Our primary goal is to preserve and share images from African American newspapers to future generations. As Black people moved about the country, the documentation of their lives was recorded on very few mediums.  The African American Newspapers were of the few published tools of the first half of the twentieth century to capture any record of our lives, our goals, our suffering and our strength. 

 

Most of the newspapers images and outtakes that captured this timeframe through photography are disintegrating.  The priority of maintaining the images and records took a back seat to staff reductions and then mere survival of these institutions.  We have limited time to act on capturing these images and facts.  Once they are gone, so goes the history.

 

The Obsidian Collection will form exclusive partnerships with African-American newspapers to stabilize archive collections and share them with the world by providing the team of archivists to get the job done.  Newspapers still operating will pledge a first-right-of-refusal to us if they decide to sell their archives and agree to revenue shares for the selected images that will require fees for use.