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The African American Experience in Cyberspace

The African American Experience in Cyberspace

A Resource Guide to the Best Web Sites on Black Culture and History

by Abdul Alkalimat

Pocket-sized guide to the best websites on Black interest and culture

The World Wide Web is the greatest source of information used by students and teachers, media and library professionals, as well as the general public. There is so great a flow of information that it is necessary to have a tool for guiding one to the best and most reliable sources. This important new guide to the African American experience in cyberspace fills this need for people in all areas of Black Studies and Multiculturalism. There is no search engine list that can match the quality of sites to be found in this book.

Alkalimat provides an easy to use directory to the very best websites that deal with the African American Experience. The first section covers every aspect of African American history, while a second section deals with a diverse set of topics covering society and culture. Each chapter has a brief essay, extensively annotated on the five best sites for each topic, and then a group of good sites and a short bibliography. This book is designed for a course at the high school or college level. This book should be kept near every home computer that people use to surf the web for Black content.

Most people have found out that the major corporations and governments have been the dominant uploaders of information into cyberspace. This volume is different because it is a serious introduction to the full democratic use of the web. These websites will introduce people to the people who are serious about ending the digital divide because they are busy uploading information about the most excluded and marginalized people, the African American community. Many of these sites are being established by Black Studies academic programmes, as well as community based organizations and institutions.

Abdul Alkalimat is a founder of the field of Black Studies and Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. A lifelong scholar-activist with a PhD from the University of Chicago, he has lectured, taught and directed academic programs across the US, the Caribbean, Africa, Europe and China. His activism extends from having been chair of the Chicago chapter of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the 1960s, to a co-founder of the Black Radical Congress in 1998.

'Not only an invaluable resource for all interested in the Black experience, but it is also testimony to the proliferation of African American voices on the Internet' - Mark Kornbluh, Director, MATRIX: The Center for the Humane Arts, Letters, and Social Sciences On-Line, Michigan State University 'Provides an extensive annotation and an interpretation framework for black studies ... no college or community library should be without it' - Barnes and Noble 'This stellar array of Africana digital archives, primary source material, streaming audio and video, syllabi, e-texts, music, photos, art, literature, bibliographies and webliographies should be in every personal and institutional library whose users want to use cyber-rources to better understand Africa and the Diaspora' - Dorothy Washington, Librarian for the Black Cultural Center at Purdue University 'Highly recommended' - CHOICE
Preface
Introduction: The Black experience in cyberspace
Guide to History Sites: Overview
Best History Sites
1. General
2. Africa
3. Slave Trade
4. Slavery
5. Emancipation
6. Rural Life
7. Great Migrations
8. Urban Life
9. Deindustrialization Crisis
10. Information Society
Guide to Society and Culture Sites: Overview
1. Family and Heritage
2. Health
3. Education
4. Food
5. Women
6. Politics and Civil Rights
7. Religion and the Church
8. Business
9. Labour
10. Science and Technology
11. Military
12. Law
13. Language and Literature
14. Music
15. Performing Arts
16. Visual and Applied Arts
17. Gays and Lesbians
18. Media
19. Sports
20. Internet communications
Published by Pluto Press in Dec 2003
Paperback ISBN: 9780745322223

127mm x 178mm