What is a great African American cultural artifact?

Bring in some jazz music.

Great idea!

A picture of a quilt that was made by slaves in the South. Many of them contained hidden maps that showed the stops on the Underground Railroad to the north.

I would go the route of art, music, dance
or
Cook up some soul food.

The most valuable artifacts (IMHO) are the stories of old people.

GA @Judi To pile on that idea – Find a way to interview several people (Nursing Home, age 70 or older) and journal there stories.

Gullah baskets

I think it would be helpful if you would define what you mean by artifact. To me, it means a thing rather than a story but you might be defining it more broadly.

I think Janbb’s suggestion of a quilt is excellent. There may be some interesting folk art portraits as well that could be interesting. Musically I might go for pictures and history of the instruments themselves as they are real artifacts. Songs are more of a living history and cultural legacy. If you research it you may be able to find some info on the history of the banjo. I read that banjos are descended from African instruments. As such it is very possible, I don’t know if this is proven, that banjos came to American music by way of slave’s contributions to music. Could be interesting to learn more about it and find some early examples of what those first banjos looked and sounded like.

African-American painters like Romare Bearden and Jacob Lawrence – both 20th century – have painte wonderful paintings of black life and thte Great Migration.

If you go to the library, just go to the cultural section. If you can’t find an idea there, maybe you could bring in a book like “ROOTS” by Alex Haley.

Here is an interesting regional art form from Georgia-carving walking sticks with animal and reptile forms in them
http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Multimedia.jsp?id=m-561

Here’s a link to a banjo in the Smithsonian
http://www.historyexplorer.si.edu/artifacts/resource.asp?id=1507