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.

Juneteenth 2021 and the work still to do
June 18, 2021
Yale’s libraries and collections are another important source of educational enrichment and inspiration in the spirit of Juneteenth. For example, the Beinecke Library has a pair of films by Solomon Sir Jones that show Juneteenth celebrations in Texas and Oklahoma in the 1920s. The Beinecke’s collections also include an address by Frederick Douglass delivered on April 16, 1883 in the Congregational Church in Washington, D.C. for the 21st anniversary of emancipation in the District of Columbia; and the gold pen used by President Lincoln to sign the Emancipation Proclamation.
Tulsa: The Fire and the Forgotten (PBS)
May 31, 2021
Restored Richard Wright novel hits bestseller lists (AP via The Oakland Press)
May 13, 2021
In 2010, Julia Wright was seated in "the comfortable, secluded, air-conditioned calm of the Beinecke Archives where my father's manuscripts are housed at Yale University." She told the AP that she "came across a long version of the short story I knew so well but augmented by the 50 pages on police brutality. Bringing the whole work to light was not only timely, it was a cure against the physical dismemberment suffered by the James Byrds of our dark history."
What We Want from Richard Wright (The New Yorker)
May 12, 2021
A newly restored novel tests an old dynamic between readers and the author of “Native Son.”
1921 Tulsa Race Massacre: Resources in the Collections
May 10, 2021

In 1921, a white mob attacked residents, homes, and businesses in the Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa, Oklahoma. In a highly segregated city and state, some 10...
Rewriting History by Fabiola Jean-Louis
April 28, 2021
The Beinecke Library has acquired a complete set of Fabiola Jean-Louis's photographic print series, Rewriting History
‘It couldn’t be more relevant’: the unseen Richard Wright novel finally getting its due (The Guardian)
April 22, 2021
A truncated part of the novel was later released as a short story, but the original manuscript’s existence was known only to a handful of scholars. Then, in 2010 Julia, a journalist, poet and advocate for death row inmates, unearthed the novel among her father’s papers at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library in New Haven, Connecticut.
Richard Wright’s Newly Restored Novel Is a Tale for Today (New York TImes)
April 20, 2021
African American studies department hires three assistant professors, hiring searches continue (Yale Daily News)
April 16, 2021
Howard added that resources such as the Beinecke Library and a more robust doctoral program in African American literature, as well as interdisciplinary programs in English and other departments, make the move especially enjoyable.
Decades After His Death, Richard Wright Has a New Book Out (New York Times)
April 14, 2021
“The Man Who Lived Underground,” a novel publishers rejected in the 1940s, is about an innocent Black man forced to confess to the murder of a white couple.