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Dorothy Berry

Dorothy Berry

Dorothy Berry is the Digital Collections Program Manager at Houghton Library, where she oversees the digitization of thousands of manuscripts and rare books a year. Her research focuses on Black lives in the archives, with a drive to highlight African American stories that, though forgotten, have shaped our contemporary lives. She can be found on Twitter @dorothyjberry, or at www.dorothy-berry.com.

Deep zoom into Facts from 1836 Broadside Slave Market

Deep Zoom: 1836 Broadside “Slave Market of America”

Published by the American Anti-Slavery Society, this single 77 by 55 centimeter sheet tells multiple stories in both text and illustration.
The evolution of a single line from David Walker’s Appeal

Comparing Editions of David Walker’s Abolitionist Appeal

Digitization allows researchers to trace editorial and authorial changes in archival content. Both are central to the study of this famous abolitionist pamphlet.
Elizabeth Keckley

Elizabeth Keckley’s Memoir Behind the Scenes, or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four in the White House

Keckley’s decision to write about her employers from the viewpoint of a household laborer—she was seamstress to Mary Todd Lincoln—enraged audiences.
J.P. Ball's Great Daguerrian Gallery of the West

Introducing “Archives Unbound”

In her new column, Dorothy Berry offers an inside look at the work of the digital archivist, while highlighting forgotten figures in Black print culture and public life.
The cover of a music book for the musical "He's Up Against The Real Thing Now," starring Bert Williams and George Walker, 1898

When Black Celebrities Wore Blackface

A Black Bohemia flourished in New York before the Harlem Renaissance and with it a new type of self-determined, contradictory Black celebrity.