Pomona College Receives the Personal Archives of Myrlie Evers-Williams
The collection, containing thousands of items focuses on her life after moving to California in 1964 after the assassination of her husband Medgar Evers. The Mississippi state archives are home to the Medgar Wiley and Myrlie Beasley Evers Papers, covering their early years in that state.
Rice University to Relocate Statue of Its White Supremacist Founder
The board of trustees of Rice University has decided the statue of William Marsh Rice will no longer be at the center of the Academic Quadrangle and will be presented with historical context and information about the university’s founder, including his ownership of enslaved people.
A Photograph Is Discovered of the First Black Graduate of Yale College
For many years, it was believed that Edward Bouchet was the first Black graduate of Yale College in 1874. But nine years ago, new research discovered that Richard Henry Greene of the Class of 1857 was the first Black graduate. Now a photograph of Dr. Greene has been discovered.
Scholars Enhance FBI Photographs From Bloody Sunday
Photographs taken by FBI photographers from the ground and in surveillance aircraft were declassified in 2015, but have never been enlarged and enhanced via hi-resolution scans until now. A major question is why these photographs remained classified for 50 years.
Bryn Mawr College Removes the Name of Its Racist Former President From Its Library...
Martha Carey Thomas was the second president of Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. She was a graduate of Cornell University and earned a Ph.D....
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Acquires Massive Photographic Archival of Black History
The Roland L. Freeman Collection is a massive compilation of assignment and project work from a career that spans more than 50 years of documenting Black communities, public figures, and folk art and artisans. It consists of nearly 24,000 slides, 10,000 photographic prints, 400,000 negatives, and 9,000 contact sheets.
The University of South Carolina’s First Building Named to Honor an African American
The University of South Carolina has renamed a residence hall to honor Celia Dial Saxon, who was born enslaved in 1857 but later had a 57-year career as an educator in South Carolina. Saxon attended the Normal School on the University of South Carolina campus when it was integrated during Reconstruction.
Yale University Awards Degrees to Two of its First Students
James W. C. Pennington (1808-1870) and Alexander Crummell (1819-1898) studied at Yale from 1834 to 1837 and 1840 to 1841, respectively. Because they were Black, however, the university did not allow them to register formally for classes or matriculate for a degree. They could not participate in classroom discussions or access library resources.
Johns Hopkins University Obtains an Archive of Materials on the Early Life of Billy...
The new collection includes the earliest known photo of Billie Holiday—a posed studio shot taken in 1917 when she was 2 years old — ephemera such as programs from clubs, hand-written set lists, and a grocery shopping list. The collection also includes 140 taped interviews with friends and colleagues of Holiday.
New Africana Studies Fellowship Created at Georgia State University
The department of Africana studies at Georgia State University has announced the establishment of the Jacqueline Rouse-Doris Derby Africana Studies Fellowship program. The program honors two women who played a significant role in the development of the Africana studies program at the university.
Eleven Colleges and Universities Receive Grants Relating to Blacks From the National Archives
Recently the National Archives announced 47 grants totaling $6,510,701 for projects in 27 states and the District of Columbia to improve public access to historical records. Many of these grants relate to African Americans.
Huge Number of the Nation’s Political Leaders Have Director Ancestors Who Enslaved People
New research by Reuters has found that of the 536 members of the current U.S. Congress, at least 100 have ancestors who had ties to the institution of slavery. More than one quarter of all U.S. Senators have an ancestor who enslaved at least one person. Two justices of the U.S. Supreme Court and 11 of the nation's 50 governors had ancestors who were involved in slavery.
Study Seeks to Fill in the Gaps in African American Ancestral History
The 1870 federal census recorded formerly enslaved African Americans by name, and though it is a vital tool for genealogical research, many African Americans are still not able to trace their family members to or beyond this document. A new study attempts to shed some light on the ancestral history of African Americans prior to 1870.
Six HBCUs Receive Funding for Historic Preservation of Campus Buildings
Six historically Black colleges and universities are receiving grants from the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund of the National Trust for Historial Preservation to preserve historic buildings on campus.
Americans Overwhelmingly Support Teaching the Current Impacts of Racism in Public Schools
Recent data from the Gallup Center on Black Voices indicate that more than three in four Americans support curricula that teach students about the current impacts of racism.
Huge Number of the Nation’s Political Leaders Have Direct Ancestors Who Enslaved People
New research by Reuters has found that of the 536 members of the current U.S. Congress, at least 100 have ancestors who had ties to the institution of slavery. More than one quarter of all U.S. Senators have an ancestor who enslaved at least one person. Two justices of the U.S. Supreme Court and 11 of the nation's 50 governors had ancestors who were involved in slavery.
Morgan State University Museum Added to the National Register of Historic Places
In 1935, Lillie Jackson was elected president of the Baltimore Branch of the NAACP. Under her leadership, the NAACP membership rose from less than 200 in 1935 to over 25,000 by 1946. She remained president until 1970. Her home was made into a museum and later ownership was transferred to Morgan State University,
Howard University Completing Work on the Renovation of the Home of Mary Church Terrell
Mary Church Terrell's home at 326 T Street NW in Washington, D.C. was built in 1894. She and her husband Robert Heberton Terrell, an educator and law professor at Howard University occupied the home between 1899 and 1913. In accordance with Terrell's wishes, the home was bestowed to Howard University in 1987. With the help of a federal grant, the home is now being restored.
