The Afro Newspaper Morgue Collections

Founded in 1892 by John H. Murphy Sr., the Afro, as it is most commonly called, began publication with the specific mission of documenting the news in the black community of Baltimore City, Maryland. Beginning as a four-page leaflet the Afro grew into one of the most influential news publications of the 20th century with distribution offices in Baltimore, Washington, DC, Philadelphia, PA, Richmond, VA and Newark NJ. The Afro remains in publication today and is the oldest family-owned African American newspaper in the United States.

Over the course of its long history, the Afro compiled numerous primary document sources which were held in the newspaper's "morgue" files. These files are presently held in the Afro-American Newspapers Archives and Research Center. In 2006, with funding provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Afro-American Newspapers partnered with the Johns Hopkins University, to catalog and improve accessibility to stacks of AANARC within the online environment.