The Amistad Research Center is embracing digital initiatives in order to enhance access to our collections. There are currently four ways to access digital content on the website. As the Center continues to embrace technology, more digital projects, such as online exhibitions will be completed as another access point to content on the web.

Online Finding Aid Database

Amistad's online finding aid database provides access to individual digital objects including photographs, documents, audio, and video formats. This will be a continuing effort with new objects added on a regular basis; however, due to copyright and permissions issues, not all photographs, documents, oral histories, or films will be digitized and published to the database. Therefore, many significant objects will not be represented in the online database.
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LOUISiana Digital Library

The LOUISiana Digital Library hosts the Amistad Research Center’s special digital collection, The American Missionary Association and the Promise of a Multicultural American: 1839-1954. This online resource is a digital archives of approximately 5,000 photographs reflecting the activities and programs of the American Missionary Association (AMA) from 1839 to 1954. Photographers working for the AMA traveled through urban and rural communities within the continental United States and abroad, visually recording the diverse communities served by the AMA's broad social justice agenda. The collection includes selected images from the AMA Archives, AMA Archives Addenda, AMA Annual Reports and American Missionary Magazine Records.

Treatment of language has been at the forefront of the critical decisions employed in the descriptive words for people and environments visually documented in the project. The challenge was to maintain the archival integrity of the photographs, while also stating the correct descriptive name for the ethnic groups copied from the back of the photographs. The terminologies used to signify ethnic identities have changed during the tenure of the AMA, due to continuing development of cultural awareness and understanding. Many of the descriptive words used to identify peoples of various ethnicities reflect our ongoing journey to understand and respect one another as human beings.
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American Missionary Association Timeline
Through images of original documents, this timeline presents a visual history of the Amistad Incident and its legacy in the American Missionary Association's commitment to social justice, and especially education.
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School Desegregation in Louisiana
An interactive, multimedia timeline articulating the events surrounding school desegregation in Louisiana, made possible through a partnership between the Amistad Research Center and The Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. This online resource contains images and information from a number of Amistad's collections that document school desegregation.
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