African American Studies at Beinecke Library

Collections, events, and news from the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection of African American Arts and Letters.

Langston Hughes 1927 "Trip South" Notebooks
July 19, 2019

A recent post at Smithsonian.com discusses notebooks Langston Hughes kept during his 1927 road trip with Zora Neale Hurston – the notebooks are found in...
Yale Hosts Reading Of Rare Copy Of Declaration Of Independence (WNPR)
July 10, 2019
Stonewall, Before and After: An Interview with Samuel R. Delany (Los Angeles Review of Books)
July 6, 2019
Frederick Douglass’s Timely Words Resonate At The Beinecke (New Haven Independent)
July 6, 2019
We hold these truths ... Declaration of Independence on view June 27 - July 11, 2019
June 20, 2019

The Beinecke Library marks the 243rd anniversary of the nation’s founding with a special display of a major document of United States history from its...
Patience and a steady hand: Increasing diversity in art conservation
June 17, 2019
Fulfilling a dream: Phoenix Alexander ’19 Ph.D. reflects on work with the Beinecke Library
May 15, 2019

Phoenix Alexander came to Yale for graduate studies in the 2013 from the United Kingdom., where he had earned an M.A. in English from Queen Mary University of...
Classic documentary ‘The Cry of Jazz’ at Yale (Hartford Courant)
May 6, 2019
The Book Art of Harlem Renaissance Artist Aaron Douglas: A Bibliography
April 29, 2019
The first complete bibliography of illustrations and jacket art of Aaron Douglas, who created the visual vocabulary of the Harlem Renaissance
Female American Poets: Archival Connections
April 16, 2019
The next poet in our series, Female American Poets: Archival Connections, is Maya Angelou. A poet, autobiographer, activist, and director, Angelou explores sound, memory, and sexuality in her poetry and prose. Her work investigates and colors the history of Black oppression, activism, and power in America.