Berkeley Professor to Design Emory University’s Memorial to the Enslaved
In 2021, Emory University announced plans to develop memorials on its Atlanta and Oxford campuses to honor the enslaved individuals who are part of Emory’s history. The university has selected the Hood Design Studio of Oakland, California to develop plans for the memorials.
University of South Carolina Celebrates the 150th Anniversary of the Enrollment of Its First...
Most people believe that the first Black students admitted to flagship state universities in the South occurred in the early 1960s. But this is not the case. Henry E. Hayne, the son of an enslaved woman and a White planter, enrolled at the University of South Carolina in 1873.
Black Students Who Integrated the Mississippi University for Women Honored
African American undergraduate students Diane Hardy, Barbara Turner and Laverne Greene, and graduate students Jacqueline Edwards, Mary Flowers and Eula Houser, stepped foot on the campus of Mississippi University for Women in 1966, facing all manner of ridicule to open the door for future generations of African American students.
Harvard University Establishes the Black Teacher Archive
The archive consists of journals and newsletters created by members of Colored Teachers Associations that captured the political and social efforts of Black educators’ activism from the Jim Crow era to the Civil Rights Movement. The old journals and bulletins chronicle the acts of resistance in places where Black educators fought against injustice in education under Jim Crow.
Davidson College Decides to Keep the Name of an Enslaver on a Main Campus...
Davidson College in North Carolina has decided not to rename Chambers Building, the main academic structure on campus. The building is named for Maxwell Chambers who made a contribution to the college in 1855 that allowed the educational institution to continue operations. He also donated five enslaved people to the college.
Harvard Announces a Grant Program to Address Systemic Inequities for Descendants of Slavery
The Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery Initiative will offer annual funding up to $350,000 for long-term projects and $25,000 for smaller projects that address systemic inequities for descendants of slavery.
Duke University Acquires Major Collection of Civil Rights Photographer Danny Lyon
The collection encompasses Lyon’s work with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and his continued documentation of the movement up to the present day. The collection includes nearly 8,500 individual images, most of which have never been published or seen outside of Lyon’s studio.
Vanderbilt University Acquires the Dom Flemons Collection
The collection includes research materials on Black cowboys, musical instruments, an Edison phonograph with several playable wax cylinders, historical sheet music, art pieces, memorabilia, personal gifts, autographed records, and materials documenting Flemons’ 20-year professional music career.
Loyola University of Maryland Publishes Report on Its Ties to Slavery
Over the past two decades, many of the nation's leading university's have issued reports on their historical ties to slavery. Now, Loyola University of Maryland in Baltimore has issued its findings.
New Online Database Exposes the Horrors of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study
The collection consists of more than 3,000 reproduced copies of correspondence, memoranda, meeting minutes, reports, and scientific articles regarding the 40-year U.S Public Health Service Study that withheld treatment from Black men with syphilis so researchers could track the progression of the disease.
Collection of Papers by Elijah E. Cummings Is Bequeathed to Morgan State University Library
The estate of Congressman Elijah E. Cummings has gifted Morgan State University with a large collection of Cummings' personal belongings. The collection will be showcased and studied by archivists at the university's library.
Global Black Writers in Translation Series Is Launched by Vanderbilt University Press
Global Black Writers in Translation, a new trade series launched by Vanderbilt University Press, will publish works by African-descended authors translated into English in an effort to expand public knowledge of Black literature.
Yale Library Acquires Digital Collection of Langston Hughes Papers
In a recent December upload, the Yale University Library added a collection of papers from Black poet Langston Hughes to the school's online archive. The collection contains correspondence between Hughes and other authors and civil rights activists of his time.
Yale Issues Formal Apology After Research Finds Historic Ties to Slavery
"Today, on behalf of Yale University, we recognize our university’s historical role in and associations with slavery, as well as the labor, the experiences, and the contributions of enslaved people to our university’s history, and we apologize for the ways that Yale’s leaders, over the course of our early history, participated in slavery," says Yale University President Peter Salovey, and Josh Bekenstein, senior trustee of the Yale Corporation.
Baylor University Breaks Ground on New Memorial to Enslaved Persons
The new Memorial to Enslaved Persons will recognize the enslaved people who were instrumental in building the original Baylor University campus in Independence, Texas.
Interactive Map at Indiana University-Purdue University Charts Frederick Douglass’ Travels in the United States
"The map is a great way to find where the Black community was actually located," says Dr. John Kaufman-McKivigan. "Douglass traveled to obscure communities and not by accident. He knew where his audience would be, and he became a way to connect the scattered free Black population of the North."
University of South Carolina to Digitize Collection of Early Twentieth-Century African-American Portraits
In the 1970s, researchers from the University of South Carolina discovered a cache of over 3,000 portraits of Black Columbia, South Carolina residents taken by photographer Richard Samuel Roberts in the 1920s and 30s. Those photos will now be digitized and made available to the public.
Collection from American Banjo Player Otis Taylor Acquired by University of Colorado Boulder
"I know my collection is in good hands," says Otis Taylor. "My hope is that future students and scholars will continue to learn about the evolution of American blues and its significance in world music."
