African American Collections

MARBL's African American collections focus on six principal areas:

The Freedom Struggle's leaders and organizations

MARBL's civil rights and post–civil rights collections include the papers of:

• The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a nonsectarian, interfaith, advocacy organization committed to nonviolent action to achieve social, economic, and political justice. The SCLC collection is now open and available to researchers. You can access the finding aid online here.
  
• Vincent Harding, founder of the Institute of the Black World
• Doris A. Derby, one of the founders of the Free Southern Theater
• Constance W. Curry, a leader in the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee 

Black print culture

This area highlights the world of literature created by and for the African American community. MARBL collects books, pamphlets, broadsides, periodicals, sheet music, and print ephemera.

Major collections include

• The library of Carter G. Woodson, the most important 20th-century creator of black print culture
• Papers of Kelly Miller, the most prolific African American pamphleteer of the early 20th century
• Works of the contemporary fine printer, Amos G. Kennedy Jr.

Blacks and the left

Louise Thompson (Patterson) and
Langston Hughes en route to the
Soviet Union in 1932 to make the
film Black and White.

Collections in this area include papers of:

• Niagara Movement co-founder William H. Scott
• The Universal Negro Improvement Association
• Longtime Communist Party members Louise Thompson Patterson and Matt Crawford

African American literature and the arts

Collections in the arts feature the papers of:

• Poets James Weldon Johnson and Langston Hughes
• Writers John Oliver Killens and Alice Walker
• Musicians William L. Dawson and George Walker
• Artist/scholar/collectors Camille Billops and James V. Hatch

This journal publishes only a portion of the 1,200-plus interviews that form the oral history component of the Camille Billops and James V. Hatch archives at Emory.

William Levi Dawson: The Collection at Emory University provides online access to manuscripts, photographs, recordings, and conference presentations related to composer, arranger, and music publisher William L. Dawson.

Expatriate literary and cultural figures

The papers of African Americans living abroad include:

• Night club owner Bricktop
• Performer, dancer, and silent film star Josephine Baker
• The papers of French scholar/collector Michel Fabre document other important expatriates, including Chester Himes and Richard Wright.