The Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection officially opened the doors to its new, larger, more prominent space on the first floor of Sullivan Hall during a ribbon-cutting ceremony on March 11.

Previously housed in separate rooms totaling less than 2,000 square feet, the collection now occupies a single, contiguous, 3,000-square-foot space.

The spacious new home provides greater room to display the collection’s wide variety of historic items and gives researchers additional room to work.

Materials in the Blockson collection date from 1581 and include first-edition works by Phyllis Wheatley and W.E.B. DuBois; African Bibles; correspondence of Haitian revolutionaries; Paul Robeson’s sheet music; narratives by Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass; thousands of taped interviews and radio programs on African and African American history and culture; and more than 500,000 photographs.

See for yourself

Explore the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection by visiting its new space in Sullivan Hall. The collection is open to the public from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Changes may occur to this schedule; to confirm hours, call 215-204-6632.