Building on a long history of collecting resources about Washington, DC, the African-Americana Research Center supports research by all scholars interested in the African American experience here. The Center is a focal point for collection development and management, reference services, outreach, fundraising and donor relations. The Center's resources, facilities, programs and exhibits serve the University's growing African-American Program as well as the needs of others researching and documenting African American history in the nation's capital and elsewhere.

Over the years, The Gelman Library's Special Collections Research Center has acquired significant numbers of books, documents, memorabilia, and realia which document the political, cultural, economic, social and historical development of the nation's capital. With the establishment of the African-Americana Research Center, the Library increases its collecting of documents and personal papers by and about African Americans who are native Washingtonians or who spent the greater part of their lives in Washington. The Center's collections, focusing on the African American experience in Washington, DC, highlight the role of people of African descent in shaping the fabric of American life and history.

Click here for a bibliography listing materials in Special Collections that might be of interest to those researching African Americans in Washington.In the next few years the Library will raise funds to endow the curator position and support the acquisition and preparation of resources to assure their accessibility for study and research. With sufficient funding the Center will make key documents from its collections available on the World Wide Web, enabling scholars and researchers everywhere to get a sense of the Center's resources and do some of their work remotely.

Manuscripts and artifacts shown are available for use in the Special Collections Research Center.