Moving Image and Recorded Sound Collections
The Amistad Research Center is home to more than 12,000 individual moving image and sound recordings. The collection includes a diverse range of topics from the African American experience to civil rights documentation. Each collection is curated to educate, inform, and inspire Amistad’s global audience. Types of recordings include: oral histories, documentaries, musical performances, home movies, poetry readings, speeches, travel films, educational films, television programs, political advertisements, radio broadcasts, organizational meetings, theatrical performances, personal record collections, time-based media fine art, and more.
The wide array of audiovisual material relates to our areas of focus. Types of recordings include: oral histories, documentaries, musical performances, home movies, poetry readings, speeches, travel films, educational films, television programs, political advertisements, radio broadcasts, organizational meetings, theatrical performances, personal record collections, time-based media fine art, and more.
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Moving Image and Recorded Sound collections.
Explore our Moving Image and Recorded Sound for convenient and comprehensive access to Amistad Research Center materials.
Manuscripts Collection Finding Aid Database
Dive into Amistad’s curated Moving Image and Recorded Sound collections, searchable within the Manuscripts Collection Finding Aid Database.
Louisiana Digital Library
Broaden your research with our Moving Image and Recorded Sound collections hosted on the Louisiana Digital Library.
YouTube
Broaden your research with our digital collections hosted on YouTube.
Carnival Ball, Robert S. and Lillie Mae Green Collection (1956)
Collection includes two 8mm films from the Robert S. and Lillie Mae Green collection depicting African American Carnival balls from 1955 and 1956. Robert Green was a photographer in New Orleans, and the film collection is comprised of his home movies depicting African American life in the city from the 1950s-1970s.
Carnival Ball, Robert S. and Lillie Mae Green Collection (1956)
Collection includes two 8mm films from the Robert S. and Lillie Mae Green collection depicting African American Carnival balls from 1955 and 1956. Robert Green was a photographer in New Orleans, and the film collection is comprised of his home movies depicting African American life in the city from the 1950s-1970s.
Ruby Bridges, Alan Wieder Collection (1961)
Collection contains newspaper clippings (November 1960-January 1979) formerly housed in three scrapbooks documenting the desegregation of William Frantz and McDonogh 19 elementary schools in New Orleans by Ruby Bridges (Frantz) and Leona Tate, Tessie Prevost, and Gail Etienne (McDonogh).
Ruby Bridges, Alan Wieder Collection (1961)
Collection contains newspaper clippings (November 1960-January 1979) formerly housed in three scrapbooks documenting the desegregation of William Frantz and McDonogh 19 elementary schools in New Orleans by Ruby Bridges (Frantz) and Leona Tate, Tessie Prevost, and Gail Etienne (McDonogh).
Mannie Fresh Interview, NOLA HipHop and Bounce Collection (2012)
The NOLA Hip Hop Archive was founded by Holly Hobbs, a Ph.D. candidate at Tulane University, in 2012. The goal of Hobbs’ project is to add to the growing body of documentation of hip hop and bounce oral histories in New Orleans, Louisiana, in order to highlight the music's role as an important community art form.
Mannie Fresh Interview, NOLA HipHop and Bounce Collection (2012)
The NOLA Hip Hop Archive was founded by Holly Hobbs, a Ph.D. candidate at Tulane University, in 2012. The goal of Hobbs’ project is to add to the growing body of documentation of hip hop and bounce oral histories in New Orleans, Louisiana, in order to highlight the music's role as an important community art form.
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Voices From Our Community
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Amistad allowed my students to do hands-on research for our Unsung Heroes Project. Staff met with my sixth-grade students in the classroom to teach them how to analyze primary and secondary sources, and provided students with access to their sources in order to help students conduct their research.
I have worked with dozens of archives throughout my graduate studies - the Amistad Research was exceptional. Staff acted like "teammates" in my research, guiding me through the Center's resources and sharing equal excitement in the discoveries we made. This attentiveness continued for months, as staff assisted me with image scans and permissions - even amid the pandemic!
