Diaspora Pathways Project

The Diaspora Pathways Project is a long-term initiative aimed at better understanding the changing landscape of the living African Diaspora, especially as it pertains to the community in the greater Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area. In 2007, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded Hopkins $476,000 for a centerpiece project of the initiative, which involves collaborating with The Afro-American Newspapers to open its historic archives to access by scholars and others.

"At the core of the broader Diaspora Pathways Initiative is the quest to understand how African Americans have, historically and currently, perceived their roles in an ever changing world — one that is affected by processes such as immigration, the quest for full citizenship rights, multiculturalism, globalism, and internal regional change," says Center for Africana Studies [former] Director Ben Vinson. "Through the unprocessed archives of the Afro, we can obtain a new and privileged view, and ultimately think differently about blackness in Baltimore." 

Please visit the Afro Archives online at morgue.afro.com.

DPAAP Begins Digging >

Civil Rights Activist Daisy Bates, ca. 1950.