February 1, 2010. In celebration of Black History Month, explore multimedia websites created with Columbia University professors that document the significant contributions of African Americans throughout history.

The Amistad Digital Resource is a multimedia website that shares hundreds of rare and iconic photographs, audio and video clips, oral history interviews, maps, and descriptive text explaining significant themes and key events in African American history, from slavery to the 21st century. Funded by a grant from the Ford Foundation and originally conceptualized by Digital Knowledge Ventures in 2007, the site is in pilot phase and is developed by CCNMTL in collaboration with Manning Marable, professor of history and director of the Institute for Research in African American Studies at Columbia University. The Amistad Digital Resource is designed to enhance the ability of educators for grades K-12 to teach African American history as a fundamental part of the overall narrative of the United States and is publicly available to assist students of all ages.

Mapping the African American Past (MAAP) is a public website created to enhance the appreciation and study of significant sites and moments in the history of African Americans in New York from the early 17th-century through the recent past. The website is a geographic learning environment, enabling students, teachers, and visitors to browse a multitude of locations in New York and read encyclopedic profiles of historical people and events associated with these locations. The site is further enhanced by selected film and music clips; digitized photographs, documents, and maps from Columbia University's libraries; and commentary from Columbia faculty and other specialists. MAAP received the 2009 Award for Innovative Use of Archives from the Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York (ART).

Southside Chicago is a research archive that provides students with direct experience in social science research. This project is part of the Urban Research Workshop (URW), which is analyzing Chicago‘s Southside black communities, with particular focus on changes in these communities since the early 1990s. This archive currently contains digitized issues of the South Street Journal, a local community newspaper that has been a powerful voice of the Southside Community; several years‘ worth of back issues, dating from 1993 to 2006, have been donated to Columbia University for this project.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X Multimedia Study Enivronment (MSE)* presents Malcolm X's memoir with links to critical annotations that provide perspectives beyond the written word. This MSE provides four "lenses," or perspectives, that illuminate the political, cultural, global, and faith-based aspects of Malcolm X's life and legacy. In addition, the MSE features a rich multimedia archive of primary sources, including historical documents, images, and videos as well as original interviews with scholars and Malcolm X's contemporaries. *The Autobiography of Malcolm X MSE is open to Columbia faculty and students.