Johns Hopkins University to Create Digital Archive of the Baltimore Afro-American Weekly Newspaper

The Afro-American is a weekly newspaper founded in Baltimore in 1892 by John Murphy, a former slave. The company also publishes an edition for Washington, D.C. The newspaper’s archives comprise of 2,005 linear feet of boxed materials.

Now, archivists at Johns Hopkins University will create a digital, searchable archive of the newspaper’s files. An internship program will begin in 2008 in which students can participate in collection, assessment, description, and processing activities. All of the photographs in the newspaper files will be processed first before moving on to written materials.

The archival project was made possible with a $476,000 grant from the Andrew Mellon Foundation.

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