African-American History

Prairie View A&M University is located on land that once was a plantation that housed 400 enslaved individuals. Many of the historically Black university's historical records were lost in a 1947 fire. Now a new committee has been formed to piece together the university's past.

The University of Michigan is set to begin a multifaceted, years-long project to study, document, and better understand the university’s history with respect to diversity, equity, and inclusion — with the history of race and racism as its first major focus.

“Without accountability, there is no justice. For too long, our nation has ignored the harms that have been — and continue to be — inflicted on African Americans in California and across the country,” said California Attorney General Rob Bonta.

For many years, it was believed that Love Hatton Jordan was the first African American woman to graduate from Arizona State University in 1928. Now an earlier Black woman graduate has been discovered. Stella McHenry graduated in 1925 and became a school teacher. She died three years later.

The board of regents of Baylor University in Waco, Texas, has decided to remove a statue of former president and slave owner Rufus Burleson from the quadrangle that has borne his name. Burleson was also a colonel in the Confederate Army.

The memorial resembles a fireplace hearth and is meant to symbolize both a place of community and the center of domestic enslavement. A vessel to hold fire that will burn on special occasions will be installed at the center of the Hearth at a later date.

Shirley Frye was a longtime administrator at North Carolina A&T State University and nearby Bennett College. Henry Frye was a district attorney, legislator, judge, and chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court.

Emory University in Atlanta has decided to rename campus spaces and professorships honoring Robert Yerkes, a psychologist who vigorously supported eugenics, and L.Q.C. Lamar, who was a staunch defender of slavery.

The board of trustees of Meredith College in Raleigh recently announced that Joyner Hall, named for an individual who advocated for white supremacy and unequal funding for schools based on race, will be renamed. "The racist ideas James Yadkin Joyner, who served as a trustee for 55 years, stood for throughout his lifetime, are antithetical to Meredith College’s mission, vision, and values,” the board said.

A new scholarship at Yale Divinity School honors Rena Karefa-Smart, the first Black woman to graduate from the school. Dr. Karefa-Smart was also the first Black woman to earn a theology doctorate from Harvard Divinity School and the first female professor to earn tenure at the Howard University School of Divinity.

Vanderbilt’s Jean and Alexander Heard Libraries are now home to a rich collection of research materials from the life and career of Yusef A. Lateef, a Grammy-winning musician who played a pioneering role in bringing Middle Eastern and Asian sounds to American jazz.

The Thomas Wyatt Turner Fellowship will support up to 10 graduate students from 1890 institutions, which are historically Black colleges and universities that are land-grant universities. They will spend the 2022-23 academic year on the Cornell University campus.

The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Libraries has acquired the complete personal archive of internationally renowned modernist painter Beauford Delaney (1901–1979). Delaney was a member of the Harlem Renaissance and one of the leading modernist painters of his time.

During the Reconstruction period, Celia Dial Saxon was one of the first African American students to attend South Carolina College, later the University of South Carolina. She taught school in Columbia, South Carolina for 57 years.

Last fall, the College of William and Mary and Colonial Williamsburg announced that they had verified that a building on the college's campus, which was built in 1760, was the home of the Bray School where both enslaved and free Black children were educated in the eighteenth century. The college sold the building to the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

Graves Hall, honoring former Governor Bibb Graves, a Grand Cyclops of the KKK, was renamed Lucy-Graves Hall to also honor Autherine Lucy the first Black student at the university. After an outcry that Lucy's name should not be joined with the name of a KKK leader, the university renamed the building Autherne Lucy Hall.

El Niño, an oceanic phenomenon that affects worldwide weather patterns, significantly affected the number of enslaved Africans transported from West Africa to the Americas between the mid-1600s and mid-1800s, according to an interesting new study from the University of California, Davis.

Yale Divinity School recently acknowledged its historical complicity in slavery and racism. It is allocating $20 million to fund 10 social justice scholarships each year for incoming students who are dedicated to social justice work.

Gordon Parks was a true renaissance man. In addition to a long career as a photographer, he was a composer, musician, author, and filmmaker.

The centerpiece of the Black Gospel Archive & Listening Center is a sound isolation pod, which features high-end audio equipment and a full keyboard for researchers who want to play along with sheet music or recordings from the collection.