Columbia University Archives: Black Experience at Columbia

Student Life 

Below is a list of resources to find information about the various Black student groups, organizations and publications.

Student Groups and Organizations

• Historical Subject Files feature materials collected by Columbiana and University Archives staff members, including the following relevant folders:
  • African American Cultural Society (AACS), 1990s
  • African American Student Activities and Student Life, 1960s-2000s
  • Afro-American Society, 1960s 
  • African Students Association, 1960s-2000s (Additional records from this group can be found at the Barnard College Archives.)
  • Alpha Phi Alpha, 1960s-1990s
  • Black History/Heritage Month, 1980s-2000s
  • Black Students Organization (BSO), 1980s-2000s
  • Caribbean Students Association, 1990s
  • Charles Hamilton Pre-Law Association, 1990s
  • Delta Sigma Theta, 1980s
  • Omega Psi Phi, 1960s
     
• Student group websites and web archives
  Columbia domain websites, that is, sites with a columbia.edu address, have been crawled and preserved since 1996 and are available in our web archive collection via the Archive-It service. In addition, select sites without a columbia.edu address, for example those for publications and student groups, have been identified and are also routinely captured in the web crawls. You can look up the list of student groups indexed or you can navigate through time using the archived Columbia University homepage.
  • Student groups websites (current)
    • African Students Association
    • African Development Group
    • Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc.
    • Black Theater Ensemble
    • Charles Drew Pre-Medical Society 
    • Charles Hamilton Houston Pre-Law Association 
    • Columbia Black History Month
    • Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc.
    • Haitian Students Association
    • Multicultural Business Association
    • National Society of Black Engineers 
    • Omega Psi Phi Fraternity Inc.
    • Proud Colors
  • Archived websites
    • African Students Association (ASA) 
    • Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc.
    • Black Students Organization (BSO)
    • Black Theatre Ensemble
    • Caribbean Students Association
    • Double Discovery Student Organization (DDSO)
    • National Society of Black Engineers
    • Proud Colors 
       
• Fraternities and sororities
  A good source to learn about the various fraternity chapters is to look in the student newspaper. In the Columbia Spectator Digital Archive, try searches for the fraternity (“Alpha Phi Alpha”) and the chapter (“Zeta Eta”) to find the relevant articles (the quotation marks will help focus the search). You will find them mentioned as early as 1921 and you can learn about its status on campus, outside affiliations and charity work.

Columbia's Alpha Phi Alpha chapter started back in 1909. The original chapter closed with World War II; the fraternity was reactivated in 1967, and with some lapses, continues to this day. The original chapter and, in fact, all Black fraternities were “unofficial” or outside the university administration, meaning they were not part of Pamphratria, the inter-fraternity council. Chapter photos were not included in the early yearbooks. However, fraternity chapter letters appear as part of an individual student’s profile. 

You can also look for more information in the yearbooks. For example, in the 1968 Columbian, you can find the article “Bringing it all back home” by Philip Fox and Roy Feldman, which addresses the reactivation of Alpha Phi Alpha at Columbia. (It was given “colony” status in 1967 as part of its return.) Two years later, in 1970, “Am I my brothers’ keeper?” by Larry Jane and Jonh C. Losk gives you an update on the black fraternities on campus and the state of fraternities in general.

The Crisis magazine, "a record of the darker races," was started as the official publication of NAACP. It was created in 1910 by W. E. B. Du Bois. In its earliest issues, the magazine regularly featured sections on college graduates and information about Black fraternity chapters. The issues have been digitized and are available online. For example, you can find the announcement of the new chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi at Columbia and in 1925-1926, an update on the chapter and a photo of the members posing in front of Alma Mater. 

• Student organization records 
  Central Files, or the Office of the President records, is a great source to investigate the changing nature of student activities and student relations with the administration, and how student organizations reflect upon the University. Between 1900 and the 1940s in particular, Columbia sought ways to centralize the administration of nonacademic services. Look for Frederick Goetz (who served as comptroller to student organizations); King’s Crown (the alumni body which oversaw the budgets of certain student organizations); the Committee on Student Organizations (which wrote regulations governing the selection of speakers by student organization); the Registrar (all student organizations needed to complete a form with the purpose and membership of the organization, forms from 1940-1962 are found in boxes 568-570 of this collection). 

