Prepare for a visit to AAMLO with these special topic resource guides.
This resource guide is intended to help users locate home movie collections at AAMLO.
It highlights holdings in the following areas:
● Selected Library Material at AAMLO
● Selected Archival Collections at AAMLO
Other collections may contain relevant materials. Please contact AAMLO (aamlo@oaklandlibrary.org) with any questions or to schedule an appointment to view materials in person.
Selected Library Materials
Migrating to the Movies : Cinema and Black Urban Modernity by Jacqueline Stewart
Home Movies : a History of the American Industry, 1897-1979 by Alan Kattelle
Screening Race in American Nontheatrical Film edited by Allyson Nadia Field and Marsha Gordon
Selected Archival Collections
Sandra Bean Home Movie Collection. The Sandra Bean Home Movie Collection includes nine reels of 8mm and 16mm film documenting African Americans beginning in the late 1930s. The home movies include four b&w and four color films totaling 103 minutes and shows women gardening, children playing, sleeping car porters traveling across the country working for the Pullman Company, and families enjoying their leisure time dancing and fishing. A majority of the footage is thought to be taken by Ernest Bean, a sleeping car porter from the Bay Area, and documents the work of sleeping car porters working for the Pullman Company and middle class African Americans in the Bay Area during the 1930s-1940s. Available to view online.
Harrison Family Home Movie Collection. The Harrison Family Home Movie Collection includes five 8mm color home movies recorded by the Harrison family of Richmond, California documenting the family’s barbeque business, Harrison’s Bar-B-Que, and daily life for African Americans in Richmond, California during the 1960s. The home movies total 107 minutes and include footage of a road trip the family made through Denver, Colorado on their way to visit family in rural Texas near Ballinger, Texas and Amarillo, Texas. Footage also includes farm workers picking and processing grapes mostly likely in the Napa Valley and scenes from the California State Fair.
Frank and Diane Davison Home Movie Collection. The Frank and Diane Davison Home Movie Collection consists of 23 color and b&w, 8mm home movies documenting the family life of the Davison family during the 1960s. The home movies include 63 minutes of footage of the family camping, skiing, at the beach, dancing “The Twist”, and celebrating Halloween, Christmas, New Year’s Eve, and birthdays of friends and family members. The majority of the footage appears to take place in Alaska and Pacific Northwest with footage of family trips to Atlantic City, New Jersey, Oakland, California, and Panama.
Collier Family Papers. Includes three home movies taken by members of the Collier family (Frank and Muriel Collier) from 1951-1953. Available to view online.
Henry Williams Jr. Film Collection. The Henry Williams Jr. Film Collection consists of 175 films and 3 reel-to-reel audiotapes mostly documenting the Black Panther Party and student and union protest movements of the late 1960s. The union and student protest series consists of assorted amateur footage of protest rallies in the late 1960s and 1970s, and includes footage of Vietnam War protests, UAW and OCAW union strikes, the Farah Manufacturing Company strike of 1972, and student protests at high schools in Oakland, California following the police shooting of Melvin Black in 1979. Available to view online.
J.J. Malone Audiovisual Collection. Includes home video taken by Bay area blues musician J.J. Malone (1935 – 2004) while touring, visiting with friends or family, and discussing his life and career between 1988-1992.
Benjamin V. Williams Papers. Includes four home movies taken by journalist and television reporter Benjamin Vernon Williams (1927-2012) on various vacations to South Africa, Costa Rica, and the Caribbean between 1993-2001.
African American Museum & Library at Oakland Vertical File Collection. Includes copies of home movies from the Norman Leroy Evans family (circa 1960s-1970s) and the Webster family (circa 1990s).
Additional Information
Search the library using the catalog.
Consult AAMLO's finding aids in the Online Archive of California.
We are working to create new resource guides. Have an idea for a new guide? Contact us at aamlo@oaklandlibrary.org.
