Rare historical photographs held in the archives of Historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in the United States are being digitised and made publicly available for the first time through the Getty Images photo archive grants programme. Many of these images — documenting more than a century of Black American history — have long sat in boxes or storage, inaccessible to the public and at risk of damage or loss. The initiative aims both to help HBCUs preserve their collections and to bring these images to a wider audience, allowing the institutions to share and profit from their own histories.

Launched in 2021 in partnership with the Getty family and the philanthropic organisation Stand Together, the not-for-profit scheme has so far seen 11 HBCUs digitise their archives, with plans to expand. Participating institutions retain full copyright, and proceeds are split so that 50% of licensing fees go to the HBCU, 30% fund student scholarships and 20% is reinvested in future digitisation. Two schools, Lincoln University and Jackson State University, have also joined a genealogy-focused partnership with Ancestry to make documents dating back to the 1800s searchable online. Getty teams visit each campus to identify commercially viable images, uncovering photographs of figures such as Shirley Chisholm, Jesse Jackson and Muhammad Ali, as well as everyday scenes of Black life.