Digital Resources for Explore Black Culture and Heritage (The Blarchives)
The Roosevelt Public Library's Black Heritage Collection
The Roosevelt Public Library's Black Heritage Collection in Long Island, NY, provides extensive resources covering African, Caribbean, and African American history, literature, and culture. As one of the largest collections of its kind in New York, it includes thousands of books alongside specialized donations like the Kenneth Jenkins Collective.
These holdings allow students to study global African diaspora connections, explore local public history, and conduct detailed research using scholarly sources. For an AP African American Studies research paper or final assignment, you could draw upon these primary and secondary materials to frame your main historical arguments and support your presentation.
Note: This resource is a physical, in-person collection. It is best utilized if you are local to Roosevelt, Long Island.
A picture of the library stacks that feature part of the Black Heritage collection at the Roosevelt Public Library. There are paintings of iconic Black Americans on the stack ends including Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, MaryJane McLeod Bethune and Anna Julia Cooper.