Black History Month

February 1, 2026

This year, the university's Black History Month celebration honors "the enduring legacy of innovation and resilience that diasporic cultivation, culture, and customs have shaped within the Black community."

The library offers a wealth of relevant resources, including scholarly content, music, films, images, and more. A few singular highlights:

• The only known copy of the first cookbook by a Black American, Malinda Russell, who offers a tantalizing, brief history of her life in the book's first pages (now available in a new, open access edition)
• Black Community Newspapers of Flint, a digital collection covering the period from the end of World War II into the beginning of the Civil Rights Era
• Chez Baldwin Writer's House Digital Collection, with thousands of images memorializing Baldwin's home in France. It was a social hub for many great Black and diaspora artists like Josephine Baker, Caryl Phillips, Nina Simone, Miles Davis, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and others
• A digital copy of the Orville Z. Frazier Photograph Album from the Bentley Historical Library. Frazier (1896-1971) was an engineer and inventor who lived in Elkhart, Indiana, as well as Grand Rapids and River Rouge, Michigan. 

For help finding materials, see our guide to African American Studies, or search by subject in our Advanced Catalog Search: select Subject in the dropdown menu, and enter a term (for example, "Composers, Black" or "African American History"). Use quotes around phrases for more precise results.

Join us on February 13 to celebrate Frederick Douglass, who escaped slavery and went on to become one of the most important figures of the 19th century. There will be a keynote speaker, a transcribe-a-thon, and desserts from Black owned bakeries.

Read about the origins of Black History Month.