African-American History

Keisha Blain of Brown University and Cécile Fromont of Harvard University have received 2024 Dan David Prizes for their outstanding achievements as academic historians.

Since its establishment in 2006, the Institute's African American museum grant program has awarded nearly $36 million to institutions across the country. This year, three grants were awarded to projects in higher education.

Currently, Delaware State University's photo archives contain thousands of photographs taken over the course of the university's 133-year history. Thanks to a new partnership with Getty Images, those images will be digitized and made available on gettyimages.com.

Dr. Hare was a prominent figure in the civil rights movement throughout the 1960s and was a strong advocate for equal educational opportunities for Black Americans. In 1968, he founded the country's first Black studies program at San Francisco State University.

Originally donated in 2005, The Geleve Grice Photography Collection has been fully processed and made available by the University of Arkansas. The collection features numerous materials documenting daily life for Black Americans in southeastern Arkansas during the mid-20th century.

The African American Civil Rights grant program from the National Park Service has awarded grants to Auburn University, the University of Northern Colorado, Eastern Michigan University, Clemson University, and the University of South Carolina aimed at preserving sites and history relating to African Americans.

"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."

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.

"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."

The new Memorial to Enslaved Persons will recognize the enslaved people who were instrumental in building the original Baylor University campus in Independence, Texas.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.