Search Help

How does this work?
There are many ways to search the collections of the Freedom Archives. Below is a brief guide that will help you conduct effective searches. Note, anytime you search for anything in the Freedom Archives, the first results that appear will be our digitized items. Information for items that have yet to be scanned or yet to be digitized can still be viewed, but only by clicking on the show link that will display the hidden (non-digitized) items. If you are interested in accessing these non-digitized materials, please email info@freedomarchives.org.
Exploring the Collections without the Search Bar
Under the heading Browse By Collection, you’ll notice most of the Freedom Archives’ major collections. These collections have an image as well as a short description of what you’ll find in that collection. Click on that image to instantly explore that specific collection.
Basic Searching
You can always type what you’re looking for into the search bar. Certain searches may generate hundreds of results, so sometimes it will help to use quotation marks to help narrow down your results. For instance, searching for the phrase Black Liberation will generate all of our holdings that contain the words Black and Liberation, while searching for “Black Liberation” (in quotation marks) will only generate our records that have those two words next to each other.
Advanced Searching
The Freedom Archives search site also understands Boolean search logic. Click on this link for a brief tutorial on how to use Boolean search logic. Our search function also understands “fuzzy searches.” Fuzzy searches utilize the (*) and will find matches even when users misspell words or enter in only partial words for the search. For example, searching for liber* will produce results for liberation/liberate/liberates/etc.
Keyword Searches
You’ll notice that under the heading KEYWORDS, there are a number of words, phrases or names that describe content. Sometimes these are also called “tags.” Clicking on these words is essentially the same as conducting a basic search.

Search Results

Sweet Honey in the Rock 20th Anniversary concert Sweet Honey in the Rock 20th Anniversary concert
Date: 1/1/1993Call Number: KP 096Format: CassetteCollection: Black Arts
Concert at Howard University campus, 1993. Sweet Honey in the Rock is a Grammy Award winning African-American female a cappella ensemble, founded by Bernice Johnson Reagon. The group’s music is rooted in the tradition of spirituals, hymns, and gospel, as well as jazz and blues. Their repertoire includes many songs promoting political and social justice. The concert is preceded by a ritual drumming ceremony tribute accompanied by a performance by members of a martial arts academy, followed by a brief reading of an excerpt from the anthology _We Who Believe in Freedom_, the first book put out by the group. Commentators review the group’s history and philosophy. Tape covers only first half of concert (ten songs, including “Spiritual”, “Ballad of the Broken Word”, “No Mirrors”, “In This Land”, “Patchwork Quilt” etc), then cuts out abruptly.