

Thanks to a major gift from the Citigroup Foundation, the Library launched a five-year effort to add rare and unique items from the Library's vast African-American collections to the National Digital Library.





A Special Presentation



African-American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship

This Special Presentation of the Library of Congress exhibition, The African-American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship, showcases the Library's incomparable African-American collections. The presentation was not only a highlight of what is on view in this major black history exhibition, but also a glimpse into the Library's vast African-American collections. Both include a wide array of important and rare books, government documents, manuscripts, maps, musical scores, plays, films, and recordings.

Digital Collections

The Frederick Douglass Papers at the Library of Congress

The Frederick Douglass Papers at the Library of Congress presents the papers of the nineteenth-century African-American abolitionist who escaped from slavery and then risked his own freedom by becoming an outspoken antislavery lecturer, writer, and publisher. The papers span the years 1841 to 1964, with the bulk of the material from 1862 to 1895. The Speech, Article, and Book File series contains the writings of Douglass and his contemporaries in the abolitionist and early women's rights movements. The Subject File series reveals Douglass's interest in diverse subjects such as politics, emancipation, racial prejudice, women's suffrage, and prison reform. Scrapbooks document Douglass's role as minister to Haiti and the controversy surrounding his interracial second marriage.

Jackie Robinson and Other Baseball Highlights, 1860s-1960s

When Jackie Robinson took the field as a Brooklyn Dodger in 1947, he became the first African American to play major league baseball in the twentieth century. Materials that tell his story, and the history of baseball in general, are located throughout the Library of Congress. The first online special presentation of these materials highlights Baseball, the Color Line, and Jackie Robinson, 1860s-1960s. The timeline draws on approximately thirty items--manuscripts, books, photographs, and ephemera--from many parts of the Library. The first three sections of the presentation describe the color line that segregated baseball for many years, the Negro Leagues, and Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson--two men who played key roles in integrating the sport. The last two sections of the presentation explore Robinson's career as a Dodger and his civil rights activities. The second presentation called "Early Baseball Pictures, 1860s-1920s" features 34 intriguing photographs and prints arranged in the following categories: Baseball Beginnings, Game Day in the Majors, Players, Non-Major League Baseball, Major League Teams and Games.

Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938

This collection contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and assembled and microfilmed in 1941 as the seventeen-volume Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves. This online collection is a joint presentation of the Manuscript and Prints and Photographs Divisions of the Library of Congress and includes more than 200 photographs from the Prints and Photographs Division that are available to the public for the first time. Born in Slavery was made possible by a major gift from the Citigroup Foundation.

From Slavery to Freedom: The African-American Pamphlet Collection, 1822-1909

This collection from the Rare Book and Special Collections Division presents 396 pamphlets, published from 1822 through 1909, by African-American authors and others who wrote about slavery, African colonization, Emancipation, Reconstruction, and related topics. The materials range from personal accounts and public orations to organizational reports and legislative speeches. Among the authors represented are Frederick Douglass, Kelly Miller, Charles Sumner, Mary Church Terrell, and Booker T. Washington.