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Category: African American History

Photograph of young, light-skinned Black woman with short dark curly hair and black eyeglasses, standing in front of library book stacks.

Junior Fellow Spotlight: Zoe Harrison

Posted by: Malea Walker

This summer, Junior Fellow Zoe Harrison researched and wrote essays about African American newspaper titles available in the Chronicling America Historic American Newspapers database. In this interview, Harrison shares her research interests and background, her internship experience, and more about the project, “Researching the Black Press in Chronicling America.”

Headshot of Courtney smiling.

Junior Fellow Spotlight: Courtney Murray

Posted by: Malea Walker

This summer, Junior Fellow Courtney Murray researched and wrote essays about African American newspaper titles available in the Chronicling America Historic American Newspapers database. In 2021, the Library began to digitize a collection of miscellaneous 19th and early 20th century newspapers from the Black American press. Murray wrote ten well-researched newspaper history essays that represented significant titles from this collection. In this interview, Murray shares her research interests and background, her internship experience, and more about the project.

Front page a newspaper with text, an image of a man's face and shoulders, and visible headline Richmond Planet.

Searching African American Newspapers in Chronicling America

Posted by: Malea Walker

Chronicling America has grown its collection of African American newspapers through the contributions of state partners. Interviews with partners from Arkansas and Virginia highlight three titles that provide details about the early civil rights movement, the end of school segregation, and post-Civil War Reconstruction; and strategies are provided for searching these newspapers in Chronicling America.

Excerpt from a newspaper showing a large bold headline reading: Tulsa's Terrible Tale is Told. Below the headline are three small photographs showing damage to Tulsa and nurses who volunteered to help.

Tulsa Race Massacre: Newspaper Complicity and Coverage

Posted by: Malea Walker

The following is a guest post by Arlene Balkansky. Arlene recently retired from being a librarian in the Newspaper and Current Periodical Reading Room, and was a regular writer for Headlines and Heroes. One hundred years ago, Greenwood, a prosperous Black neighborhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma, described as Black Wall Street, was destroyed by white mobs in …

Photograph shows portrait of abolitionist Sojourner Truth wearing polka dotted dress and holding cased photograph of her grandson.

Sojourner Truth’s Most Famous Speech

Posted by: Malea Walker

The following is a guest post by Arlene Balkansky. Arlene recently retired from being a librarian in the Newspaper and Current Periodical Reading Room, and was a regular writer for Headlines and Heroes. On May 29, 1851 at the Woman’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, abolitionist and women’s rights activist Sojourner Truth delivered what would …