Partnerships for Progress
AAI’s Archival Digitization & Preservation Project
Over the past 70-plus years, AAI has maintained records that document our history, impact, and legacy. Our collection is a remarkable resource for the study of the history of educational support and exchange, and people-to-people as well as official relations between Africans, African-Americans, and the United States.
Each of our archival collections represent not just pivotal moments in history, but foundational intellectual movements. Our unprocessed archives reveal the untold stories of Africans and African Americans who advanced a collective agenda for African liberation through education and the documented efforts of elementary and secondary school educators committed to providing school-age children with accurate, unbiased information about Africa and its global diaspora.
The Africa-America Institute invites you to join us in uncovering our history to guide our future. Central to AAI is the principle of Sankofa– translated to “go back and get it”– highlighting the power of historical knowledge in shaping our present. Over the next year, AAI and University of Massachusetts-Amherst are diving deep into our archives, taking a look backwards to move forward. Making available these never-before-seen pieces of African and African-American history requires significant resources, but together, our commitment to archival exploration can uncover our shared Global African history and inspire our future.
The digitization process is underway as students from UMASS-Amherst scan and analyze materials from our archives. Join us in ensuring that these historical documents are available to everyone.
Experience rare footage of AAI co-founder Dr. Horace Mann Bond’s historic trip to Nigeria in An African comes home, 1949 and retrace the steps leading up to our founding.
RECOVERED FROM THE ARCHIVES:
Take inspiration from an issue of our flagship Africa Report and learn from thought leaders of the 20th century:
