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Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Black History Month Resources

February is Black History Month and it's not hard to find a ton of resources on the Internet. However, sometimes it might be difficult to find "good" resources or ones that you might actually use.  So here are few and one new one that I'm particularly excited about, Mission US: Flight to Freedom!

The History Channel's Black History site has a great collection of quizzes, videos, images and information.

The National Archives. I've mentioned this in previous posts, but it's truly a fantastic site and they have put together a great set of resources that can be found here.

Letters of Note. I came across this site while reading through a blog. Letters of Note is a collection of "letters, postcards, telegrams, faxes and memos that are original and historical. Set up in a blog type format, it's a collection of confirmed tidbits of history that has the primary source material to go along with it. Pretty neat if I do say so myself and the reason for it being on this list- there's a letter from a former slave to his former master.


Mission US: Flight to Freedom. This is the one I'm most excited about! Mission US: Flight to Freedom is a fun and interactive role-playing game. It is the second in the series created by the people at Thirteen WNET. The first one was Mission US: For Crown or Colony. Players of Flight to Freedom assume the role of Lucy King who is a 14-year-old enslaved girl living in Kentucky in 1848.  The object of the game is to work to navigate her escape and journey via the Underground Railroad to Ohio.  The game can be played directly online or can be downloaded and installed on a computer.  FREE! Need to mention that word here. FREE! There is also an amazing set of teacher resources to go along with the game. You'll find DBQs, primary sources, visual aids, writing prompts and more. Take a look it's well worth it. Even if you don't plan to use it for Black History Month, you could use it for studying the Civil War.