The Collection

The Jim Alexander Collection is a living archive of more than 250,000 images spanning six decades of Black culture, music, leadership, literature, resistance, everyday life, and the struggle for human rights.

 

The collection’s power lies not only in its scale and subjects, but in the active presence of Alexander in shaping how his legacy is stewarded. 

 

Emory University’s Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library (MARBL) became the institutional home for the collection beginning in 2014, with subsequent acquisitions through 2022. Alexander retains ownership, while MARBL holds a long-term license to preserve, process, digitize, and use the archive for educational purposes. In 2025, a $280,000 Getty Foundation Black Visual Archives grant was awarded to support enhanced processing, finding aids, oral histories, and the hiring of visiting archivist, Mariah Isbell.  

 

To allow for the monumental task of processing, The Jim Alexander Collection is now closed to the public until 2028.