Our mission is to archive and preserve the rich legacy of Black Beauty Culture.
The Black Beauty Archive® permanent collection features over 4,000 objects, such as full-issue magazines, books, hair and hot tools, wigs, cosmetics, photographs, posters, oral histories, interviews, audio tapes, and more. Much of our collection has been recovered, acquired, or generously donated by elders, artists, and collectors. All items in the digital archive are primary sources, preserved in BBA collections and digitized exclusively for educational purposes.
Languages: Collection material in English, Spanish & Hebrew.
Chronological Focus: 1941 to present. Materials prior to 1941 are collected in relation to their relevance to the Black Beauty Archive in preserving Black Beauty Culture.
Acquisition Information: Since the project was published on Juneteenth 2020 by our Founder & Lead Archivist Camille Lawrence, items have been added to the collection on a regular basis and will continue to be recovered and preserved as they are identified.
OUR ARCHIVAL PRACTICE
Developed & Rooted In Three Foundational Pillars
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Our team is in constant conversation, learning, exploring, and preserving oral histories within Black Beauty culture.
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Black Beauty Archive acquires and preserves physical materials including beauty tools, cosmetics, advertisements, photographs, memorabilia, apparel and more.
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Beauty practitioners across the African diaspora create, share, pass down ancestral knowledge through Black beauty ritual practices.
Black Beauty Archive makes materials accessible through fair use and open access (Section 107-108, Copyright Act) for educational and scholarly pursuit, but we do not own copyrights to all materials. All images, magazines, newspaper clippings, and published materials are Copyright © by their respective authors/publishers. Copying, by any method, of material on this site for any purpose other than an individual’s personal reference for educational purposes without the written permission of Black Beauty Archives, or the copyright owner, is prohibited.
To request a digital reproduction or permission to use archival materials in any publication, contact admin@blackbeautyarchive.com.
Black Beauty Archive is a member of the National Digital Stewardship Alliance and featured in Mapping the Black Digital and Public Humanities, Digital Black History.