AFRO Morgue Files
Biographical / Historical
The AFRO Morgue Files are a newspaper production archive that was created and maintained as an internal reference file by AFRO staff librarians and archivists. Primarily arranged by subject, folder titles reference topics covered in the stories published by the AFRO-American Newspapers, and subjects followed by editorial staff. Working across the company's multiple regional offices, AFRO staff have built, maintained, and used the Morgue for generations for reporting, researching stories, and publishing the paper, and the collection continues to be used for this purpose today.
Recognizing the unique historical record represented by the AFRO Morgue Files, the AFRO company began to facilitate external as well as internal research requests as early as the 1980s, when the first efforts to create a searchable inventory of the vast collection began in earnest. From 2008 to 2011, the AFRO collaborated with Johns Hopkins University on the Diaspora Pathways Archival Access Project to create the first digital finding aid to the AFRO Archives.
Afro Charities, founded in 1963 to oversee the news organization’s charitable programs, became stewards of the AFRO archives in 2019, and in 2023 began processing the morgue files, migrating the finding aid data to current systems, formalizing the archival arrangement of the collection, verifying and enhancing existing description, and physically stabilizing the collection.
Scope and Contents
The AFRO Morgue files contain approximately 1,200 linear feet (LF) of newspaper production archives created by the staff of the AFRO American Newspapers. The majority of folders are arranged by subject and contain original photographs, wire photographs, publicity photographs, clippings, reporters' notes, cartoons, illustrations, metal printing plates, correspondence, event programs, pamphlets, posters, reports, publications, ephemera, and other materials created and collected in the course of publishing the paper.
The General File comprises approximately 70% of the volume of the morgue and contains material from the AFRO's multiple editions with the bulk of material dating from the 1920s through the early 1980s. The AFRO Subjects series contains files from the morgue made up of material the AFRO-American Newspapers created to publish content about its own activities, programs, company, and staff in the newspaper. The Contemporary Regional Morgues series contains morgue material from specific regional offices dating from roughly the 1980s to the 2010s.
Extent
circa 1200 Linear Feet
Dates
- Creation: circa 1900-2011
Conditions Governing Access
The collection is open for research. However, the collection is currently stored at a temporary location without a public reading room, so researchers are unable to conduct in-person research at this time. Afro Charities' staff conducts research remotely and welcomes queries via their online form. See see https://www.afrocharities.org/archives for more information.
Language of Materials
English
Metadata Rights Declarations
- Afro Charities, Inc. makes the metadata in this finding aid available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Arrangement
The AFRO Morgue Files collection is arranged in three series:
- General File
- AFRO Subjects
- Contemporary Regional Office Morgues
Processing Information
Processing of the AFRO Morgue Files is ongoing. As portions of the collection are completed, data is added to the finding aid. Unprocessed extents are noted in the finding aid but the data is not yet searchable in this interface. For help searching the entire AFRO Archives, see https://www.afrocharities.org/archives.
Portions of the collection have been processed with detailed processing procedures, but most of the collection has been processed using accellerated procedures, which are less detailed. See processing notes throughout the finding aid for more information about the procedures used for specific sections.
Researchers may discover errors and gaps in the description, or folders that need content warnings or condition notes about fragile documents. Archives staff welcome information to help us improve collection description.
Other Finding Aids
An inventory of the AFRO Morgue Files produced between 2008 and 2011 by the Diaspora Pathways Archival Access Project (DPAAP) is available at http://afroarchives.libraryhost.com/. Data in the legacy inventory covers more of the morgue than the current finding aid in process, but users should be aware that the legacy inventory contains errors, obsolete information, and duplicated data. Please note also that its underlying software is obsolete, so users may encounter issues with the unsupported tool.
- Title
- A Guide to the AFRO-American Newspapers Morgue Files in the AFRO-American Newspapers' Archives.
- Status
- In Progress
- Author
- Megan McShea, Bilphena Yahwon, and Jasmine Clarke
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
- Sponsor
- The first phase of processing of the AFRO Morgue Files received support from Community Projects Funding (AKA a federal earmark) supported by Senators Ben Cardin and Chris Van Holland, and Representative Kweisi Mfume of Maryland, administered by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.
Repository Details
Part of the AFRO American Newspapers Archives Repository