Danley has a graduate assistantship at the Langston Hughes Memorial Library at Lincoln University, one of two partnerships Africana studies launched this year to enhance the graduate student experience at UD. 

“One of my first assignments was writing a paper on the state of Black archives, and I learned that a lot of times things are overlooked, or not preserved or valued, and I learned how important it is to uncover these things and share these histories,” she said.

Stories that matter

Danley started her assistantship before her classes at UD began, spending the summer working with assistant archivist Ashley Gillard to curate “100 Years of the Lincolnian Newspaper: Ink, Voice, & Vision,” which opened in October and is on view through spring 2026. The Lincolnian is the second-oldest student-run HBCU newspaper in the country. 

They pored through old copies, focusing on issues that today’s students might find interesting or that parallel their experiences. She found that students have always expressed their views on politics or campus issues.

“It’s amazing, because what students were talking about 50 years ago is the same thing they’re talking about today,” she said. “Students were using their pens to express how they were feeling about what was happening politically, as opposed to marching or protesting.” 

Lincoln is a small institution, serving around 2,000 undergraduate and graduate students at its Oxford Township and University City, Philadelphia, campuses. 

But their alumni have had significant impact, and Danley found famous names and international influence among the archives. 

She found papers written by poet and activist Langston Hughes, a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance, who graduated from Lincoln in 1929, and a paper written by Kwame Nkrumah, who served as the first president of Ghana after liberation from British rule in 1957. He arrived at Lincoln in 1935 and received a bachelor of arts in economics and sociology in 1939.

The first Black female mayor of Philadelphia, Cherelle Parker, is a Lincoln alumna, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Rosa Parks and August Wilson have received honorary degrees from the institution.

“There are quite a few ‘firsts’ tied to Lincoln’s legacy,” Danley said.

That includes the football rivalry between Lincoln and Howard University, Danley’s undergraduate alma mater. In 1924 they played the first homecoming game between HCBUs, helping to establish homecoming as a significant HBCU rite of passage.

“It’s part of the paper’s history, too,” Danley said. “As part of the Lincolnian exhibit there is a museum case that contains some programs from that first homecoming game in addition to a few other items from the era. It is amazing to know that these things exist, that they’re tangible, they're there and how important they are.”

Welcoming campus

Danley appreciates the support and encouragement she’s found at UD. 

This fall she met subject specialists at Morris Library who help students navigate library resources like research databases, and she sat in on a class with Laura Helton, associate professor of English and history. Danley came across Helton’s book Scattered and Fugitive Things while doing summer research. 

“I cited her in my paper, so meeting her was just wonderful,” she said.

She even participated in Knit Happens with Student Wellbeing, a group therapy initiative that draws on the emotional and mental benefits of crafting. 

“It’s new to me to have resources like that,” she said. “If you’re feeling overwhelmed by school or whatever, you can go have a discussion. It was good to see that with knitting, you may just get one thing done or learn one thing, and that’s enough. Students shouldn’t take for granted that these resources are everywhere, because they’re not.”