Student Publications

• Historical Subject Files feature publications collected by Columbiana and University Archives staff members, including the following relevant folders:
  • Black Forum, 1970s (Urban Center publication, 1972-1973)
  • Black Heights, 1970s-1980s (a magazine for and by African American students at Barnard and Columbia) 
    • You can also find the first issue, volume 1, number 1, 1979, under the call number CP1 B56. Additional issues are also available at the Barnard College Archives
  • The Black Experience: A Record of Summer Forums, 1968. 
    • You can also request to see the 2-volume set under the call number CP12 B58
       
• Columbiana Library: You can request these titles by using the call numbers listed below:
  • The Black Student. Journal of the Students Afro-American Society (SAS) at Columbia, Issue 1, Spring 1966, call number CP2 B56. 
  • In addition to their journal, the Students Afro-American Society (SAS) and the Latin American Students Organization published Black and Latin at Columbia, circa 1969, call number CP12 St94. This is a high school student recruitment brochure published for the Office of Admissions. 

Archival collections are non-circulating and can only be viewed in the Rare Book & Manuscript Library's reading room (RBML). In order to use the collections at the RBML, you will be required to register your own Special Collections Research Account before your visit and to validate the account in person with government-issued photo identification or Columbia ID card. Once you have created your Special Collections Research Account, you will be able to request materials directly from the finding aid: click the check box located on the right for the box(es) you need, and then scroll back to the top of the container list document and click “Submit Request” in the red-rimmed box at top. This should lead you directly to your Special Collections Research Account to complete the request form.

For additional resources or other topics you would like to be addressed here, please contact uarchives@columbia.edu.

Administrative Records

The University Archives main administrative collections include information about admissions, enrollment and retention, as well as curricular changes, requirements, faculty hiring, etc. These records can be good sources to learn about the University’s evolving understanding of the needs of a diverse student body, their academic interests, and the varied efforts at inclusion.

• Central Files (Office of the President records)
  These records include the day-to-day documents of the central administration offices primarily from the Morningside Heights campus days (1900s to the present). Here you will find the communications between the President, Provost, Secretary, trustees and deans of the various colleges and faculties. In these records, you will find discussion on policy changes, proposals, budget and personnel matters, and other issues to be voted on by the faculty and/or the trustees.
  • Student Organizations - Central Files is a great source to investigate the changing nature of student activities and student relations with the administration, and how student organizations reflect upon the University. Between 1900 and the 1940s in particular, Columbia sought ways to centralize the administration of nonacademic services. Look for Frederick Goetz (who served as comptroller to student organizations); King’s Crown (the alumni body which oversaw the budgets of certain student organizations); the Committee on Student Organizations (which wrote regulations governing the selection of speakers by student organization); the Registrar (all student organizations needed to complete a form with the purpose and membership of the organization, forms from 1940-1962 are found in boxes 568-570). 
     
• Office of the Provost records
  This collection is a great resource for all University activity from the 1940s to the 1990s. The records are particularly strong in the documentation of the Provost's work on issues related to academics, faculty, and student life.
   
• Columbia College records
  This collection focuses on the records of the Office of the Dean of Columbia College, the undergraduate school. The Dean is responsible for academic requirements of the College but also student life and students individually. 

Curriculum

Changes to the curriculum such as new courses, departments, centers, institutes and areas of research, can be found in the following collections:

• Office of the Provost records
• Faculty Meeting Minutes
• Central Files (Office of the President records)
• Minutes of the Board of Trustees

• Manning Marable papers – In 1993, Marable became the founding Director of the Institute for Research in African American Studies (IRAAS) at Columbia. During his tenure (1993-2003), the Institute launched academic programs for undergraduate and graduate students centered on teaching the African American freedom struggle. 

For information about the Institute for Research in African American Studies (IRAAS):

• You can consult the department website and archived websites.
• You can request to see paper copies of the course bulletins in the RBML reading room by using the Columbia University Bulletins finding aid.
   
