A $476,000 grant will allow one of the nation's oldest newspapers for African-American readers to open its 115-year-old archives to the public and create an internship focused on handling and processing historical materials.

The archives of the Afro-American Newspapers, a Baltimore-based weekly paper, contains the work of notable black writers and journalists, including Langston Hughes, William Worthy and J. Saunder Redding.

The paper will use the grant, awarded Monday by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, to create searchable guides of its collections and materials.

The money will also be used to fund an internship to train students in archives work. Johns Hopkins University and Morgan State University will partner to teach the interns. The program will begin January 2008 and will be offered to undergraduate and graduate students.

"It is an unparalleled opportunity to create a training program for students at Johns Hopkins and other Baltimore-area colleges and universities that combines archival theory and hands-on practice in providing access to a nationally significant archive," said Winston Tabb, the dean of university libraries at Johns Hopkins, in a statement.