Seeing Themselves: Education and Black Women Activism During the Mississippi Movement

Dr. Christina J. Thomas is the 2023-2025 Andrew W. Mellon Visiting Scholar at the Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University. Her current research projects explore Black women’s intellectual history, biography, and early childhood education. I met Alice Walker in November 2023 at the Phillis Wheatley Poetry Festival hosted by the Margaret Walker Center in Read More …

Unapologetic and Unafraid, Elaine Brown on Community Care, Love, and Revolution: A Womanist Approach to Archives

Desiree McCray entered the world, hailing from Chicago, Illinois. A womanist scholar and prophetic scribe, she crafts essays, poetry, and scholarly research, delving into themes of race, gender, bodies, and class, at the intersection of Black religion and culture. McCray, a poet, released three collections of poems: My Sisters Look Like God: A Womanist Manifesto Read More …

Donald Locke at the Nexus of Atlanta and the World

Guyanese-born Grace Aneiza Ali is a Curator and Assistant Professor in the Department of Art and Art History at Florida State University and is a 2024-25 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellow at The Huntington Library, Los Angeles. As a curator-scholar of contemporary art of the Global South, her curatorial research practice examines the links and Read More …

Undine Smith Moore: The Dean of Black Women Composers

Samantha Ege is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Southhampton in the United Kingdom. She is a 2024 Rose Library Visiting Research Fellow in the area of African American History and Culture. When you spend any amount of time with the materials of Undine Smith Moore (1904–1989), aka the Dean of Black women Read More …

Following the Return Migration of Black Americans to the U.S. South

Summer Perritt is a History PhD candidate at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Her work looks at the return migration of Black Americans to the U.S. South in the post-civil rights period. Her project consists of oral history interviews with migrants as well as traditional archival sources such as those collected by the Stuart A. Read More …

Announcement: The Be Present Inc. records and the Lillie P. Allen papers are now at the Rose!

By The Be Present Team The Rose Library is pleased to announce the acquisition of two dynamic collections, the Be Present Inc. records, and the Lillie P. Allen papers. The Lillie P. Allen papers and the Be Present, Inc. records together tell the story of how one visionary leader can ignite change and create an Read More …

Sybil Kein’s Transnational Louisiana Creole and Exchanges with Michel Fabre

Rachel Kirk is a PhD student in French Studies at Louisiana State University. She is interested in how colonial-shaped environmental changes and disasters have influenced literary and cultural production in Louisiana and the broader Francophone and Creole-speaking Caribbean. Rachel is a recipient of an African American History and Culture short term fellowship for visiting researchers.  Read More …

Operation SEEK: Finding New Pathways for Collegiate & Carceral Cross-Education in the Archive of artist Benny Andrews (1930-2006) 

Sinclair Spratley is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Art History & Archeology at Columbia University. She is the 2024 recipient of the Benny Andrews Award, which provides funding for researchers exploring the collection of visual artist, teacher, activist, critic, and writer Benny Andrews. I had the privilege of spending time in the vast Read More …

First Looks and Second Glances: Exploring the Amalia Amaki Papers and the Robert Langmuir African American Photograph Collection

Stephanie Rambo is an assistant professor of English at George Mason University. She specializes in African American literature, Black Girlhood Studies, Diasporic Black theory, and Women and Gender Studies. She is currently working on her first a book monograph which examines literary and visual depictions of Black girlhood in African American literature. This past December Read More …

Notice: Kathleen Cleaver Papers Will Be Closed For Processing

By Anicka Austin, Collections Processing Archivist. The Kathleen Cleaver papers will be closed for processing starting January 1, 2024. The papers of African American activist and lawyer, Kathleen Cleaver were acquired in 2020 by the late Dr. Pellom McDaniels, former Curator of African American collections. The collection includes photographs, printed material, audiovisual and born digital Read More …

NEH Wayfinder Project: Establishing a Linked Data Future for African American Periodicals with the Advisory Board

Over the course of two days, the Wayfinder Project Advisory Board and Project Team met at Emory University on October 24-25, 2022, to consider and determine the opportunities and critical considerations for advancing a linked data version of the Bibliography of African American Periodicals at Emory University. High level take-away from the advisory board meeting Read More …

Navigating The Camille Billops and James V. Hatch Archives

By Charmaine Branch (she/her), PhD Candidate in Art History at Princeton University with a Graduate Certificate in African American Studies.  This August I visited the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library at Emory University to study the formation of Hatch-Billops Collection Inc. In 1975, Camille Billops and James V. Hatch founded an archive Read More …