African American National Biography Project

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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. The object of the project is to publish and maintain a database of African Americans similar in scope to the American National Biography.

The African American National Biography (AANB) was published in print in 2008,{{Citation | author1=Gates, Henry Louis | author2=Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks | title=The African American national biography | publication-date=2008 | publisher=New York Oxford University Press | isbn=978-0-19-516019-2}} with a supplement published in 2013.{{Citation | author1=Gates, Henry Louis | author2=Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks | title=The African American national biography: Supplement 2008-2012| publication-date=2013 | publisher=New York Oxford University Press | isbn=978-0-19-516019-2}}

The database, which is continually updated, 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.{{cite web | title=African American National Biography (AANB) | website=The Hutchins Center for African & African American Research | url=https://hutchinscenter.fas.harvard.edu/aanb | access-date=11 December 2020}}

The general editors of the project are Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, while the executive editor is Steven J. Niven of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute.