AAHGS honors a foundational pillar of our society: Dr. Debra Lynn Newman Ham, a world-renowned archivist, historian, and former professor at Morgan State University.

Dr. Ham has spent her career disrupting the myth that Black history is untaught due to a lack of records. As a specialist at the National Archives and the Library of Congress, she produced the landmark guide, The African-American Mosaic, revealing an "unbelievable ocean" of primary sources—from films and recordings to government manuscripts—that document our ancestors' lives.

Her passion lies in shifting the narrative: treating African Americans not as victims, but as overcomers who are central to the American story.

AAHGS encourages all to explore the "Mosaic" by following Dr. Newman Ham’s roadmap.
Search the Library of Congress digital collections for your family’s last name or hometown to see the records she fought to highlight.

Preserving the narrative of your family's history, in several ways, one being sharing it with younger family members. Make sure they know about the local archive or museums near them, and that our history is documented and preserved.

Source: AAHGS-Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society, Inc.
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National Archives: Rediscovering Black History

Making the Original Black History Guide
February 20, 2013 by RediscoveringBlog, posted in Uncategorized

This week’s blog post is by Dr. Debra Newman Ham, a former Archivist at NARA and the editor of the original Black History Guide. Ham is currently a professor of history at Morgan State University

After I graduated as a history major from Howard University in 1970, I spent the summer working as an intern in the special programs and exhibits division at the National Archives. When I left for graduate school at Boston University, NARA arranged from me to work part-time at the Kennedy Presidential Library which, at that time, was located in the Regional Record Center located outside of Boston in Waltham, MA.

I finished my master’s degree at Boston University in 1971 and NARA hired me to work fulltime in DC in 1972. I worked as the assistant to the Black History Specialist, Robert Clarke. By the time I arrived, the staff was already planning the National Archives Conference on Federal Archives as Sources for Research on Afro-Americans. Participants included scholars such as Mary Frances Berry, Alex Haley, Herbert Gutman and John Blassingame.

The conference took place June 4-5, 1973. This predated Haley’s publication of Roots and Gutman’s study, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom. The proceedings of this conference are available in a volume edited by Clarke, Afro-American History: Sources for Research (DC: Howard University Press, 1981).

NARA had promised the scholarly community that there would be a series of research guides made available to facilitate research and record accessibility. By the time of the conference, several interns and I had prepared a list of black servicemen in the American Revolution and a list of free black heads of family in the 1790 census. We distributed these lists as handouts to the conference participants.

After making Haley’s acquaintance, he invited me and several other researchers to help him with his Kinte Library Project, which was supposed to result in genealogical center for African American materials. The center never happened but several of the genealogists and historians who worked with Haley including myself founded the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society in 1977. That organization is still alive and well and has a national and several local chapters. For information about the society on the web, go to aahgs.org.

I subsequently left Clarke’s office to work in the NARA industrial and social branch. There I prepared finding aids for the Social Security Administration, the Office of Economic Opportunity and the Department of Labor. The labor publication was a special list of documents relating to black workers.

In 1978, I was promoted to work exclusively on the preparation of a guide to civilian records for African American history. Clarke was assigned to the military records. I explored civilian records in DC and Suitland over five year period and then worked on the publication of the guide. I was assisted by dozens of patient and not-so-patient archivists and technicians.

Finally, the work, Black History: A Guide to Civilian Records in the National Archives, was published by the National Archives Trust Fund Board in 1984. The guide won awards from both the SAA and MARAC.

I am most pleased about two things. The guide is still in print and steps are now being taken to update it. I earnestly believe in the public’s right to know and I believe that one of NARA’s roles should always be to facilitate researcher access to the nation’s records.
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Biography of Debra Lynn Newman Ham, PhD

Dr. Ham was born August 27, 1948) and is an American archivist and retired professor in the field of history.[1]

Education
Ham grew up in York, Pennsylvania and graduated from York High School.[1] She received a BA in history from Howard University in 1970 and received her Masters from Boston University in 1971.[2] She also completed a PhD at Howard University.[3]

Career
After graduating, she spent the summer as an intern at the National Archives.[4] In 1972, Ham began work as an archivist and Black History Specialist at the National Archives. While there, she helped co-found the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society in 1977.[5] She also compiled and prepared finding aids for the Social Security Administration, the Office of Economic Opportunity and the Department of Labor.[5]

In 1986 she moved to the Library of Congress, working as the specialist in African American History and Culture in the Manuscript Division.[2] Under her care were papers of influential people such as Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass and Thurgood Marshall.[1] While at the Library of Congress, she was the curator of the exhibit, "African American Odyssey: Quest for Full Citizenship," and edited the catalog of the exhibit.[2]

In 1995, she left the Library of Congress to become a professor of history at Morgan State University, a position she held til her retirement in 2016.[3] Her special interests include the study of African Americans, women, public history and archival methods. She commands her classrooms and even takes students on visits to local archives and museums. She is passionate about putting African Americans in the narrative and not treating them as victims. Instead, "I plan to focus on African Americans as overcomers.”[1]

She has worked to disrupt the myth that black history isn't taught because of a lack of records. She states in an interview with Jim McClure, “There is an unbelievable ocean of African-American history resources for people who are interested in viewing them or studying them.”[1]

One of her most well-known works is The African-American Mosaic which was published through the Library of Congress.[6] The guide lists many examples of pieces at the Library of Congress that examine African-American life, including "government documents, manuscripts, books, photographs, recordings and films."[6] Ham also includes work on African Americans, or by African Americans, from other notable historians. Many archivists and historians use her guide in the study of African American history.

When asked about her impact on the archival profession, she responded:

I would say that I honestly believe that the resources that I have provided in these 30 years of my doing historical work, the resources that I have identified have deepened and broadened the scope of African-American history … because my people didn’t know about the availability of these resources.[1]

During her career, Ham served on a number of professional bodies. She was a member of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, and served on the executive council from 1989 and was national secretary from 1992. She was on the editorial board of the Society of American Archivists from 1989 and she was publications director of the Association of Black Women Historians from 1986-1990. Ham was also involved with the Oral History Association.[5]

Recognition
In 2011, Ham received an Avoice award from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, for excellence in historical research.[2] Her publication Black History: A Guide has won several awards, including awards from the Society of American Archives and the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference.[5]

Publications
The African-American Mosaic: A Guide to Black History Resources in the Library of Congress (1993)
Black History: A Guide to Civilian Records in the National Archives (1984)
Catalog Guide for Exhibit, 'The African American Odyssey' (1998)
"African-American Activist Mary Church Terrell and the Brownsville Disturbance" (Trotter Review: Vol. 18 : Iss. 1, 2009)
"Resource Guide," Columbia University Guide to African American History since 1960 (2006)
"Government Documents,'' in the Harvard Guide to African-American History (2001)
"Jesus and Justice: Nannie Helen Burroughs and the Struggle for Civil Rights," in Humanity and Society (1988)
"Black Women Workers in the Twentieth Century," in Sage: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women (1986)
"Black Women in Pennsylvania in the Era of the American Revolution," in the Journal of Negro History (1976)
"The Emergence of Liberian Women in the Nineteenth Century," (Howard Doctoral Dissertation, 1984).

Source: Wikipedia