Tuskegee Airmen wartime photo archive depicting African American Army Air Forces servicemen during the Second World War, circa 1944 to 1945, recording the personal and military environment of Black aviation personnel serving within a segregated U.S. armed forces. The photographs belong to the wartime world created by the Tuskegee program.....
[Women's Sports] Women’s wrestling photograph archive documenting amateur competitions, gymnasium training, and professional wrestling performers between the 1940s and the 1970s. The images record women participating in a sport historically dominated by men, illustrating the gradual emergence of female wrestling as both an amateur athletic activity and a professional entertainment.....
Partially identified Black Airmen photographs and Tuskegee Airmen signatures. African American airmen associated with the United States Army Air Forces during the World War II era document the struggle the struggle of entry into military aviation during a period when the armed forces remained racially segregated. This archive contains sixteen.....
ewis B. Moore correspondence, 1916–1923, documenting the role of one of the nation’s pioneering African American scholars and educators in creating professional opportunities for Black teachers during the Jim Crow era. Moore, founding dean of the Teachers’ College at Howard University and the first person of African descent to earn.....
Seven photographs of Nat King Cole, circa 1950s, document the expansion of African American presence in film and television during the mid twentieth century, including Cole’s role as the first Black host of a nationally broadcast variety program, The Nat King Cole Show. Emerging from the jazz and popular music.....
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The Lynching of Claude Neal, 1934, documents one of the most widely publicized acts of racial violence in the Jim Crow South and provides direct investigative evidence used in national anti lynching advocacy campaigns. Issued in the immediate aftermath of the October.....
King, Coretta Scott. Typed statement recalling her meeting with Martin Luther King Jr. and the origins of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Coretta Scott King’s signed reflection recounts her early relationship with Martin Luther King Jr. and her first experiences in the Civil Rights Movement, situating their marriage and ministry within.....
Broadside, 1964, announcing the “Second Giant March Up Market Street” in San Francisco, documenting West Coast civil rights mobilization in advance of the July 12, 1964 Human Rights March and the opening of the Republican National Convention. Issued during a period of national debate over the Civil Rights Act of.....
Anderson, William E., Thesis Writing: A Guide for the Preparation of the Master’s Thesis, 1947, documents graduate research training at State Teachers College at Montgomery, a historically Black institution later known as Alabama State University. The manual records the institutional system of advanced academic preparation through instructions for planning, organizing.....
Bright Road publicity photograph group, 1953, documenting a major studio film that departed from postwar racial problem pictures by centering Black teachers, children, and families without making racial conflict its narrative engine. Featuring an all black cast, Dorothy Dandridge plays the idealistic teacher Jane Richards, while Harry Belafonte, in his.....
Tuskegee University felt pennant, likely late twentieth century, documents HBCU pride, African American educational identity, and Black Power visual culture through a collegiate souvenir tied to one of the most historically important Black institutions in the United States. Tuskegee was founded in 1881 as the Tuskegee Normal School for the.....
Anonymous. The Story of a Slave: Slavery’s Social Evil, circa 1890s, is a slavery-themed work of popular fiction presented in autobiographical form and centered on plantation life, racial hierarchy, and sexual coercion under slavery. The book belongs to late nineteenth-century slavery fiction rather than verified enslaved-person testimony, making its value.....
Moton, Robert R. typed letter signed on Tuskegee Institute letterhead, dated March 9, 1917, documents Tuskegee Institute’s donor outreach during Robert Russa Moton’s early presidency, revealing how HBCU fundraising operated through personal appeals to white Southern patrons and providing primary-source evidence for the study of African American education, philanthropy, and.....
[Minstrelsy] Archive of minstrel sheet music and ephemera documenting the role of blackface performance and racial caricature in American popular music during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Josephine, My Jo. Words by R.C. McPherson; music by Jas. T. Brymn, 1902, appears alongside a group of minstrel and ragtime-era.....
[African American] [Education] 2 original press photographs related to integrating Little Rock Central High School and the University of Alabama. n.d. [1957], 1965. Silver gelatin print photographs, 8 x 10”. Both images include original, typed press captions printed in image margins. Little Rock photo shows NAACP leaders including Daisy Bates.....
Archive of Two Anti-Vietnam War Pamphlets Critiquing Nixon-Era Policy, 1969–1972. Birmingham, AL and Cambridge, MA / Los Angeles, CA: Birmingham Moratorium Committee and Indochina Peace Campaign. Two pamphlets totaling 8 pages. A stark and emotionally charged pair of pamphlets confronting the human and economic cost of the Vietnam War, particularly.....
[African American] [Education] Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical College. Normal, Alabama. Announcement for 1957-1958 Session. September 5 – May 26. “The aim of the college is to provide students an opportunity to secure a functional education in terms of individual an social needs. This includes the preparation of workers in Home.....
[African American][Sports][Civil Rights] Owens, Jesse with Paul G. Neimark. Blackthink: My Life As Black Man and White Man. New York: William Morrow & Co., 1970. First edition. Black cloth-backed boards, housed in original black dust jacket with photo of Owens in 1935 on the rear panel. A candid and controversial.....
George Wylie Henderson. Jule. New York, 1946. First edition. Navy blue cloth boards with dust jacket depicting a shirtless young Black man. Jule is a semi-autobiographical novel about an African-American man who moves to Harlem from his sleepy hometown in rural Alabama. It follows his journey as he works to.....
