Black History and Visual Culture Digital Collection

The Black History and Visual Culture Digital Collection consists of compelling visual materials that celebrate and remember Black life on Penn State’s campuses, in the broader United States, and around the world. Posters, poems, and other visual materials have been digitized in an ongoing effort to expand holdings of published and primary source materials related to a diversity of Black experiences. Represented collections include the University Archives, the Charles L. Blockson Collection of African Americana and the African Diaspora, the Black History and Literature Collection, and many others from the Special Collections Libraries on Penn State’s campuses. The digitized materials serve as helpful surrogates in teaching, research, and experiential learning, and include content that encourages interdisciplinary collaboration.

Black Alumni Oral History Project

Founded and led by Maia Hill (Penn State, 2020), the Black Alumni Oral History Project documents the experiences of 13 Black alumni who attended Penn State between 1969-1971. As one of the interviewees Carol Merrill-Bright comments, "the struggle did not start nor end with us, but we were a template for what student organization and activism could look like/could be." A short film about the project entitled The Struggle Continues and produced by students from the CommAgency can be viewed on the Introduction to the Project page. In 2022, Maia Hill completed two additional oral histories with alumni V. P. Franklin and Andrew Brown.

Charles L. Blockson Collection of African-Americana and the African Diaspora

This multidisciplinary collection includes books, magazines, photographs, manuscripts, sheet music, postcards, record albums, and artifacts of the African experience in the United States, Latin America, Caribbean, and Africa, dating from 1632 to the present.

For more information, visit the Blockson Collection of African-Americana and the African Diaspora website and Holding History: The Collections of Charles L. Blockson

Digital Exhibition: "A Mighty Long Way": Black Representation in American Politics

“A Mighty Long Way” showcases books and documents, many from the Charles L. Blockson Collection of African-Americana and the African Diaspora, that highlight some of the many African Americans who have held office or made an impact on the political system.

Digital Exhibition: #LovecraftCountry

Inspired by the HBO’s television program, the #LovecraftCountry exhibition pairs historical, literary, and cultural events presented in the show with published and primary source materials from Penn State’s Special Collections Library. The site takes visitors through the show episode by episode and focuses on Black and LGBTQIA+ creators and experiences. 

Mann Lecture

The Charles W. Mann Jr. Lecture in the Book Arts is named in honor of the first Dorothy Foehr Huck Chair for Special Collections in the University Libraries. This annual event, featuring scholars with academic research areas connected to the materials held in the Eberly Family Special Collections Library, is made possible by the Mary Louise Krumrine Endowment. The Penn State University Libraries’ 2022 Charles W. Mann Jr. Lecture in the Book Arts featured members of Book/Print Artist/Scholar of Color Collective: Tia Blassingame, Ben Blount and Tamar Evangelestia-Dougherty.

The Center for Black Digital Research/#DigBlk is a public-facing research center committed to bringing the histories of early Black organizing to digital life through innovative scholarship and collaborative partnerships. The Center is home to the award-winning Colored Conventions Project, Douglass Day, and the Black Women’s Organizing Archive. Learn more at their Research page or by exploring the exhibits, historical records, and videos available through their project sites and the links below!

• Democracy Works: Colored Conventions Show Us Where Democracy Really Happens (WPSU interview with P. Gabrielle Foreman)(2021)
• New book highlights Colored Conventions and long history of Black activism (2021)
• The colored conventions movement : Black organizing in the nineteenth century / edited by P. Gabrielle Foreman, Jim Casey, and Sarah Lynn Patterson (2021)
• Portable Anna Julia Cooper / edited by Shirley Moody Turner (2022)
• Mary Ann Shadd Cary : the Black press and protest in the nineteenth century / Jane Rhodes (1998)

image credit: sketch from the cover of “The colored conventions movement: Black organizing in the nineteenth century,” as published in Harper’s Weekly (February 6, 1869)