Complete works — not summaries — free to read in full. Search inside every page, and see exactly which source an answer came from.
These are complete works held in the archive — every chapter, start to finish. Open one and read it in the browser.
Three steps, and the reading starts on the first one.
The point isn't only that the history is here — it's that a child can trace any claim back to the document it came from. That's a habit worth teaching.
Each subject opens with the public-domain works we host in full. Alongside them sit contemporary titles from Black authors — those are the ones membership pays for.
The historical works here are public domain — free forever, and no one is owed a royalty on them. They exist to bring people in. What membership actually buys is licensing: contemporary books by Black authors, and narration rights so those books can be listened to as well as read.
Every new title we license is a payment to a living author on a generous revenue share. That is the whole business model, stated plainly.
Rights pills show exactly what's available for each title — no surprises. Works held in full open straight into the reader; licensed titles show what membership would unlock.
Cited answers are not built yet. Until they are, this page shows worked examples of the format an answer must meet — a claim, and the documents behind it.
Meanwhile, search does work — it reads every word of every book held here and shows you the passage in context.
Seven eras spanning the U.S., the Caribbean, and the African continent. Eras holding works in the archive open them; the rest are marked as not yet stocked.
Regional collections are not built yet. Rather than show invented counts, this lists the regions planned and what each will cover.
Assign books and follow chapter progress from one dashboard. Reading tracked on this device is shown below; a family account syncs it across everyone's devices.
One parent account with a private profile per child. We'll email you the moment accounts open — nothing else, and you can leave at any time.
Everything the archive holds in full is free and always will be. Membership funds licensing contemporary Black authors and clearing narration rights. Pricing is not settled.
BlackArchive exists to preserve, organize, and make Black history and culture accessible worldwide — not just in the United States, but across the full global diaspora. Every book, every answer, and every timeline entry traces back to a citation you can check yourself.
We believe the strongest defense against erasure and misinformation isn't restriction — it's rigor. Nothing gets published here without a source. Nothing gets narrated without cleared rights. Nothing gets claimed without a citation.
This platform is built for Black history, Black authors, and Black families — an editorial mission and focus, the same way Essence, Ebony, and BET have always centered Black voices and stories.