Proposal for Creating a Digital Database of the African American Photography Collection of the Institute for Arts & Media at California State University

The African American Photography Collection (AAPC) of the Institute for Arts & Media (IAM) at California State University, Northridge is a collection of more than 820,000 negatives and slides produced by nine Los Angeles-based African American photographers. The collection documents the social, cultural, and political aspects of African American life in post-war Los Angeles and Southern California and in doing so illuminates nationally significant themes such as racial segregation and discrimination, the civil rights movement, African American entertainment and cultural leaders, and major political and cultural events. Yet with less than one percent of the collection digitized and available to users online, the collection is not widely accessible to researchers, educators, cultural institutions, or others interested in the time, place, and community the photos represent. This proposal seeks NEH funding in the amount of $341,762 to enable IAM to create a digital archive of its photographic materials, concentrating on the work of three particularly prolific and influential photographers—Harry Adams (1918-1988), Guy Crowder (1940-2011), and Charles Williams (1908-1986). Their work as freelance photojournalists for the city’s black press, together with their work for private clients within the African American community, has produced a set of 551,000 images of unusual depth, breadth, and power.

The proposed project will create a digital database of the Adams, Crowder, and Williams collections using CONTENTdm to digitally preserve the images and enable educational online access. Users will be able to easily access the database through the university’s Oviatt Library Digital Collections website. The digital archive will include 19,820 images. Project activities, which will take place over a 3-year timeframe, include completing the archival processing of the collection, selecting images for inclusion in the digital archive, creating metadata, scanning the images to make access files, uploading the access files and metadata to CONTENTdm, and linking the database to the Oviatt Library website. This will result in the complete processing of the Adams, Crowder, and Williams collections. Approximately 4% of these collections will be digitized. In total, 19,820 digital images of the Adams, Crowder, and Williams collections will be preserved and made accessible to the public through the Oviatt Library Digital Collections Web Site. The project will take three years to complete.

Additional activities relate to disseminating the collection’s content to numerous communities of potential users, particularly the Southern California K–12 educational community with whom California State University, Northridge has developed close collaborative partnerships. The project team will include an Education Advisor who will work closely with the Project Director to develop curricular plans and educational tools and resources, such as an online interactive timeline, that educators can use as the basis for a variety of activities and assignments in their classrooms. In this way, the collection will help expand student viewpoints to include local perspectives on national themes.

Creating an online digital archive of the AACP collection and implementing dissemination strategies that harness the power of digital technology will help ensure that the collection’s content reaches a broader, more diverse audience than it does today. Expanding access and use of the collection will provide a greater awareness of the struggles, sacrifices, and accomplishments of the African American community during the post-war years both in Southern California and in the nation at large, furthering NEH efforts to enhance understanding of our shared heritage and to help bridge cultures within our society.