Americana

The Beinecke Library’s major strengths in general Americana span the colonial period to the middle of the nineteenth century, complemented by important collections of twentieth century writers and photographers.

  • Baldwin Set to Music at Arts & Ideas (The Arts Paper)

    June 18, 2024

    The concert held particular weight in its coincidence with the birthday of writer and civil rights activist James Welden Johnson, for whom Beinecke’s collection of materials related to African American politics and culture is named. The James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection contains an original copy of Johnson’s lyrics for “Lift Every Voice and Sing”—colloquially the Black National Anthem—as well James Baldwin’s letters, among other things. “There are lots of materials related to liberation in this library,” said Beinecke’s Community Engagement Director Michael Morand before the performance. “All are welcome to do research in this place.” (To access materials held in the Beinecke, members of the public should register with the Yale library system.) Morand first encountered Harris at Bill Lowe’s performance at the Beinecke for last year’s Arts & Ideas festival, where Harris played piano. Afterwards, Morand spoke with Harris about his own work and thought that the Baldwin theme related perfectly to Beinecke’s materials on the author as well as the Baldwin centennial. “I had high expectations,” Morand said after the performance. “But this was phenomenal.”

  • Beinecke Jazz Reframes Reality (New Haven Independent)

    June 18, 2024

    As the music swelled to a triumphant peak, Harris encouraged the audience to clap along, which many had already been doing. Then he urged them to their feet, until the entire room was dancing in place. This also meant they were in exactly the right position for a standing ovation, which, as the movement ended, they happily gave. Harris hoped his audience left with a feeling of deep meaning, from both Baldwin and himself. ​“The words of Baldwin that move them, I hope my music moves them in the same way,” he said. If the bright smiles and energetic applause were anything to go by, he had succeeded in his mission.

  • Bringing truth to light

    May 28, 2024

    “Shining Light on Truth: New Haven, Yale, and Slavery” is free and open to the public through August 2024. The New Haven Museum, located at 114 Whitney Avenue in New Haven, is open Wednesday through Friday, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and Saturday, noon to 5:00 p.m.

  • Morand brings passion for New Haven to city historian role

    April 12, 2024

    Michael Morand, director of community engagement for Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, has been appointed New Haven’s official city historian by Mayor Justin Elicker. A New Haven resident since 1983, Morand brings a demonstrated passion for local history and a devotion to the Elm City to the unpaid role. His initial five-year term runs through Dec. 31, 2028. “[E]very time I speak with Michael Morand, I learn something new and interesting about New Haven,” Elicker said in his announcement. “Michael has a deep love for the Elm City, and he has the knowledge, experience, and passion to help our residents and institutions better explore and understand New Haven’s history, while inspiring community engagement and action from the lessons we learn from it.

  • Yale Film Archive Adds Sound to Silents (New Haven Independent)

    April 5, 2024

    As Yale Film Archive launches into the last quarter of its 2024 spring semester programming, it offered something a little different on Thursday evening: silent films that each had a special distinction. The first, presented in conjunction with the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, was a selection of Solomon Sir Jones Films from 1924 to 1928 that are currently a part of the library’s holdings. The second was a showing of Within Our Gates, a 1920 film written, produced, and directed by Oscar Micheaux; it’s the oldest known surviving film with a Black director. One more bonus: both films on this evening were accompanied by live music, played by pianist Donald Sosin.

  • New Haven, Yale, and Slavery: The Real Story (New Haven Independent)

    March 13, 2024

    Chapter 6 was written by Michael Morand, director of community engagement at the university’s Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library, who is also lead curator of the New Haven Museum exhibition. It recounts an event of mob mentality, deplorable then but also prescient. Reading it today, noting the power of the politics of fear, it leaps right out of history and into the stream of denigrations of 2024. The chapter covers what might have been in New Haven: the establishment of the nation’s first college built specifically for Black men. The plan was discussed and endorsed in 1831 in Philadelphia, at a convention of Black intellectuals and abolitionists who decided on New Haven as the best option. One of the reasons: It was already a center of higher education, as Yale was then the largest college in the nation, even as it restricted its student body to white, Protestant and of European descent. The city, too, grew more prosperous from international trade and in population, the 23rd largest in the nation.

  • The ‘ubiquity of Black presence’: Alum curates exhibition about Yale, New Haven, and slavery

    March 8, 2024

    Morand, Director of Community Engagement at Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, organized the show as part of the Yale and Slavery Research Project, which arose from a 2020 summons by President Peter Salovey for Yale to reckon with its historical ties to slavery. The museum exhibition coincided with the February publication of Yale and Slavery: A History by David W. Blight, Sterling Professor of History and African American Studies, written and edited with research project colleagues Hope McGrath and Morand. The book was released alongside a companion website, videos, and audio walking tour, accessible from yaleandslavery.yale.edu (link is external).

  • Exhibit highlights slavery and resistance in Yale and New Haven (WSHU Public Radio)

    February 19, 2024

    Shining Light on Truth: New Haven, Yale, and Slavery opened its doors to the public late last week, showcasing what Michael Morand and Charles Warner, Jr. have curated through accessing mountains of archival material on Black history in New Haven and throughout Yale University. The exhibit complements a new book published the same day, Yale and Slavery: A History ...

  • WWII Tuskegee Airman Enoch Woodhouse II ’52 returns to Yale

    February 1, 2024

    Michael Morand ’87, ’93 MDiv, director for community engagement at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, who arranged a special visit of the Library for Woodhouse, including a meeting with staff members, remarked that alumni like Woodhouse are a wealth of knowledge, wisdom, and experience that informs the greater narrative of Yale and, therefore, is worthy of documentation, preservation, and dissemination. “We have so much more to learn about the full story of Yale,” he said. “People like General Woodhouse bless us all when they share their stories—it’s a privilege to learn these stories and a solemn duty to make sure they are more broadly known.”