• Historical Subject Files feature materials collected by Columbiana and University Archives staff members, including the following relevant folders:
  • African American Studies, 1960s-2000s
  • Black Studies, 1960s-1980s
  • Exhibitions - African-American Art and Literature, 1940s-1960s
  • Black History/Heritage Month, 1980s-2000s
     
• Dean’s Table podcast – In this podcast series, host and Dean of Social Sciences Frederick Harris sits down with Columbia faculty members to discuss scholarship and life. Previous episodes have included African-American and African Diaspora studies faculty members Farah Jasmine Griffin and Frank Guridy. 
   
• Columbia University & Slavery Project
  The Columbia University and Slavery project explores a previously little-known aspect of the university’s history – its connections with slavery and with antislavery movements from the founding of King’s College to the end of the Civil War. It features the work of faculty, students and staff. The website also features the work done by students in the related course.

  • Columbia Law School Students and Slavery
    Over at the Law School, Professor Katherine M. Franke leads the Columbia Law School & Slavery course.  In this seminar, students undertake research projects documenting different aspects of the Law School's connection to slavery. The project from class in Fall 2020 created this website. The contributors of this project are Abie Green, J.D. '22 (Family Histories Page); Elsa Sayag, LL.M. '21 (Soldiers Page); and Rebecca Stout, M.A. '21 (Slaveholders Page). Web design by Rebecca Stout.

Archival collections are non-circulating and can only be viewed in the Rare Book & Manuscript Library's reading room (RBML). In order to use the collections at the RBML, you will be required to register your own Special Collections Research Account before your visit and to validate the account in person with government-issued photo identification or Columbia ID card. Once you have created your Special Collections Research Account, you will be able to request materials directly from the finding aid: click the check box located on the right for the box(es) you need, and then scroll back to the top of the container list document and click “Submit Request” in the red-rimmed box at top. This should lead you directly to your Special Collections Research Account to complete the request form.

For additional resources or other topics you would like to be addressed here, please contact uarchives@columbia.edu.

Community

Columbia University is located next to the predominantly Black neighborhood of Harlem and the relationship with its neighbors has often been a source of tension. Below are sources that highlight the University's relationship with the surrounding community over the years.

• 1968 Crisis research guide
  In 1959, the University initiated plans to build a gymnasium for Columbia College students that would sit on two acres of public land just inside Morningside Park. The New York Legislature approved Columbia’s gymnasium plans, which included limited community access, in 1960. By the mid-1960s, the University’s allocation of public land for the project provoked increasingly negative feelings. Those opposed to the gym were particularly critical of its design: the separate and unequal access to the facilities prompted cries of segregation and racism.  Almost immediately after Columbia began construction on the gym in February 1968, demonstrating Columbia students and neighborhood residents descended on the site in protest. The protestors argued that Columbia effectively stole the land from the predominantly Black community that had traditionally used Morningside Park. To learn more about the 1968 student strike, its causes, timeline, and consequences, see the resources in the 1968 Crisis research guide.

• Urban Center records, 1967-1974
  The Urban Center at Columbia University was established in 1967 under a $10.8 million dollar grant from the Ford Foundation in support of community service programs, urban research, and educational and cultural activities. The records include annual reports, publications and the Ford Foundation grant materials. The collection also contains both the transcripts and recordings of a number of conferences and events sponsored by the Urban Center. The Urban Center was disbanded in 1973.

Urban Center publications at the University Archives:

