African American National Biography Project

The African American National Biography Project is a joint project of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University and Oxford University Press. Editors are Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham.

The object of the project is to publish and maintain a database of African Americans similar in scope to the American National Biography. The Executive Editors of the project are Steven Niven of the WEB Du Bois Institute at Harvard University and Tony Aiello of Oxford University Press. The African American National Biography (AANB) was published in 2008. The database includes many entries by noted scholars, among them Sojourner Truth by Nell Irvin Painter; W. E. B. Du Bois by Thomas Holt; Rosa Parks by Darlene Clark Hine; Miles Davis by John Szwed; Muhammad Ali by Gerald Early; and President Barack Obama by Randall Kennedy. In 2008 the AANB was selected as a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title, was named a Library Journal Best Reference work, and awarded Booklist Editors’ Choice — TOP OF THE LIST.[1]