February is a busy month in the Afro American Newspapers Archive and Research Center, as archivist John Gartrell and his staff work to provide archival materials to students, researchers, and public historians, as well as to journalists at the Afro. The Diaspora Pathways Archival Access Project (DPAAP), a three year collaboration between the Afro Archives, the Sheridan Libraries’ Center for Educational Resources and JHU’s Center for Africana Studies, has provided student interns from local colleges and universities to arrange and describe archival materials, making them more accessible. At the end of the project this information will be freely available in a searchable web-based database.
One rich part of the Afro Archives collection is the Newspaper Morgue. Dating back to the 1920s, the more than 150,000 files in the Afro Newspaper Morgue contain newspaper clippings, correspondence, pamphlets, and at least a million images, all arranged by subject. Historical files on “Negro History Week” contain intriguing items like the pamphlet pictured here of recommended readings put out by students and staff at Baltimore’s Dunbar High School in 1944.