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.

Africa- General Resources

This collection contains general resources about the continent of Africa. The collection draws from many types of materials (periodicals, books, pamphlets) and many different countries (Kenya, Guinea, Tanzania). Themes of the collection range from the role of women in African liberation struggles, a series of periodicals detailing various liberation struggles called Revolution in Africa, a book filled with continental maps throughout history and a journal focusing on issues of Pan-Africanism.  

Documents

John Henrik Clarke on the change and challenge of history for the African person John Henrik Clarke on the change and challenge of history for the African person
Date: 2/10/1992Call Number: AFR 074Format: Cass A & BProducers: Wahat productions, New York Urban LeagueProgram: Black History Month Lecture: The Change & Challenge of History in the 20th CenturyCollection: Africa- General Resources
Lecture by Dr. John Henrik Clarke about the change and challenge of history for the African person. He speaks about how it is more difficult to understand the changes and challenges of history if we do not read the basic history of our people. History tells a people where and what they are and have been, what they still must be. He comments on how most people simply look at the history of the world as a whole, but overlook the histories of each people. He talks about the differences between men and women, blacks, and whites. Lastly, he speaks about placing black relationships on a new level based on tradition and a common history. Quote: “You don’t beg for something that belongs to you, you take back what belongs to you.”