A Homecoming for the AFRO Archives of Black News and Culture

On the front page of the New York Times on March 24, 1956, are stories about Minnesota’s farmers union, Soviet students on strike, and political reforms in Algeria. On the same day, the front-page headline of the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper read “Boycott Will Go On.” Underneath, the paper ran a photo of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King exiting a Montgomery courthouse after Dr. King had been convicted for violating the state’s anti-boycott laws. The Kings had been leading the now historic Montgomery Bus Boycott for sixteen weeks. Other articles chronicled the ongoings of Black life; the Afro-American was steadfastly keeping Black people informed about their world and the world at large, also mentioning a visit from the Indian prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.

At 130 years and counting, the Afro-American is superlative in more ways than one: it is the only publication to be continuously owned by the same family for its entire history and is the oldest Black-owned business in Maryland. Today, the AFRO news organization reaches far beyond Baltimore and the surrounding community, continuing to inform African Americans across the United States.

The Reverend William Alexander began publishing the newspaper in 1889 in Baltimore, Maryland, as Home Protector. By 1892 it had been renamed the Afro-American, and in 1897, John H. Murphy Sr., a formerly enslaved man who had served as a soldier during the Civil War, purchased the newspaper’s printing equipment for $200 at auction. Murphy was quite the visionary, considering that in 1870, 80 percent of the Black population was illiterate—a direct effect of the South’s staunchly implemented anti-literacy laws. Under his direction, the paper became a platform to promote solidarity in the Black community and put the power of the press to the test: the paper shone a light on inequity and injustice. Editorial pages campaigned for African Americans to be hired as police officers and firefighters, pushed for the creation of a public higher education institution for African Americans, criticized Jim Crow cars on the railway, called for the integration of professional sports, partnered with the NAACP on civil rights cases, and during World War II sent correspondents to Europe, Africa, and the South Pacific to cover the war.

When Carl J. Murphy, John Murphy Sr.’s son, took over the paper in 1922, it expanded to nine national editions, published in thirteen major cities across the country, with two weekly editions published in Baltimore. Among the paper’s notable hires as reporters were William Worthy and Langston Hughes. Artist Romare Bearden was hired as a cartoonist in 1936.

As a news organization, the AFRO has survived decades of economic ebb and flow and sustained through the turning tide of the media industry. Beyond that, it has provided a behemoth of documentation chronicling Black life in America—its expansive archives house more than three million photographs, thousands of letters, and rare audio recordings, among other rich artifacts.

Care for the amassed collection of photos, writing, editorials, and more today is in the hands of Savannah Wood, John Murphy Sr.’s great-great-granddaughter and executive director of Afro Charities, an organization born in 1963 to support charitable activities in Baltimore. Now, as the primary proprietor of the AFRO’s archives, the organization is working to create a repository of historical information and qualitative data that is accessible beyond the narrow parameters of academia.

"I think about how difficult it can be to get into some archives, and that is the exact opposite of what we want for our collection," Wood says. “We want to prioritize nontraditional scholars, people who don’t necessarily have a PhD, but people who have an invested interest in this collection—to make sure that they have access to it, and know how to handle it, and that it is really there to learn from.”

To democratize archive access, Afro Charities has partnered with a regional youth organization, Muse 360’s New Generation Scholars, to introduce students to research and archival practices in producing original creative works. There is no shortage of requests from authors, artists, and documentarians who are using the archive as a primary source for their projects. And, in that same breath, the AFRO Archives remain true to their origins—a resource for local Baltimoreans exploring family genealogies, published obituaries, or wedding announcements to inform their family histories. Afro Charities also commissions artists, produces publications, and provides public programming inspired and informed by events and themes woven throughout the archive.

Presenting new work derived from the archive is another entry point for engagement, inviting people to experience the archive. Commissioned by Afro Charities, New York–based artist Xaviera Simmons used the archive to select a series of images to create a new body of original photographic work. In 2022, Simmons’s work Nectar debuted in a solo exhibition in Paris in conjunction with arts organization KADIST. Another offering to the greater community was To the Front: Black Women and the Vote, a book published by the AFRO and Afro Charities commemorating the centennial anniversary of the women’s vote and celebrating Black suffragists based in Washington, DC, and Maryland. The book creates an intergenerational thread between foremothers of the women’s movement and today’s activists, who, like their ancestors, are in passionate pursuit of equity and justice.

Currently being processed at a Maryland State Archives facility in Windsor Mill, Maryland, the AFRO Archives will ultimately live in the Upton Mansion in the heart of Old West Baltimore. The Upton Mansion, a Greek revival country house, was once the headquarters of Maryland’s oldest radio station, WCAO. Vacant since 2006, the over 10,000-square-foot building is located in the largest federally recognized Black historic district in the country. One in three houses in the area is currently vacant, yet Old West Baltimore is a goldmine filled with rich Black history. And, this neighborhood is where the AFRO first began.

The Mellon Foundation is supporting the redevelopment of the Upton Mansion to be a research center and the permanent home of the AFRO Archives. “Part of the reason we chose this site is because it’s a big property in the middle of this historically Black neighborhood,” Wood said. “By investing in this site, we are really hoping we can spur some catalytic change in the neighborhood—more investment from other organizations, from governmental agencies, and potentially from other homeowners to want to be in this location specifically because of the institution-building that we’re doing there.”

Designs for the public-facing spaces throughout the building include office space, a lecture hall and reading room for archival projects and public programs, processing and digitization labs, and an onsite carriage house for community meetings and social gatherings. At the rear of the building, an additional, fully customized space, complete with temperature and luminescence controls, is where the physical archives will live. Wood explained, “There’s something about encountering these materials within the context that they were made that I think adds another level of power and understanding to why they are the way they are and that’s important. It’s important that we’re the ones doing this project.”

In 2023, digitization of the archival materials was underway, using optical character recognition technology to identify objects and garner contextual information to create description tags to make materials easily searchable. The goal is to build a seamless infrastructure for an optimal user experience—one that continues to prioritize ease of access to the collection for all people who want to engage with it. “We’re just trying to figure out the best process so eventually we’ll have a system that’s very clearly outlined and anyone can jump into that work with a little training,” Wood said.

Afro Charities archivist Deyane Moses is doing the work of scanning photos and ephemera into the digital space. Working closely on the collection, she has found artifacts that could be in history textbooks and family photo books. She recently discovered a photo of a very young Thurgood Marshall. The AFRO also published its own version of The Green Book (a safe haven guide for Black motorists) and myriad birth and marriage announcements. “The correspondences are beautiful, from leaders like Lillie May Carroll Jackson and Jesse Jackson. Julian Bond wrote a series of letters to Carl Murphy and various editors about his experiences traveling overseas as a young activist.” She continued, “It was like he was writing to a friend.”

Throughout America, there is a percolating movement to rewrite history. The Afro Charities Archive gives everyone the opportunity to learn about history through a unique lens. “The AFRO’s archives have first-person accounts, handwritten letters from the people; these are first-person accounts that aren’t secondhand. The archive is 130 years of Black folks’ history coming from their perspective and their point of view. I don’t think we can get this material anywhere else,” Moses said affirmingly.

The Afro Charities Archives Center is slated to open in 2025.