Lunch & Learn: Preserving the AFRO News Archives

Join Afro Charities’s executive director Savannah G.M. Wood for an engaging discussion about the organization’s efforts to preserve the historic AFRO American Newspapers Archives. Founded in Baltimore 1892, the Afro was a crucial voice in the fight for civil rights from the very beginning. It grew into a vital news source for the African American communities along the East Coast, with editions in Washington, D.C., Richmond, Philadelphia, and Newark, New Jersey.

Wood will discuss Afro Charities’s current processing project, public programs, and their redevelopment of Baltimore’s historic Upton Mansion as the public research center for the collections; an artist’s rendering of the completed building is shown here.

Savannah G.M. Wood is an artist with deep roots in Baltimore and Los Angeles. As the Executive Director of Afro Charities, she is leading the charge to increase access to the 130+-year-old AFRO American Newspapers’s extensive archives. In this role, she has shepherded the organization through a period of historic growth, initiated new programming, and attracted support from national funders including the Mellon Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and The Ruth Foundation.

Wood is a graduate cum laude of the University of Southern California. She is a 2025 Tabb Research Center fellow, a member of the 2023 class of The Leadership Baltimore, a 2022 Saul Zaentz Innovation Fund fellow, 2022 Creative Capital finalist, and a 2019-2021 Robert W. Deutsch Foundation fellow. Like four generations of ancestors before her, she lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland, sharing and preserving Black stories.

To join virtually visit the Enoch Pratt Free Library's Facebook or Youtube page.

ASL interpretation will be available for attendees.

Presented in partnership with The Maryland State Archives and The Maryland Four Centuries Project.

Host or Publisher Enoch Pratt Free Library