•  Human uses of the university; planning a curriculum in urban and ethnic affairs at Columbia University, 1969, call number CU4 H88
• Report on the Activities (annual reports), 1967-1972, call number CU55 C and the years: 1967-1970, 1970-1971, and 1971-1972
• The urban university: a report on the activities of the Urban Center, September 1, 1967-June 30, 1970, 1970, call number CU55 C72.
• A five-year report on the activities of the Urban Center, July 1, 1968 to June 30, 1973, call number CU55 C723
• Columbia College Citizenship Council. A brochure addressed to College alumni introducing the Citizenship Council, a volunteer community service organization, circa 1967, call number CU55 C724
• Black Forum (Urban Center publication), Volumes 1 (1972) and 2 (1972/1973), call number CU55 J
• Long, Louella Jacqueline. How much power to the people? A study of the New York State Urban Development Corporation's involvement in Black Harlem, 1971, call number CU55 L85.
• Parker, Kellis E. Law and the Black experience, 1973, call number CU55 P226
• Robinson, Vernon Ben. Rhetoric or Programs? A three-year summary of the technical assistance provided by Columbia University to two minority communities, West Harlem and South Jamaica, 1973, call number CU55 R344.
• Skinner, Elliot Percival. Afro-Americans and Africa: the continuing dialectic, 1973, call number CU55 Sk34
• Thornell, Richard P. Toward equal opportunity in the urban setting; report of the activities of the Urban Center in support of increased minority student enrollment, 1969, call number CU55 T39.
   

Harlem/Morningside Heights area

• Double Discovery Center records
  Columbia College Citizenship Council submitted a grant proposal in the spring of 1965 to the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) requesting funds to establish a summer tutoring program for low-income and first-generation college-bound junior high and high school students who live in neighborhoods adjacent to Columbia University. Columbia University was originally awarded an initial grant of $157,020 from the OEO to establish Project Double Discovery. The name derived from the "double discovery" that was made by both the students and staff of the students’ academic potential.
   
• Morningside Alliance records
  The Morningside Area Alliance is an organization working for community improvement on behalf of its member institutions in the Morningside Heights neighborhood in New York City
   
• Marie Runyon papers
  Marie Runyon was an activist and former New York State legislator. In 1963 she began a decades-long fight against Columbia University over its real estate practices and expansion in the neighborhood. Runyon founded the Morningside Tenants Committee as well as other tenants' organizations, and she brought a number of cases to court to prevent her eviction from her apartment at 130 Morningside Drive. She also worked for many political and service organizations throughout her career.
   
• Arthur Carlisle papers
  Arthur E. Carlisle served as the Vice President for Community Affairs among other titles. He represented Columbia in community outreach efforts, including working with the Morningside Area Alliance and at Community Board meetings about the activation of the TRIGA reactor. During his tenure in the 1970s, he negotiated with and relocated tenants along Morningside Drive. He managed an over-$200K budget spent largely on donations to community groups and programs, including a summer softball league for children in Harlem.
   
• Columbia 250 Harlem History
  For the University’s 250^th anniversary, one of the celebratory websites was dedicated to Harlem History, featuring sections on Arts and Culture, the Neighborhood, and Politics.

Archival collections are non-circulating and can only be viewed in the Rare Book & Manuscript Library's reading room (RBML). In order to use the collections at the RBML, you will be required to register your own Special Collections Research Account before your visit and to validate the account in person with government-issued photo identification or Columbia ID card. Once you have created your Special Collections Research Account, you will be able to request materials directly from the finding aid: click the check box located on the right for the box(es) you need, and then scroll back to the top of the container list document and click “Submit Request” in the red-rimmed box at top. This should lead you directly to your Special Collections Research Account to complete the request form.

For additional resources or other topics you would like to be addressed here, please contact uarchives@columbia.edu.

Profiles

The list below captures information about some “firsts” and other notable Black Columbians. In addition to the links provided in the text, to learn more about these individuals, you can often find additional information in the Historical Biographical Files.

• Office of Public Affairs / Columbia News
  • The Columbia Celebrates Black History and Culture site includes a set of profiles of Notable Columbians. The list of "Great Columbians Who Made a Difference" includes WPA artist Charles H. Ashton (CC 1929, TC 1931), first African American U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder (CC 1973, Law 1976) and the first African American woman licensed to practice architecture in New York City Norma Sklarek (Arch 1950) among others.
  • During Black History Month, Columbia News features articles on Black alumni, including this one from February 2022: 10 Decades, 10 Black Columbians You Should Know and this one from February 2023: 7 African American STEM Pioneers With Uptown Connections.

