Shmoop salutes those — from the biggest names to the most ordinary people — who’ve shaped the African American experience over nearly 400 years.

From David Walker to Toni Morrison, from Malcolm X to Jay-Z, we’ve got you covered.

Featured Shmoop Article

• 8 African-American Women Who Changed the World
• 18 Important Moments in Black History

Featured US History

• Jim Crow
• Civil Rights Movement: Desegregation
• Civil Rights Movement: “Black Power” Era
• Brown v. Board & Admissions Quotas
• Race in the American Revolution
• Race in Antebellum America
• Race in Causes of the Civil War
• Race in the Civil War
• Race in Reconstruction
• Race in FDR’s New Deal
• Race in WWII
• Race in the History of Rock & Roll
• Blues Music History
• Desegregation in the NFL

Featured Poetry, Literature, & Biographies

• “Harlem” (Dream Deferred), by Langston Hughes
• “The Weary Blues”, by Langston Hughes
• “The Negro Speak of Rivers”, by Langston Hughes
• “We Real Cool”, by Gwendolyn Brooks
• Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston
• “King of the Bingo Game”, by Ralph Ellison
• Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
• Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison
• Sula, by Toni Morrison
• The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
• A Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry
• Native Son, by Richard Wright
• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, by Frederick Douglass
• Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe
• Theme of Race in Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
• Theme of Race in To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee

NEW Shmoop Teacher’s Editions

• Teaching Jim Crow
• Teaching the Causes of the Civil War
• Teaching Huckleberry Finn
• Teaching To Kill a Mockingbird
• Teaching Their Eyes Were Watching God

Featured Music

• Empire State of Mind, by Jay-Z and Alicia Keys
• Purple Haze, by Jimi Hendrix
• Say It Loud (I’m Black and I’m Proud), by James Brown
• Strange Fruit, by Billie Holiday
• Through the Wire, by Kanye West
• When Doves Cry, by Prince

Much More Coming Soon
Any requests? Send us your suggestions.

Generations of students and teachers have been forever changed by author J.D. Salinger and his acclaimed novel The Catcher in the Rye.  Salinger, the reclusive author of Catcher and numerous other books and stories, has died, but his stories live on in the canon of great literature. We at Shmoop have always had reverence for Salinger – a man who broke the boundaries of literature and brought us one of the most sympathetic and complex young characters of all time, Holden Caulfield. Although Holden is Salinger’s best-known character, most of Salinger’s writing featured incredibly intelligent, sensitive, spiritual children or adults who had trouble functioning in the real world.  Many would say that J.D. Salinger himself fit this description as well. Here at Shmoop, we continually find inspiration and revelation in Salinger’s work, and we salute him.

Explore Salinger’s Work on Shmoop

• J.D. Salinger Biography
• The Catcher in the Rye
  • Teaching The Catcher in the Rye
  • Catcher in the Rye Learning Guide eBook for Kindle
  • Catcher in the Rye Learning Guide eBook for Nook
• De Daumier-Smith’s Blue Period
• For Esmé — With Love and Squalor
• A Perfect Day for Bananafish
• Franny and Zooey
• Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: an Introduction
• Teddy

“I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all… What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff – I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be.”
- The Catcher in the Rye Quotes

Shmoop announces a slew of new resource for teachers and a revamped Teacher Resources Center. Check out this video clip to see what teachers say about using Shmoop in the classroom.

Teacher’s Editions in Shmoop Literature

6 New in Shmoop Literature:

• Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand
• The Chairs, by Eugene Ionesco
• The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas
• Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott
• The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• Tartuffe, by Molière

3 New in Shmoop Poetry:

• “Because I could not stop for death,” by Emily Dickinson
• “Bright Star, would I were stedfast as thou art,” by John Keats
• “Paul Revere’s Ride,” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

1 New in Shmoop Bestsellers:

• The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger

2 New in Shmoop US History:

• The 1960s
• The West

3 New in Shmoop Biography:

• Flannery O’Connor
• George Eliot
• Harriet Beecher Stowe

5 New in Shmoop Music:

• Fortunate Son, Creedence Clearwater Revival
• Paparazzi, Lady Gaga
• Rocket Man, Elton John
• Say it Loud (I’m Black and I’m Proud), James Brown
• Strange Fruit, Billie Holliday

One of our mantras at Shmoop is a paraphrased quote from Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening“…

“we have miles to go before we sleep.”

So please keep your suggestions and requests coming and stay tuned for even more to love on Shmoop in 2010.

Gobble Gobble from Shmoop!

For those who are making room in your stomach for a delicious Thanksgiving holiday, we don’t want your brain to get jealous. Blues, romantic poets, and Sherlock Holmes — we’ve dished it up for you this week.

• Pilgrims & Puritans of Colonial New England: Who were the Pilgrims and what the heck did they have to do with turkey?
• Native American History: What happened between 1790 and 1890 to cause the American “Indian” population to drop by more than 50%?

