A Black’s Reference Work

The institution

Black’s Encyclopedia is an internet archive of Black American life, history, and culture: institutional in rigor, ours in voice, free to read, and kept by its people.

What this is

A reference. Every record is sourced, dated, attributed, and citable, and every record is written from our account first, under the Standard of Record. The archive exists to hold the origins the mainstream record erased, to answer natural searches with receipts, and to keep what the severance tried to take: the title to what we made.

Publication is fast and open to anyone. Certification is earned before the keepers. That pairing, quick to publish, slow to seal, is the whole design.

How it is governed

The keepersTrusted editors who verify sources, work intake, and hold the seal. Standing is earned on the record, in the open.

Portal editorsSenior keepers who own a room of the archive: its docket, its canon, and the quality of its records.

The councilPortal editors sitting together. Settles doctrine, confirms keeper standing, and answers for the archive by name.

The reference house

Black’s Dictionary ↗

The national archive of the vernacular. The words, their origins, their receipts.

Black’s Encyclopedia

This archive. The events, accounts, institutions, and origins: the context the words live in.

Black’s Atlas · coming

The places: neighborhoods, routes, and grounds, mapped and sourced.

One house, one standard. A word cited in the Dictionary links to its context here; a record here defers to the Dictionary on the word itself. Each work makes the other harder to dismiss.

Reach the archive

Correctionscorrections@blacksencyclopedia.com

Keepers & contributorskeepers@blacksencyclopedia.com

Press & institutionspress@blacksencyclopedia.com

Black’s Reference Works is a nonprofit. The books are public: see where the money goes.