Mission:
To present a new interpretation of African-American history and culture that focuses on thirteen defining migrations — either from Africa, Haiti, and the Caribbean to America, or within the United States — from the 1450s to the present, and to showcase the ethnic and cultural diversity of the African-American population.

Background:
With the unanimous support of the Congressional Black Caucus, the United States Congress appropriated $2.4 million in 2002 for the creation of a digital archive documenting African-American migration to be administered by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The result is the newly launched In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience, a project of the New York Public Library's Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture. A tribute to the extraordinary diversity and history of the 35 million African Americans living in the United States today — African Americans, Africans, Afro-Caribbeans, Central Americans and South Americans of African descent, and Africans and Afro-Caribbeans born in Europe — the site places migration at the center of the African-American experience, and explains that only two migrations were coerced — the transatlantic and domestic slave trades. Eleven others, including Haitian immigration in the 18th and 19th centuries, the great migration from the South to the North from 1916 to 1918, and the return migration to the South that began in the early 1970s and continues to this day, were voluntary movements. The site contains more than 16,500 pages of essays, books, articles, and manuscripts, 8,300 illustrations, and sixty maps, and is designed to be a catalyst for a national discussion on what it means to be African American.

Outstanding Feature:
The Web site offers a narrative, dozens of captioned illustrations, maps, research resources, and lesson plans for teachers for each of the thirteen migrations. In addition, each migration section contains a bibliography and a list of related Web sites.