New Moon Shatters the Box Office Record for Worldwide Opening Weekend

• VOTE NOW: Are you Team Edward or Team Jacob?
• Twilight on Shmoop
• New Moon on Shmoop
• (New!) Eclipse on Shmoop

Pull up a Chair and Feast on Our 11 New Learning Guides

2 New in Shmoop Literature:

• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson

4 New in Shmoop Poetry:

• “Annabel Lee,” by Edgar Allan Poe
• “Birches,” by Robert Frost
• “La Belle Dame Sans Merci,” by John Keats
• “She Walks in Beauty,” by Lord Byron

1 New in Shmoop Bestsellers:

• Eclipse, by Stephenie Meyer

4 New in Shmoop US History:

• Blues History
• Country Music History
• Market Revolution
• Women’s Movements

Get up close and personal with the Twilight characters on Shmoop

The theme of this year’s CSLA conference was “serendipity.” Ellen shared her “5 Rules of Serendipity” and spoke about the critical role that Teacher Librarians play as mentors, researchers, guidance counselors, and police officers of the digital revolution inside their schools.

- E-textbooks accounted for about 3 percent of total U.S. college textbook spending during the current school semester, according to Student Monitor LLC in Ridgewood, New Jersey. Digital textbooks may reach 20 percent of total textbook sales in five years, CourseSmart’s Lyman said.

“Print will expire faster in the textbook world than in the trade book world,” Epps said. “The technical barriers will disappear and five years is enough for the content to catch up with demand. The potential is there.”

My, How We’ve Grown! Did You Know:

• Shmoop is the #1 High School educational publisher on the Amazon Kindle, with 300+ titles currently available
• Shmoop is the #2 educational App developer for iPhone/iPod, with 250+ Apps currently available

Full Article: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=azBjsoux51D4

Now, we just have to figure out who is going to sit next to whom:

These dinner guests will get along like – you know – peas and carrots, ice cream and pie, Aunt Nene’s green jello and marshmallows (how the heck does she get those marshmallows to float, anyway?)…

1. Scout Finch and Huck Finn:
Watch a childhood crush develop as Scout and Huck share exploits, plan adventures, and show each other their slingshots. When nobody’s looking, they’ll steal the silverware, find treasures in the hole of a neighbor’s tree, and meet up with Jim on the river.

2. Holden Caulfield and Hamlet:
These two sensitive, maladjusted young men should have enough in common to keep them talking the whole night. Both privileged? Check. Both lovesick? Check! Both despise liars and phonies? Check! Both going to tackle the world’s hypocrisy head-on? Checkmate!… Whenever they can get around to it, anyway.

3. Grendel and Luna Lovegood:
Letting Grendel into the room is a fast way to kill a good dinner party, so don’t seat him next to anyone faint-of-heart or vegetarian. The un-fazeable Luna Lovegood will make Grendel feel right at home by asking him all about mythical monsters and swapping tales of run-ins with humankind. And if Luna’s magic wand can’t keep Grendel in check, maybe her radish earrings will.

4. Porphyria’s Lover and Madame DeFarge:
Porphyria’s Lover is a passionate, poetic, thinky-feely kind of guy who likes long walks on the beach and staying up all night to admire the corpse of a strangled girlfriend. None of your other guests will want to get near him, so throw him in a corner and use Madame DeFarge as a buffer zone. Her attitude? Bring it!

5. Alice and The Walrus:
Who has a better resume for spending an evening with The Walrus? Alice has extensive singing-walrus experience from traveling through the Looking-Glass, and with her mind so radically opened by her adventures in Wonderland, she’ll be the only guest who has any idea what “cu-cu-cachoo” means.

Only the brave host would seat these duos together. If the mashed potatoes start flying, don’t say that we didn’t warn you…

1. Edgar Allan Poe and Ulysses S. Grant:
Nothing is more embarrassing than watching friends and family getting blitzed at a dinner party. Poe liked his absinthe and Grant was a reported alcoholic, so if you want to give your other guests a fighting chance at the wine, make sure to stick these two at opposite ends of the table.

2. Jay Gatsby and The Giver:
Letting these two get on a roll is bound to make everyone depressed. Everything was better in the good old days, they’ll tell you: the men had more hopeful futures, the women were more loving – heck, even the colors were brighter!

3. J. Alfred Prufrock and Teddy Roosevelt:
Blankets don’t get much wetter than J. Alfred Prufrock, so be careful not to seat him next to a carouser like Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy was so famously high-energy that when he invited a foreign ambassador to join him for a day of sports, the ambassador is said to have collapsed from exhaustion.

4. Hedda Gabler and The Misfit:
Sometimes, having too much in common can be a bad thing. Hedda Gabler is bored, manipulative housewife who breaks up relationships, destroys careers, and encourages people to commit suicide for entertainment. Similarly, The Misfit is an escaped convict who murders an entire family along the roadside because he wants to do something mean before the police catch him. The last thing these two need, aside from cutlery, is an evening picking each other’s brains.

5. Emily Dickinson and Boo Radley:
The only thing worse than a conversation gone wrong is no conversation at all. These two notorious recluses might not be the liveliest guests at the table. But, who knows, maybe they would hit it off after passing soap carvings and crumpled-up poems to each other under the table.