African-American History

Old Movie of African American Baseball Players Found in the University of Georgia Archives

The film, made around 1919, was found in the archives of the Pebble Hill Plantation that were donated to the Walter J. Brown Media Archives of the University of Georgia Libraries.

1805 Bill of Sale for Three Slaves Donated to Duke University

The bill of sale lists three slaves, Elizabeth, a 20-year-old woman and her daughter Harriet who was six months old. A third slave Delilah, aged 14, was also included. The three slaves were sold for a total of $493.

New Poem by Jupiter Hammon, a Slave, Discovered at Yale Library

Jupiter Hammon was born into slavery in 1711. Although a slave, he attended school and learned to read and write. Later in life he wrote essays and poetry and is generally considered the first African American writer to be published.

New Film Recreates Black History at the University of Virginia in the 1970s

The film project was co-created by Kevin Jerome Everson, professor in the department of art and Claudrena Harold an associate professor of history at the university.

George Mason University Students Recreate Some of the Iconic Photographs of Black History

The students found actors who resembled the historical figures and secured costumes and designed sets to recreate the original scenes in old photographs.

University of Virginia Acquires Historial Documents of a Black-Owned Bank

The First State Bank in Danville, the last of the Jim-Crow era Black-owned banks in the state of Virginia, recently donated a large collection of its historical records to the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia.

University of Tennessee Names Its First Building After an African American

The Fred D. Brown Jr. Residence Hall, the first new dormitory built on the Knoxville campus in 43 years, is named after the founder of the Office of Diversity Programs in the College of Engineering.

SMU Students Spend Spring Break on a Civil Rights Pilgrimage

The students will travel by bus to visit many of the most famous locations of the civil rights movement including Little Rock Central High School, the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, and the site of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination.

Jackson State University to Produce an e-Book on Medgar Evers and Margaret Walker

The university, in conjunction with the University Press of Mississippi, is producing an electronic book on the friendship of civil rights leader Medgar Evers and author Margaret Walker Alexander. They were family friends and they lived a block from each other.

Emory Opens Exhibit of Its SCLC Archives

Emory University in Atlanta officially acquired the archives of Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 2007. Now the university has debuted its first exhibition from the archive.

The Black Man Who Taught at Auburn University in 1947

African American artist Isaac Scott Hathaway taught a workshop at Alabama Polytechnic Institute, now Auburn University, in the summer of 1947. This was 16 years before the racial integration of the university.

Vanderbilt University Receives the Papers of a Civil Rights Icon

The Rev. James M. Lawson Jr., a leading figure in the civil rights movement and an associate of Martin Luther King Jr., has donated a significant portion of his papers to the special collections division of the Vanderbilt University Libraries.

University of Louisville Asks the Public’s Help to Preserve a Historical Black Newspaper

Due to the poor quality of microfilm copies, the university has been unable to create a searchable digital archive of the Louisville Leader, an African American newspaper published between 1917 and 1950. The university is asking the public to help transcribe the microfilm files.

PBS Conducting an Oral History Project on the Voting Rights Act of 1965

The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is conducting an oral history project about the Voting Rights Act of 1965. You can call the PBS NewsHour Oral History Hotline at (703) 594-6PBS and record your story.

University of South Carolina Project Seeks to Preserve the History of the Civil Rights Movement

Scholars at the University of South Carolina are establishing an archive documenting the history of the civil rights movement in South Carolina. The project is made possible by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Emory Students to Prepare Exhibit from Historic Collection of African American Photos

Students in the class "Looking at the Familiar: History, Memory, Race, and Visual Culture" will create an exhibit from the university's archive of 12,000 photographs of African Americans from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The University of Virginia Unveils a New Online Archive of the Civil Rights Movement

The new online digital archive offers biographies of key figures in the civil rights movement, oral histories, and digitized documents relating to each person featured in the archive. The documents include newspaper articles, personal correspondence, letters, court documents, and field reports.

University of Tennessee Professor’s Research on Streets Named for Martin Luther King Jr.

There are more than 900 streets named for Dr. King. The 900 streets are predominantly in the southeastern United States, where much of the civil rights movement took place. There are 10 states in which there are no streets named after Dr. King.

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