• Dr. Marie Maynard Daly is the first Black woman in the U.S. to earn a PhD in chemistry from Columbia University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 1947. On May 19, 2023, the American Chemical Society declared Havemeyer Hall a National Historic Chemical Landmark in Dr. Daly’s name.
   
• Terrah Garner's "Highlighting Black Columbia alumni and their experiences" appeared as part of the Spectator's Spectrum coverage of Black History Month, 2024.
   
• Columbia Athletics put together the website Black Excellence at Columbia for Black History Month in 2021. It celebrates Black student-athletes and their contributions in the Ivy League.
   
• The Business School features its first Black graduate, Theodora Rutherford Class of 1924 in this video profile. 
   
• The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Sciences named a scholarship in honor of James R. Priest, the first Black graduate from the School of Mines in 1877. In 1874, Chemistry Professor Charles A. Joy wrote to Anthony Halsey to ask for funds for Priest to complete the School of Mines course. Priest had already completed one year and "stood second in a class of fifty pupils." 
   
• Pixley Seme Class of 1906 is often considered the first Black graduate of Columbia College.
   
• John Dotha Jones CC 1910 was the first Black Columbian Phi Beta Kappa. He went on to become the principal at Slater Industrial and State Normal School (now Winston Salem State University) and died in 1927. Arthur Paul Davis CC 1927, AM 1929, was the second. Victor Tejera CC 1946 set the record straight in a letter to the editors of Columbia College Today.
   
• Arthur Paul Davis, the second Phi Beta Kappa, wrote about his student days in "Columbia College and Renaissance Harlem: An Autobiographical Essay" Obsidian, Winter 1978, Vol. 4, No. 3, 90-113. The essay allows readers to time travel: you feel as if you were attending the great lectures during the very early days of the Core Curriculum and then you stroll around Harlem.
   
• Hilyard Robinson BArch 1924 is considered the first Black graduate of the School of Architecture. The first Black woman graduate was Norma Merrick Sklarek GSAPP 1950 profiled in Columbia magazine in February 2024.
   
• Elliot P. Skinner was the first African American professor to receive tenure in 1963. He went on to serve as the Department Chair (and in fact, also the first Black Department Chair) and eventually held the Franz Boas Professorship of Anthropology. After Skinner, the next tenured Black professors were Professor of Government and Political Science Charles Hamilton (featured in this Columbia Magazine profile from 2004), Professor of History Hollis Lynch and Professor of History Nathan Huggins. The first Black woman history professor was Barbara J. Fields.
   
• James Dickson Carr is considered the first black student to receive a law degree in 1896. Kellis E. Parker became the first Black member of the Law faculty in 1972 and received tenure in 1975.
   
• M. Moran Weston CC 1930 PhD 1954 and Franklin A. Thomas CC 1956 Law 1963 were the first Black University Trustees, both elected in July 1969. At the time, Weston was the Rector of St. Phillip’s Episcopal Church in Harlem and Thomas was the president and executive director of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation. The first Black Trustee over at Barnard was Barbara Mae Weston, who was appointed in October 1968.
   
• Phyllis T. Garland was the first Black and first female member of faculty to earn tenure at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. 
   
• Afro-Puerto Rican Jose Celso Barbosa was denied admission from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1877. Acta Columbiana, the undergraduate publication, criticized the decision, as it did "not speak well for the democratic principles of the professors." (Acta Columbiana, Volume 10, October 30, 1877, page 31). He went on to graduate as valedictorian of the Class of 1880 of the medical school at the University of Michigan.
   
• In the Columbia Law School and Slavery course, Carolyn Lau looked at the Earliest Black Students and who was the first Black graduate of the Law School. She discovered that it was George Henry Schanck in 1882, not John Daniel Lewis, as it was long believed:

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem is one of the New York Public Library’s research libraries. This cultural institution is devoted to the research, preservation, and exhibition of materials focused on African American, African Diaspora, and African experiences. Below are some of the Columbia University alumni and faculty papers found in their archival holdings. 

To use the collections at the Schomburg Center, you will need to create a Special Collections Researcher Account and make an appointment, much like at Columbia’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library (RBML). To learn more about how to conduct research at the Schomburg Center, please visit their Research Guide.

