Featured Collections

Welcome to the African American Experience in Florida Portal

In 2020,  the USF Libraries embarked on a project to leverage collections that document the African American community. As part of our efforts, we designed a portal that would highlight and share the stories of individuals, families, business, and communities preserved as part of the state’s long history and made available in Special Collections on the Tampa and St. Petersburg campuses.

The portal you are visiting is just the beginning of a long-term project to highlight current and future materials that contribute to conversations about the African American experience in Florida. We look forward to preserving and sharing those stories with you.

Activism

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Community

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Black-Owned Businesses

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The Arts

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Journalism

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General African-American History

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Latest Blog Entries

Francisco Rodriguez, Jr.: Ybor City’s Champion of Equal Opportunity

 431 340 Tomaro Taylor

On July 28, 1868, US Secretary of State William Seward announced that the Fourteenth Amendment had been ratified. Three years after the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, the Fourteenth nullified the Dred Scott ruling, declaring that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States” are citizens. The Fourteenth also includes the Equal Protection Clause, which…

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Independence Day Dissent

 1024 420 Tomaro Taylor

Readers of the July 4, 1998, edition of The Weekly Challenger were confronted with a bracing front-page headline: “Independence Day Has Little Meaning to African-Americans.” “July 4th is a precious and patriotic holiday for most Americans,” the piece begins, “heralding the Declaration of Independence by the thirteen ‘American’ colonies from the mother country, Britain, in…

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