Collections : [AARLCC Special Collections]

The Arthur B. Steinman Collection contains twentieth century African sculptures and masks from the central and western regions of Africa. It also contains one lithograph print of "Planting" signed by Thomas Hart Benton.

The Clinton Mack Collection contains more than 290 images of the Black community in Pompano Beach taken during the 1930s. The photographs are primarily portraits of African-American and Bahamian men, women, children, and families, but there are also group photographs, images of parades, Masons, and church groups. The original negatives from the 1930s form the bulk of the collection, along with the original box they were stored in. The collection also includes materials from Bob Pool Jewelry and Photo, and materials documenting Kurt Mulder's efforts to preserve the images and identify the people in them.

The Daniel M. Johnson Collection consists of approximately 5,200 books published between the 1780s to 2002 that are by and about Africans and people of African descent. The collection includes many first edition and signed copies as well as pamphlets, articles, letters and photographs. The major categories that Daniel M. Johnson delineated for his collection are: African-American literature and children's literature; African and Caribbean literature; African-American history and critical thought; African, Egyptian, and Middle-Eastern history; and African-American art, music, dance, and sports. The catalog includes 4164 nonfiction books and 907 fiction books.

The Derrick Joshua Beard Collection contains the "Fats Waller" pencil sketch by George E. Neal. It also contains books.

The Frederic Gomes Cassidy Book Collection consists of 57 books published between 1888 and 1999. The books include fiction and nonfiction books on subjects such as Atlantic history, African American history, Caribbean history, and African history. They also include biographies.

The Library of the Spoken Word collection contains 145 audio cassette tapes including lectures, interviews, conferences, literature, articles, and poems on Caribbean and African history and culture from the Library of the Spoken Word project conducted by the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus in Jamaica.

The Love-Thornell Collection of Black American Photographs contains over 1300 photographs including cabinet cards, tintypes, daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, stereotypes, cartes de visite and postcards documenting Black American life from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century. Jaquelyn Love-Thornell collected the photographs over a 15-year period.

The Paul and Mary Rosen Collection contains 65 objects including masks, currency, figures, and other objects from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Mali, Gabon, Zaire, Tanzania, Cameroon, Angola, Ivory Coast, and Liberia dating to the 20th century.

The Sixto Campano Collection contains 1,076 pieces of original American sheet music dating from 1848 to 1974, with almost 900 titles published before 1924. The bulk of the collection contains pre- and post-Civil War minstrel pieces, commomnly known as "plantation melodies", as well as ragtime, vaudeville, blues, and jazz pieces. Noted composers and songwriters include W.C. Handy, Scott Joplin, John Rosamond Johnson, Bob Cole and Bert Williams. Images, illustrations and photographs demonstrate 19th and early 20th century attitudes towards African Americans and include Gene Buck, Walter Dittmar and the Starmer Brothers.