The African American Museum and Library at Oakland digital collection contains audiovisual material (moving images and audio) from the 1940s to the 2000s. These recordings include an oral history collection containing recent interviews with African-American residents of Oakland, interviews with Blues musician Brownie McGhee, and home movies recorded by Oakland's Collier family.
The African American Museum and Library at Oakland is dedicated to the discovery, preservation, interpretation and sharing of historical and cultural experiences of African Americans in California and the West for present and future generations.
AAMLO's archival collection is a unique resource on the history of African Americans in Northern California and the Bay Area. The over 160 collections in the archives contain the diaries of prominent families, pioneers, churches, social and political organizations. Freedom's Journal, the Liberator, California Voice, Sun Reporter, Muhammed Speaks, and the Black Panther newspapers are available on microfilm. Using AAMLO's oral history collection researchers can listen to interviews with local civil rights activists, educators, writers, and musicians. AAMLO is home to the Eternal Voices video library containing more than 80 years of African American East Bay history and Susheel Bibb's Meet Mary Pleasant DVD (scholarly interviews, key issues and documents). The microfilm collection includes primary research information on African American enslavement, military service, California census records 1910-1930, Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association, W.E.B. Dubois, Benjamin Banneker, Mary Church Terrell, Paul Robeson and others.
