Quintard Taylor's website brings black history alive
Of all the electronic resources available for anyone interested in Black history, www.BlackPast.org is the richest gold mine on the planet.
Developed by University of Washington history professor Dr. Quintard Taylor – the foremost historian of African Americans and African descendents in the West – BlackPast.org has attracted millions of visitors to its hundreds of free and easily-searched features since its launch in 2005.
“Our mission is to provide as much information as we can on the historical experiences of African Americans and of people of African ancestry all around the globe, to as many people as are interested and who have computer access,” Taylor says. “The main goal is to bring that information together at one source, one central location, and to then make it available to the entire world.”
So far, that includes people from more than 100 countries. The site’s most popular features, Taylor says, are the seven timelines featuring the history of the African diaspora from 5,000 B.C. to the present; the online encyclopedia with more than 1,700 entries; and the database of speeches from 1789 to now.
The most popular individual entry on the website is an encyclopedia blurb about Michelle Robinson – also known as Mrs. Barack Obama — which has been viewed by 41,861 people. The second most popular entry is the Bill Cosby “Pound Cake Speech,” his controversial scolding of youth and their parents from 2004, which has been read 39,000 times.
“We had 400,000 visitors in 2007, over one million visitors in 2008, and we’re already up to 320,000 for this year,” Taylor says. “This is not a University of Washington project, a Pacific Northwest project or even an American project – this is going all over the globe.”
Taylor and a small crew of graduate students started the site in 2004, when a student expressed concerned about the fact that the same questions kept coming up in classes – who was Frederick Douglass? What is the Negro National Anthem? Who is Booker T. Washington?
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Developed by University of Washington history professor Dr. Quintard Taylor – the foremost historian of African Americans and African descendents in the West – BlackPast.org has attracted millions of visitors to its hundreds of free and easily-searched features since its launch in 2005.
“Our mission is to provide as much information as we can on the historical experiences of African Americans and of people of African ancestry all around the globe, to as many people as are interested and who have computer access,” Taylor says. “The main goal is to bring that information together at one source, one central location, and to then make it available to the entire world.”
So far, that includes people from more than 100 countries. The site’s most popular features, Taylor says, are the seven timelines featuring the history of the African diaspora from 5,000 B.C. to the present; the online encyclopedia with more than 1,700 entries; and the database of speeches from 1789 to now.
The most popular individual entry on the website is an encyclopedia blurb about Michelle Robinson – also known as Mrs. Barack Obama — which has been viewed by 41,861 people. The second most popular entry is the Bill Cosby “Pound Cake Speech,” his controversial scolding of youth and their parents from 2004, which has been read 39,000 times.
“We had 400,000 visitors in 2007, over one million visitors in 2008, and we’re already up to 320,000 for this year,” Taylor says. “This is not a University of Washington project, a Pacific Northwest project or even an American project – this is going all over the globe.”
Taylor and a small crew of graduate students started the site in 2004, when a student expressed concerned about the fact that the same questions kept coming up in classes – who was Frederick Douglass? What is the Negro National Anthem? Who is Booker T. Washington?