• Langston Hughes Collection, 1929-1967
  Poet, novelist, short story writer, playwright, lyricist, and author of juvenile books, Langston Hughes, a Columbia Engineering student 1921-1922, was one of the most prolific African-American writers of the 20th century. Born in Joplin, Missouri, Hughes came to New York in the 1920s and joined other writers and artists in creating what would become known as the Harlem Renaissance.

• Frederick W. Wells papers, 1924
  The Frederick W. Wells Papers consist of letters, telegrams and news clippings documenting a cross burning incident by the Ku Klux Klan as part of an effort by white students to have Wells, an African American Columbia University School of Law student, removed from his on-campus dormitory. The collection dates from January through May of 1924 and consists primarily of 61 letters of support from organizations, friends and members of the public, both Black and white. 

• Helene Johnson poems, 1972-1979
  Helene Johnson was a poet of the Harlem Renaissance. She was born in Boston, Massachusetts. She attended Boston University and Columbia University in 1927. Johnson was the youngest of the African American writers of the Harlem Renaissance and published approximately twenty-five poems which appeared in such magazines as Opportunity, Fire!!, and Vanity Fair, as well as in The New Negro.

• Lyonel C. Florant papers, 1930-circa 1945
  Lyonel C. Florant, an African American economist, who earned his Master's degree in 1939 from Columbia University, was employed by the Carnegie Corporation's "Study of the Negro in America" project. Florant authored several documents for the project, and he, along with others, completed the report, "Negro Population Movements, 1860 to 1940: In Relation to Social and Economic Factors". (You can find his Master’s Essay from 1939 “Negro migration in the depression to New York City (as reflected in church data)” in CLIO.)

• Bernhard Stern/Alain Locke collection 1931-1955
  Dr. Bernhard Stern was a lecturer in sociology at Columbia University in the 1930s and 1940s with a particular interest in race relations. Dr. Alain Locke was Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University and the principal spokesman of the "New Negro Movement," the black arts movement of the 1920s. This collection contains the correspondence between Bernhard Stern and Alain Locke, co-editors of When Peoples Meet, A Study in Race and Cultural Contacts (1946), a book on race relations. Stern’s 1927 dissertation, Social factors in medical progress, and the Bernhard Stern papers are both available at the RBML. 

• Christiane C. Collins collection of the West Harlem Coalition for Morningside Park and Urban Problems of the Contiguous Communities: West Harlem, Manhattan Valley, Morningside Heights and Manhattanville, 1941-1996 [bulk 1968-1973]
  The Christiane C. Collins collection documents the origins, demonstrations and aftermath of the Columbia University student protest in the spring of 1968 and events through 1970. The materials in this collection were gathered by Christiane Crasemann Collins and her husband, Professor George R. Collins, long-time residents of Morningside Heights. Mrs. Collins, an art librarian at the Parsons School of Design (1973-1983), was an active member of the West Side Coalition for Morningside Park. Dr. George Collins, professor of art history and an architectural historian at Columbia University, was involved in community and university relations as early as the mid-1950s, when he began protesting Columbia's expansionist plans. He also became an active member of the University Senate's Committee on Community Relations following the upheavals in the spring of 1968. Professor Collins retired from Columbia University in 1986. (To learn more about the 1968 student strike, its causes, timeline, and consequences and the materials available at the RBML, see the resources in the 1968 Crisis research guide.)

• Ewart Guinier papers 1910-1989
  In 1968 Ewart Guinier was appointed Associate Director of the newly founded Urban Center at Columbia University, an institute designed to help solve the growing antagonism between the University and the Harlem community, caused in part by Columbia's plan to build a private gymnasium in nearby Morningside Park. The Ewart Guinier Papers document Guinier's professional and political career as a labor leader and community organizer from 1938 to 1962, and his role in the founding and development of Harvard University's African American Studies Department (AASD) from 1969 to 1975. The Personal papers provide partial documentation on his childhood and migration to the United States, his employment in the Civil Service in New York, his military record, his association with the Urban League, the Urban Center at Columbia University and others. (The Urban Center records are available at the RBML.)