expand limited electives, advanced placement, and foreign language offerings. The use of the Internet allows small schools to provide an education that would not be economically possible without it.