Newark Digital Archive

Discover the Newark Public Library’s Digital Collections!

The NPL digital archive is a treasure trove of fascinating images from Newark’s past, created under a generous Carnegie Corporation grant awarded in 2016 to preserve and provide access to invaluable historical collections.
During the two years of the grant, NPL succeeded in digitizing a wealth of materials, especially those related to the Great Migration of African Americans and the Latino immigration experience.

The digital archive now makes more than 50,000 items from over 100 collections easily accessible in schools, library branches and homes – anywhere in the world!

About the Newark Eagles Papers

A highlight of the digital archive are the Newark Eagles records, which document the history of a pioneering professional baseball team that played in the second Negro National League from 1936 to 1948.

Beginning in the 1880s, legal segregation gave rise to organized teams and leagues for baseball players of color. Black players were excluded from Major League baseball until the mid-1940s, yet many Negro League stars are ranked today among the greatest players of the sport. The Newark Eagles were a beacon of excellence on and off the field, their rosters replete with outstanding athletes. Seven players were eventually inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

The Newark Eagles organization owed much of its success to Effa Manley, its eighth Hall of Fame inductee and the only woman ever to be so honored. One of the earliest female owners and operators of a professional baseball club, Manley conducted the team’s affairs with unparalleled skill and determination. The records of the club, which include correspondence, minutes, player contracts, team schedules, game results, publicity material and financial records, illustrate Effa Manley’s day-to-day management of the team’s affairs, her involvement in the business of the Negro National League, and her groundbreaking philanthropic and civil rights work.

The Newark Eagles Papers – especially Effa Manley’s correspondence with players, fellow club owners, and business and community leaders around the country – are a chronicle of courage, enterprise, resistance and resilience at the dawn of the modern civil rights movement.

Join our community transcription project!

We invite citizens of Newark, New Jersey – and beyond – to join this community transcription project and engage with the contents of the NPL digital archive. Handwritten letters and other documents make it possible to commune directly with people in the past: their voices leap from the page, and we enter into their daily lives, social conditions, cares and concerns, hopes and dreams.

Volunteer transcribers of the Newark Eagles Papers help uncover the workings of Negro League teams and leagues, the achievements of African American business and community leaders, and the challenges of working, playing and community building in times of adversity.

Finished transcriptions are published alongside digitized images on the Newark Public Library’s Internet Archive website. These transcriptions will form the basis for new educational resources, research projects and community engagement opportunities.

By helping make the contents of the Eagles records better known and more accessible, you’ll be introducing ordinary citizens to the documents of the past; you’ll help us enhance their value for researchers and educators; and you’ll be part of a project that celebrates and conserves a vibrant, vital history, one played out on the field, on the road, and in club houses, offices and boardrooms: the history of Black baseball.