The Amistad Research Center is integral to preserving and sharing the history of Africa American Material Culture. Amistad has proven to be a repository of some of the most important collections in American history and it has been an honor to partner with them.
The Amistad Research Center and the MW Prince Hall collection have been a tremendous resource in my research on Prince Hall Masonry. The records I sometimes need can't easily be found but the Amistad Research Center seems to always have what I'm looking for. I've worked with quite a few research centers but in my opinion Amistad is one of the best!!
The Amistad Research Center serves as the Griot of African American presence in our struggle for equal rights in America. It is, and has been for over 50 years, the archivist and curator for the works of thousands of African American scholars, researchers, writers and artists; persevering and documenting their stories. This is an important legacy of our resilience.
As an independent, community-based archive, Amistad uniquely serves as an anchor institution for the preservation and scholarly research of the Black Condition at a time in history when Truth is defined as Critical Race Theory.
The Amistad Research Center is widely considered to be one of the preeminent research libraries on African American history and life and the African diaspora in the world. It holds collections that are indispensable to my research.
Suturing material history and contemporary art practice, archival and curatorial experience, Rivers works in partnership with the Amistad Research Center to advance contemporary art that makes a study of history. Together we welcome artists from around the world to New Orleans for extended research and study in the development of new work, publications, and exhibitions.
By way of its potent focus on preserving the fabric of past and present day New Orleanians, the Amistad serves as the ultimate reminder that we are all part of the same symbiotic circle. As an individual who is fortunate enough to have his own collection at the Amistad, I am forever grateful, and wish the organization as a whole and its wonderful staff members in particular every bit of continued success.
Because of Amistad's knowledgeable and caring staff, and the Center's many rare collections, I recommended to the Efforts of Grace Board in 2014 to entrust to Amistad more than two decades of papers documenting the Ashe Cultural Arts Center. The Amistad Research Center richly deserves the National Medal for Museum and Library Service.
Providing a service globally, the Amistad Research Center is an icon in our community. I'm deeply happy to see that the Amistad and staff is being recognized for their dedication to providing excellent services so that researchers can have a positive experience and donors can be confident that their choice of Amistad as a repository for their personal collections was sound.
The Amistad Research Center was an invaluable resource for us to complete our documentary about bass-baritone singer William Warfield. They provided us access to the one of a kind Larney Goodkind collection, which helped us tell Warfield's story though photographs from his amazing career. Collections like this keep history alive.
The time I spent at the Amistad was indispensable to the completion of my dissertation. The staff were able to point me to several related collections, which led me on research paths I hadn't anticipated but were incredibly fruitful for my dissertation's framing.
Thank you very much for a wonderful article! I'm almost at a loss for words to read such a touching and kind article about my father. I hope this helps to bring more awareness of the important work that you and your colleagues are doing at the Amistad Center.
During my time working at the Amistad Research Center on the IMLS Women's Project, I assisted in the processing of the Senga Nengudi Papers and the Antoinette Harrell Papers. While documenting Nengudi's art and Harrell's political and genealogical work, these collections also remind us of the multilayered and complex person behind the material.
As someone who is hopefully training at least a few future historians and many more who love and understand the importance of a deep knowledge of history, I am so grateful that New Orleans is home to such a treasure as the Amistad Research Center, and even more grateful for its staff members who are so generous in sharing that treasure even, and especially, with young people.
Amistad is an institution that has a deep understanding of not just New Orleans history but the history and culture of Black and Indigenous peoples. Their stories are vital to understanding the story of race in America.
Without the Amistad Research Center, many documents from the African American experience would end up in landfills and many stories would end up in cemeteries. As a gift to our community, the Amistad preserves our rich history. As a gift to the world, it generously shares it.
My organization has facilitated the donation of a number of LGBTQ+ collections to ARC and I have always been impressed with their professionalism. We have partnered with ARC in the past on public programming events and their commitment to preserving queer history is admirable.
The Amistad Research Center has a wealth of vital archive collections that have been fundamental to my research. ARC has really gone above and beyond, not only responding to my requests with both speed and efficiency, but also demonstrating in-depth knowledge of the collections and the materials I required.
