African American Studies at Beinecke Library

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

Searching for America’s First Black Woman Novelist (New York Times)
October 14, 2023
In “The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts,” Gregg Hecimovich pieces together the story of a woman who fled slavery, and whose manuscript was lost for more than 150 years.
Beinecke event highlights failed effort to make New Haven the site of America’s first HBCU (Yale Daily News)
September 12, 2023
Yale’s Beinecke Library hosted an event reflecting on the unsuccessful effort to establish the United States’ first Historically Black College/University in New Haven. The event, which was called “New Haven 1831: What Was and What Could Have Been,” was held on the 192nd anniversary of the very town meeting in 1831 where the proposal for the college was struck down in a 700-4 vote.
Beinecke Readings Examine Freedom From All Angles (New Haven Independentt)
July 6, 2023
The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library holds one of 26 known surviving copies of the first printing of the Declaration of Independence. The document, printed by John Dunlap in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776, has a single typographical error, an indication that the founders issued it in a hurry to declare independence from England. On Wednesday, a few dozen New Haveners got to hear the words of that revolutionary broadside read aloud — along with that of Frederick Douglass’s 1852 oration “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” — as part of an annual primary-source-focused tradition to celebrate the 247th anniversary of Independence Day.
We hold these truths … Declaration of Independence, Life of William Grimes, Declaration of Sentiments, and Frederick Douglass's Oration on view June 22 - July 30, 2023 (extended!)
June 20, 2023

The Beinecke Library marks the 247th anniversary of the nation’s founding with a display of vital documents of United States history from Yale Library special...
Bill Lowe Keeps The Renaissance Alive (New Haven Independent)
June 14, 2023
The group’s first number, “Us,” was part of Signifyin’ Natives, a suite of searching, excoriating, and invigorating music from composer and musician Bill Lowe that uses as its text passages from a Harlem Renaissance classic that, it turns out, has as much to say about the present as it did to its own time, a century ago. Lowe’s presentation of Signifyin’ Natives — at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library on Yale’s campus Tuesday afternoon — was a collaboration between the library and the International Festival of Arts and Ideas, running now through June 25.
Portrait from library collection featured in lavish Pulitzer Prize–winning opera “Omar”
May 15, 2023
The circa 1850 ambrotype (a positive image on glass) is from the library’s Randolph Linsly Simpson African American Collection, James Weldon Memorial Collection. It is one of only three known portraits of the man, who is identified in a handwritten caption as “Uncle Moreau, a slave of great notoriety.”
Yale Camerata to celebrate African American history and culture
April 27, 2023
As they prepared for the performance, the Camerata’s members had the opportunity to view materials at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, part of the Yale University Library, which highlight Hughes’ and Bonds’ friendship and their long-running artistic collaboration. The choir members took turns leafing through seven folders of correspondence between the poet and the composer, an archive that contains engrossing evidence of their intimate friendship.
Archive illuminates New Haven’s Bias Stanley, a 19th-century civil rights advocate
April 18, 2023
Papers at Yale’s Beinecke Library shed new light on the lives of Bias and Margaret Stanley, stalwarts of New Haven’s Black community in the early 1800s.
Uncovering the link between 'Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing' and Yale's historic Beinecke Collection (Connecticut Public Radio/WNPR)
March 23, 2023
"Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing," also known as the Black National Anthem, was adopted by the NAACP and prominently used as a rallying cry during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. This year, the song was performed at the Super Bowl by Waterbury native Sheryl Lee Ralph, an actress on “Abbott Elementary.” That’s not the song’s only tie to Connecticut.
History, found. Richard Henry Greene was the first Black graduate of Yale College. Now, we can see him.
March 1, 2023
Nine years ago, a researcher at an auction house reminded Yale of a forgotten piece of its history: Yale College’s first Black graduate, Richard Henry Greene of the Class of 1857. We wrote about the rediscovery of Greene’s accomplishment at the time, but one thing was missing. We could find no pictures of Greene. Now, we have a face to go with the name, thanks to Greene’s great-great-granddaughter, who recently shared with the Yale Alumni Magazine two tintype images of him in his Civil War uniform. (He was an assistant surgeon in the US Navy during the war.) They are the only known images of Greene. What’s more, Greene’s descendant is able to shed a bit more light on the life of this pathbreaking alumnus.