Black Tucson

“Black Tucson” is a digital exhibit offering a small glimpse of the lives of Black Americans in Tucson, Arizona from the 1850s to the 1960s. In this exhibit, you will learn about various activities that Black folks engaged in as they created and sustained community. Still images and textual items help to illustrate the material output of this community and offer complementary visuals to the narrative. 

While “Black Tucson” covers a nearly 100-year period of time, the information found here is brief and in no way fully demonstrative of the deeply entrenched community and history that Black folks have created here since early settlement. The exhibit is organized thematically, covering three primary topics — settlement, education, and the social world of Black Tucson. Viewers are invited to engage with each theme as they choose. 

This exhibit was created by Graduate Assistant Zoe Harrison, with the guidance of Assistant Librarian & Archivist Erika Castaño. In the Spring of 2023, Zoe created and published a LibGuide highlighting archival materials related to the history of Black folks in the U.S./Mexico borderlands, titled “Black History in the Borderlands.” “Black Tucson” is an extension of this work, as all of the materials highlighted in this exhibit can be found in the LibGuide. Additionally, all of the reference material used to support the narrative of this exhibit can be found at UA Libraries Special Collections.

It must be mentioned that much of the research conducted on Black Tucson communities was conducted by Black Tucson students who felt the need to document their community and root their place in Tucson history. Their scholarship, then and now, offers us immense insight to the wide and wonderful ways that Black folks have existed throughout time in Tucson.