Amistad Research Center

Amistad Research Center

The reading room at the Amistad Research Center
Country	United States
Type	Research library and archive
Established	1966
Location	New Orleans, Louisiana
Collection
Items collected	Manuscripts, books, and art
Size	approx. 15 million
Website	www.amistadresearchcenter.org

The Amistad Research Center (ARC) is an independent archives and manuscripts repository in the United States that specializes in the history of African Americans and ethnic minorities. It is one of the first institutions of its kind in the United States to collect African American ethnic historical records and to document the modern Civil Rights Movement.

The ARC has approximately 15 million holdings, emphasizing documents, and also including books, pamphlets, periodicals, photographs, and fine arts. It additionally has digitized holdings to enable research and education by scholars and students at locations distant from the ARC. Although the ARC documents history and race relations in the United States its holdings extend beyond African-American history and also include the ethnic heritage of Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, Appalachian whites, and the LGBTQ community.

The ARC traces its history to the events leading to the 1841 U.S. Supreme Court case United States v. The Amistad. The abolitionists who aided the Amistad Africans in their defense in that court case eventually helped to found the American Missionary Association (AMA), as an anti-caste, integrated abolitionist group. During and following the United States Civil War, the AMA founded hundreds of schools for the freedmen and other ethnic communities across the United States, including common schools, colleges and universities.