Getting an inside look at more than a century of Black history at AFRO News
BALTIMORE -- In August, AFRO newspaper will celebrate 132 years since John Murphy Sr. borrowed $200 from his wife Martha to buy and found Baltimore's Black newspaper.
AFRO news gave WJZ a peek at their historic archives as they continue to preserve Black history.
Along the grated floors of the storied aisles at the Maryland State Archives, are shelves full of treasure troves of Black gold.
"No, you said it right, Black gold," said Alexis Taylor, the managing editor of AFRO News. "The AFRO archives give me a feeling of gratefulness."
In each box are the stories of the fight for equality that go beyond the headlines of Black excellence.
"It wasn't just, oh he woke up and became the Supreme Court Justice," Taylor said about Thurgood Marshall. "You know he was denied from the first law school that he tried to get into and that's how he ended up at Howard. All of those stories are here."
Each story, carefully curated, is reviewed and filed in an orderly fashion by the team at Afro Charities.
People, like Archives Assistant Oyinda Omoloja, are sure to preserve and protect every snapshot of Black stories, as told over the 132-year history of Baltimore's AFRO newspaper, which is littered with so many gems of Black history.
This was the exact vision of the Murphy family who wanted to document and educate Black people to know their own stories.
"And what's funny is that my grandmother was married to a military serviceman and he ended up being captured on the USS Pueblo," Taylor said. "He was captured and was a prisoner of war."
And off goes Archives Assistant Oyinda, knowing exactly where to find a piece of Taylor's precious family history.
"I think it gives you such a sense of pride that my story was worth recording and this is the greatness that we come from," Taylor said. "So my grandmother's name is Betty Bussell. So, she's been Betty Bussell my whole life and this is where she got the name Bussell. The fact that we have one here from 1969, I mean, it just…reiterates that all of the stories that we captured, they put that stuff on record for a reason."
But their latest prize possession is newly acquired- the original door from their old newsroom in Baltimore.
"This is just a testament to how closely the AFRO editors and publishers were working with the NAACP," Taylor said. "I mean, if we shared an office space, it just backs up all of the evidence we have in the archives that say the AFRO was an integral part of the Civil Rights movement."
Maryland State Archives are more than a century of documenting and preserving the framework of the Black experience in Baltimore and beyond.