Collections in Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Moving Image and Recorded Sound Division

The Abyssinian Baptist Church Oral History Project consists of interviews with ten African American women about their recollections of the church as longtime members. Conducted by Dr. Martia G. Goodson, an American historian specializing in African American oral history, focused the interviews on the church's activities from 1940 to 1970. Many of the interviewees and their stories are included in Dr. Goodson's book Church Ladies: Untold Stories of Harlem Women in the Powell Era (2015). less

The Bernard F. Ashe moving image collection documents the latter portion of Ashe's career as general counsel to the New York State United Teachers (NYSUT), and esteemed member of the American Bar Association and American Arbitration Association, from 1989 until his retirement from NYSUT in 1996. less

A Great Day in Harlem is an Oscar-nominated 1994 documentary directed by Jean Bach (1918 - 2013), a press agent, radio producer, jazz aficionado, and fixture of New York's jazz scene. The collection consists of sixty-four video recordings, which are the interviews conducted for the documentary from 1989 to 1996. less

The Black Filmmaker Foundation (BFF) is a nonprofit membership organization co-founded and led by filmmaker Warrington Hudlin. The Black Filmmaker Foundation collection consists of 715 moving image recordings and one sound recording created from 1971 to 2004, with the bulk of the collection created in the 1980s and 1990s. The collection includes films, demo reels, music videos, and other media produced by Black Filmmaker Foundation members and collaborators, as well as recordings of the organization's public programs. less

Pioneering African American writer, actress, and director Alice Childress (1916-1994) was known for her plays and her best-selling young adult novel, A Hero Ain't Nothin' but a Sandwich. The collection consists of five sound recordings and one video recording documenting performances and research dating from 1959-1991. less

The Léon Gontran Damas Recorded Sound Collection consists primarily of noncommercial recordings of radio broadcasts made during his travels to Africa, France, and the United States etc.; as well as one commercial LP audio recording, "Poesie de la Negritude" by Leon G. Damas. The noncommercial material consists of interviews with Damas and others; poetry readings, and lectures by Damas and various other artists; drum music and traditional music from French Guinea and Sub-Saharan Africa. The collection includes the works of Guy Tirolien, Bernard Dadie, Jacques Rabemananjara, Aimé Césaire, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Bob Stokes, Eugene Miller, Jayne Cortez and others. less

Essence was a nationally syndicated weekly magazine television program that ran from 1983 to 1988, produced by the same firm that publishes the long-running Essence magazine. The Essence television program collection consists of seventeen video recordings; twelve episodes of the program, and five additional recordings related to those episodes' topics and hosts. less

Producer, educator, and archivist Martha Diaz formed the Hip-Hop Education Center (HHEC) to formalize and promote hip-hop based education. Its primary holdings are from the Hip-Hop Odyssey (H2O) International Film Festival, which Diaz founded in 2002 to showcase hip-hop films, music videos, public service announcements, and related media from around the world for artists, educators, and the broader community around its home at the Bronx Museum of the Arts. In 2007, H2O shifted from producing festivals to collaborating with Third World Newsreel on H2ONewsreel, a full-service media development and distribution organization for hip-hop media makers. The Hip-Hop Education Center collection brings all of these related works under one umbrella. The Hip-Hop Education Center collection consists of 446 moving image works and forty-one sound recordings created from 1979 to 2014. These works have been included in Hip-Hop Odyssey International Film Festivals, or created or presented with the assistance of H2ONewsreel. less

The Voices from the Renaissance audio collection consists of fifty-one sound recordings, primarily of interviews that David Levering Lewis conducted with and about Harlem Renaissance figures for his 1981 book, When Harlem Was in Vogue. less

The Phelp-Stokes Fund Black U.S. Ambassadors Oral History consists of ten interviews with Black U.S. ambassadors to African and Caribbean nations, who are also referred to as Chiefs of Mission. Funded by the Ford Foundation and sponsored by the Phelps-Stokes Fund, the project documented the contribution of Black people to the shaping of U.S. foreign policy. Interviews were conducted by oral historians Celestine Tutt and Dr. Ruth Stuts Njiri. less

Theodore Walter "Sonny" Rollins (born September 7th, 1930) is an American jazz tenor saxophonist. Harlem born and raised, Rollins is considered among the players to have defined the instrument through his prolific practicing, performing and recording over a career that spans sixty decades and more than eighty albums. Created and collected by Sonny Rollins, the 2475 item audio and moving collection includes interviews, profiles, live performances, practice sessions and studio recordings. The holdings are available in the Moving Image and Recorded Sound (MIRS) Division. less

Positively Black is a public affairs television program that first aired on New York City's WNBC-TV in 1970, and was hosted by community activist Gustav "Gus" Heningburg through the 1990s. The Positively Black collection consists of 131 video recordings of episodes broadcast from 1979 to 1990. less

Their Children Learned was a Black History Month special that aired over the course of three nightly news broadcasts on New York City's WNBC-TV in 1983. The Their Children Learned WNBC Black History Special collection consists of forty-two video recordings which include the three original broadcast segments, as well as unedited interviews, outtakes, and archival footage and audio used in the special. less