Black History Month - The Library of Congress's "Story Maps" on the Civil Rights Movement

This is a collection of primary source materials for teachers, specifically focusing on their new "Freedom" Story Map. I also want to use the opportunity to look briefly at earlier story maps - including one on the background of the Brown vs Board of Education school integration case and another on African American performance styles. I'll also add a few other links to historic map resources and other items in the story map collection.

Jay LeBlanc

2/20/20264 min read

In case you are not already familiar with the Library of Congress's Story Map collection, let me start with a general overview. This collection was initially created in 2018 and is intended to combine interactive and immersive web applications with traditional primary sources to tell a different story of the Library’s collections! From a couple of their blog articles about the goal of the collection:

"Story Maps are created within a Geographic Information Systems (GIS)-based software platform created by Esri, and combine text, images, multimedia, and interactive maps to create engaging online narrative experiences. Under a program spearheaded by the Geography and Map Division, collection specialists from across the Library have produced Story Maps with content from the hidden and not-so-hidden collections of the library. This new program provides a unique opportunity to pull together materials from all corners of the Library and to give voice to stories within the collections."

The newest story map was introduced in a blog article this past Tuesday (linked for your reference below). I'm not going to repeat the whole thing here, but I want to include a few features to give you an idea what to expect

The design of the story maps is a mix of labelled maps,

primary sources like pictures and documents, and

edited videoclips of interviews with people who went

through the events being described. The map to the

right marks several important places in the Civil Rights'

Movement of the early 1960s - then some of those

events will have more detailed maps (like the one below).

One of the parts I think is most interesting are the interviews - usually 4-6 minutes edited clips taken from much longer segments in the Library of Congress vaults. These are NOT interviews with famous people, but instead little-known "soldiers" in the civil rights struggle. Below I have included two screenshots to give you an idea what to expect - unfortunately I can't play the videos here because of the edits made by the LOC in the YouTube links (but I have listed them below in the references):

As I mentioned earlier, the Library of Congress does have other Story Maps for a variety of other topics, including three that are related to Black History Month. One examines the legal and strategic path to the Brown v Board of Education decision in 1954:

A second story map focuses on African American performance styles:

And a third one I just discovered examines the story of Susie King Taylor, an African-American nurse during the Civil War (integrating her story into the events of the war and the places she was during that conflict):

Just as a reminder, I already have links to basic information about the Library of Congress in the History, Civics, and Geography Resources page (accessible in the pull-down menu of Resource Pages above, OR click on this underlined sentence). So for this blog post, I'm going to focus specifically on the Maps and Geography collection, with links to new material and specific links brought up during the Q&A portion (which I always enjoy - people bring up ideas I would never have thought of).

Specific resources related to the Story Maps collection:

"Freedom: The African American Struggle for Rights & Justice in Words and Images" (story map), Library of Congress, Feb 2026, https://www.loc.gov/ghe/cascade/index.html?appid=4d76cf42caf84b069b0e0235b6996efd

"The Path Towards Desegregation: Brown v. Board of Education" (story map), Library of Congress, Apr 2024, https://www.loc.gov/ghe/cascade/index.html?appid=4e4889c845574eed89ef3bbc8d74168a

"Resources for African American History Month: Story Map of the Civil Rights Movement" (blog article), Library of Congress Blogs (Teaching with the Library: Primary Sources and Ideas for Educators), Feb 2026, https://blogs.loc.gov/teachers/2026/02/resources-for-african-american-history-month-story-map-of-the-civil-rights-movement/?loclr=eatlcb

"Roots and Routes: Mapping African American Expressive Culture" (story map), Library of Congress, Mar 2025, https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/69b8a5ece33541ec88ea68439d6dae46

"Susie King Taylor: An African American Nurse and Teacher in the Civil War" (story map), Library of Congress, Dec 2021, https://www.loc.gov/ghe/cascade/index.html?appid=5be2377c246c4b5483e32ddd51d32dc0

"Using Primary Sources to Explore Historic Events: Library of Congress Story Maps" (blog article), Library of Congress Blogs, Dec 2021, https://blogs.loc.gov/teachers/2021/12/using-primary-sources-to-explore-historic-events-library-of-congress-story-maps/?loclr=blogtea

General information on the LOC's African American and teacher resources:

About the Geography and Maps Reading Room - https://www.loc.gov/research-centers/geography-and-map/about-this-research-center/

"Brown v. Board at Fifty: “With an Even Hand” (exhibition items), Library of Congress Exhibitions, 2004, https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/brown/brown-overview.html?loclr=blogtea

"Commemorating the 70th Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education: Library of Congress Resources", Library of Congress Blogs, Apr 2024, https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2024/04/commemorating-the-70th-anniversary-of-brown-v-board-of-education-library-of-congress-resources/

"Exploring African American History with Library of Congress Teacher Resources", Library of Congress Blogs, Jan 2025, https://blogs.loc.gov/teachers/2025/01/exploring-african-american-history-with-library-of-congress-teacher-resources/

LOCMAPS Twitter/X Account - https://x.com/LOCMaps

"Ask a Librarian" - Library of Congress research assistance (in this case specific to the Geography/Maps collection) - https://ask.loc.gov/map-geography/

Library of Congress Teachers Guides - https://www.loc.gov/programs/teachers/getting-started-with-primary-sources/guides/ Two specific PDF tools to keep in mind: