James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection

The James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection (JWJ) documents and celebrates the cultural and artistic achievements and the intellectual and political activities of African Americans.

Beinecke Readings Examine Freedom From All Angles (New Haven Independentt)
July 6, 2023
The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library holds one of 26 known surviving copies of the first printing of the Declaration of Independence. The document, printed by John Dunlap in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776, has a single typographical error, an indication that the founders issued it in a hurry to declare independence from England. On Wednesday, a few dozen New Haveners got to hear the words of that revolutionary broadside read aloud — along with that of Frederick Douglass’s 1852 oration “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” — as part of an annual primary-source-focused tradition to celebrate the 247th anniversary of Independence Day.
An Unusual History of Indian Dance, Cross-Continental Culture and a Camera (The Wire)
July 1, 2023
In his book 'Photo Attractions', Ajay J. Sinha unwinds several threads after discovering a cache of photos of the dancer Ram Gopal.
We hold these truths … Declaration of Independence, Life of William Grimes, Declaration of Sentiments, and Frederick Douglass's Oration on view June 22 - July 30, 2023 (extended!)
June 20, 2023

The Beinecke Library marks the 247th anniversary of the nation’s founding with a display of vital documents of United States history from Yale Library special...
Bill Lowe Keeps The Renaissance Alive (New Haven Independent)
June 14, 2023
The group’s first number, “Us,” was part of Signifyin’ Natives, a suite of searching, excoriating, and invigorating music from composer and musician Bill Lowe that uses as its text passages from a Harlem Renaissance classic that, it turns out, has as much to say about the present as it did to its own time, a century ago. Lowe’s presentation of Signifyin’ Natives — at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library on Yale’s campus Tuesday afternoon — was a collaboration between the library and the International Festival of Arts and Ideas, running now through June 25.
Portrait from library collection featured in lavish Pulitzer Prize–winning opera “Omar”
May 15, 2023
The circa 1850 ambrotype (a positive image on glass) is from the library’s Randolph Linsly Simpson African American Collection, James Weldon Memorial Collection. It is one of only three known portraits of the man, who is identified in a handwritten caption as “Uncle Moreau, a slave of great notoriety.”
Yale Camerata to celebrate African American history and culture
April 27, 2023
As they prepared for the performance, the Camerata’s members had the opportunity to view materials at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, part of the Yale University Library, which highlight Hughes’ and Bonds’ friendship and their long-running artistic collaboration. The choir members took turns leafing through seven folders of correspondence between the poet and the composer, an archive that contains engrossing evidence of their intimate friendship.
Archive illuminates New Haven’s Bias Stanley, a 19th-century civil rights advocate
April 18, 2023
Papers at Yale’s Beinecke Library shed new light on the lives of Bias and Margaret Stanley, stalwarts of New Haven’s Black community in the early 1800s.
Uncovering the link between 'Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing' and Yale's historic Beinecke Collection (Connecticut Public Radio/WNPR)
March 23, 2023
"Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing," also known as the Black National Anthem, was adopted by the NAACP and prominently used as a rallying cry during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. This year, the song was performed at the Super Bowl by Waterbury native Sheryl Lee Ralph, an actress on “Abbott Elementary.” That’s not the song’s only tie to Connecticut.
Suffragist, Activist, Journalist: The Incredible Life of Jersey City’s Own Ella Barksdale Brown (The Hoboken Girl)
February 27, 2023
Her involvement with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Circle for Negro War Relief, the New Jersey Civil Rights Bureau, and the National Association of Colored Women led to her friendships with such pioneering civil rights leaders as W.E.B. Dubois, Booker T. Washington, Paul Robeson, and James Weldon Johnson. Archive boxes in Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library hold letters of well wishes, sympathy, news, and greetings between Ella and her illustrious peers.
In "What Could Have Been," New Haven's Past Haunts Its Present (Arts Paper)
February 23, 2023
The year is 2023. Just beyond East and Water Streets, the nation’s first Historically Black College is gearing up for its 192nd anniversary. Balloons bob in the breeze outside. Buildings reach into the blue New Haven sky. Gulls cry and cackle above the water, and sound like they are laughing. All day, the nation’s most prominent Black scholars file in and out of the campus buildings, holding a history that is nearly two centuries old. Except, their path to that day never happened. The year is 2023, and the space is just an ocean of asphalt and road, with a labyrinth of highway winding above. It didn’t have to be this way.