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The James Weldon Johnson Collection Files contain manuscript correspondence, literary works and other documents relating to African Americans, dating from 1809 to 1979. The collection contains several letters to James Weldon Johnson from aspiring poets asking for feedback on their writing. Correspondence sent to Langston Hughes, Harold Jackman, Grace Nail Johnson, and Carl Van Vechten is also prominent in the collection. The collection includes broadway actress Rose McClendon's scripts used when performing in various productions. Some early documents relate to slavery; these include bills of sale and an estate inventory dating from 1856. Writings by Sterling Allen Brown, George Washington Carver, Ralph Ellison, and J. Saunders Redding can be found in the collection. African-American women authors are also represented; most notably in writings and correspondence of Elizabeth Ross Haynes and Margaret Walker.

Single manuscripts and small groups of manuscripts, including literary manuscripts, letters, and other documents. Materials are grouped under headings by author or corporate name.

A collection of one hundred drawings by the self-taught African American artist Mary A. Bell, featuring glamorously dressed and accessorized women and men engaged in courtship activities, or women centered in domestic or garden settings. Many of the images have religious iconography as well as animals, birds, plants, and children, with houses or other buildings placed distantly in the background. The drawings range in size from 78 x 52 to 51 x 39 cm. and were executed in crayon, colored pencil, and graphite on a lightweight wove tissue or pattern paper. Bell mounted each drawing on a second sheet of lightweight paper that she wrapped around all four edges to create the effect of a frame, then attached small paper tags to the top edges of the frames onto which she inscribed a title, phrase, description, or other caption; some drawings have larger paper tags attached to their versos with poems or lengthier inscriptions. Bell signed a few drawings with her initials "M.B." and included Carl Van Vechten's initials ("Mr. C.V.") in one work titled "Happy thoughts." The drawings are not dated but were made in the years after her retirement and before her hospitalization.

The papers contain correspondence, diaries, writings, subject files, and personal papers of John Breon concerning his World War II experiences, correspondents include Pat Carroll, Charles Cerbone, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, and Carl Van Vechten.

The collection contains letters, manuscripts, and printed material related to the life and work of James Branch Cabell. The letters in Series I were written by Cabell to his publishers, literary collaborator, and colleagues; in most cases the folders include carbon copies of responses sent back to Cabell. Writings in Series II are typescripts and proofs of several works, and include correspondence related to their publication, as well as designs by John O'Hara Cosgrave for the cover and end papers of Cabell's work There Were Two Pirates. Series III holds published material about Cabell, including reviews of his work, in the form of clippings, pamphlets, and other ephemera, and portrait photographs by Carl Van Vechten and Foster Studio, Richmond.

The papers consist of personal and professional correspondence.

The Muriel Draper Papers document the personal life and artistic and political interests of Muriel Draper. Major correspondents include George Antheil, Samuel Courtauld, Paul Draper, Max Ewing, Lincoln Kirstein, Walter Lowenfels, and Mark Tobey. The collection also contains manuscripts of many of Draper's writings, including the largely unpublished America Deserta, and records of her activities as a member of the Congress of American Women, the League of American Writers, and similar organizations.

The Max Ewing Papers consist of correspondence, writings, sheet music, photographic prints and negatives, photograph albums, scrapbooks, diaries, sound recordings, writings of others, notebooks, printed material, personal papers, and a sculpture. Correspondence includes letters from Ewing to his parents, general correspondence with friends and family, and third party correspondence regarding Ewing. Writings contain autograph manuscript and typescript drafts and printed versions of short stories, poems, essays, and other writings, including typescript drafts, corrected, of Ewing's novel, Going Somewhere. Sheet music contains printed and manuscript music by Ewing. Photographs in the collection are from Ewing's "Gallery of Extraordinary Portraits," "Carnival of Venice," Les amants de Venice" and subjects include Ewing's family and friends. The scrapbooks were made and kept by Ewing and contain reproductions of photographs of notable artists and celebrities; articles by or on Ewing, concerning his professional life as a music editor, musician, photographer, and writer; and reviews of Going Somewhere. Sound recordings are two aluminum instantaneous phonodiscs, "Speak-O-Phone personal phonographs," made by Max Ewing with Berenice Abbott and Doris Ewing. Other papers include Ewing's parents' marriage certificate, diaries, notebooks, legal documents, lists of books read by Ewing, printed material, writings on Ewing by others, and an unidentified head sculpted in clay.

The Arthur Davison Ficke Papers document the personal lives and literary interests of Arthur Davison and Gladys Brown Ficke. Major correspondents include Witter Bynner, Floyd Dell, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Edgar Lee Masters, and John Cowper Powys. In addition to manuscripts of Ficke's own works, the papers contain manuscripts of poems by Witter Bynner, Edgar Lee Masters, and others.