AfAm. African-Americans

The collection consists of an oral history interview audio recording with Leo Lucas, a member of the Dayton City School Board during the battle over busing students for desegregation. The interview was conducted in the summer of 1975 by high school student Mark Benbow.

The scrapbook commemorates a celebration of life of a distinguished African-American author from Yellow Springs, Ohio, Virginia Hamilton. The celebration of life was held October 29, 2005, at the Yellow Springs Community Library.

Records of freed blacks from Greene, Logan, Miami, and Montgomery counties. Information usually includes name, age, birthdate, place and date of freedom, name of former owner, and a short physical description.

Collection includes scrapbooks, correspondence and photographs of a well-known African-American civil rights activist in Dayton.

Original handwritten and typed version of a poem, "To Anna C." written by Paul Laurence Dunbar. The poem is believed to have been written between 1900 and 1906. It was written for Anna Coons who lived in Dunbar’s neighborhood.

Booklet written by Charles M. Austin concerning the Dayton Youth Movement of the 1930s.

This collection contains one copy of "Rain Songs: Poems by Paul Laurence Dunbar," Selected and Illustrated by Emily Burkman, printed by Apiary Press, Northampton, Massachusetts, 2009. This copy is number 7 of fifteen.

This collection consists of a self-published autobiography by Anna Gee Blackwell titled He's All I Need: My Life Story. The book not only details Ms. Blackwell's life, but also serves as a chronicle of mid-to-late 20th Century middle-class African-American experience in the Miami Valley.

The collection documents the stories of six (6) local Dayton area refugees who originated from Congo, Iraq, Burundi, and Ethiopia. It contains audio oral histories, transcripts, and project documentation.

Ann Cooper is a prolific author with over 600 published magazine articles and ten books on aviation notables to her credit. The research collection is an excellent source of information on women aviators such as Jessie Woods, Patty Wagstaff, Edna Gardner Whyte, Dorothy S. Lewis, and Nancy Hopkins Tier, as well as African American aviators including the Tuskegee Airmen.