Black Press archives at Howard University gets preserved, digitized thanks to $2 million grant

Press Release | The Howard University Moorland-Spingarn Research Center (MSRC) received a US$2 million grant from the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation to support the preservation and digitization of the Black Press Archives, a newspaper collection of titles by Black journalists, editors and publishers. MSRC worked in partnership with the Center for Journalism and Democracy to secure this critical gift, and the center will be committing additional funds to the project to ensure a significant number of publications in the Black Press Archives are available in an online repository for worldwide research.

“Documenting and telling our stories has always served as a source of truth and power for the Black community in the United States and across the African diaspora,” said Howard University President Wayne A. I. Frederick. “The Black Press Archives is a unique and deeply important resource for Howard University faculty and students as well as the broader research community. We are very pleased to receive the support of the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation to digitize the archives – an important milestone that advances Howard’s mission to share the story of the Black experience with the world.”

The Black Press Archives represents more than 2,000 newspaper titles from the United States, Africa and the African diaspora. It has 2,847 microfilm reels of newspapers, totaling over 100,000 individual issues of newspapers. The collection includes complete files of Black papers as well as the records of Black editors, publishers and journalists.