Today’s blog post was written by Dr. Lopez D. Matthews, Archives Technician in the Holdings Maintenance Staff at the National Archives and current Secretary of the Afro-American History Society at NARA. He is also currently the Vice-President/President Elect of the National Archives Assembly.   The idea for a monument to the “Faithful Mammies of the South” began [...]

By Donald Roe, Associate Professor of History, Howard University, and former Archivist and Subject Area Expert in the Motion Picture Sound and Video Branch at NARA.   The film collection housed at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), consisting of both edited and unedited film footage, is among the largest in the world.  Included [...]

Today’s blog post is by Tina L. Ligon.   2013 marks the 50th anniversary of several significant events regarding the modern Civil Rights Movement. The year 1963 witnessed the murder of Mississippi activist Medgar Evers, the forced desegregation of the University of Alabama, the March on Washington for Freedom and Jobs (MOW), the death of [...]

 Today’s Blog post is by Christina Violeta Jones, Ph.D. Dr. Jones is currently an Archivist in the Textual Records Reference Division at the National Archives in College Park, MD were she specializes in Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and other law enforcement Federal agency records.   There are several other printed findings aids [...]

This week’s blog post is by Dr. Debra Newman Ham, a former Archivist at NARA and the editor of the original Black History Guide. Ham is currently a professor of history at Morgan State University   After I graduated as a history major from Howard University in 1970, I spent the summer working as an [...]

Today’s blog post is by Netisha Currie, Archives Specialist in the Textual Processing Division of the National Archives     A small portion of the millions of records at the National Archives are considered to be of such historic or intrinsic value that researchers are restricted from physical access to these materials. These materials are [...]

Today’s post comes from Stephanie Greenhut, Education Technology Specialist, in the Education and Public Programs division.   In the midst of the Civil War, on January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. This document, preserved here at the National Archives, formally proclaimed the freedom of all enslaved people held in areas still [...]

Today’s blog post is by Dr. Trichita M. Chestnut, Deputy Director Indexing/Declassification Review Division at the National Declassification Center (NWD)   Ida B. Wells was among many individuals whose letters bombarded the Department of Justice demanding Federal help to fight racial violence. These letters are found among Year Files, 1884 1903, located in RG 60, [...]

This post is written by Tina L. Ligon, an Archivist in the Textual Processing Division of the National Archives and Project Lead for the Updated Black History Guide. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is dedicated to preserving the history of the Federal Government and the American people. In 1984, Dr. Debra Newman Ham [...]