The Kelly Miller Smith Institute on Black Church Studies at Vanderbilt University works to bring together the African American church community and educational institutions to study important issues concerning the practice of faith and ministry.

Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University works to provide a home to the “broad range of activities illuminating the Nobel Peace laureate’s life and the movements he inspired.” This organization includes the King Papers Project, in which Stanford historian Clayborne Carson edited and published The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr.

W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University is a research center dedicated to the study of the history, culture, and social institutions of Africans and African Americans.

Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference works to “strengthen the capacity and network of the African American faith community and its leaders to address the needs of those it serves.”

National Urban League, the nation’s oldest and largest community-based movement devoted to empowering African-Americans to enter the economic and social mainstream.  

National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS is the oldest non-profit organization of its kind in the U.S. It works to educate and empower African American leaders to fight and help protect against HIV/AIDS in local communities through education, policy, advocacy, research and resource development.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People organization works to ensure political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate race-based discrimination.

The King Center in Atlanta educates people about the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., nonviolent conflict-reconciliation and social change.

Hampton University Ministers’ Conference in Hampton, Va. is the oldest nondenominational African-American ministers conference in the country. The organization works to address the concerns of the African American church and its relationships to the community.