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Minutes, correspondence, annual reports, press releases, financial records, photographs, memorabilia, audiovisual, digital and printed materials document the philanthropic activities and administration of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The collection is actively growing, primarily through regular document transfers from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Andrew Carnegie's biographical information and personal philanthropic activity can be found in Series VII. In addition, his pre-1911 gifts, most notably his donations for libraries and church organs, can be found on microfilm (Series II), in the Home Trust Company Records (VI.A), and Financial Record Books (I.C.1). Grant files (Series III.A), which comprise the bulk of the collection) provide information on projects and institutions founded, endowed or supported by the Corporation. The Special Initiatives series (Series IV) contains the records of task forces, commissions and councils, formed by the Corporation mostly during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s to address specific issues. The Corporation's records include those of other Carnegie philanthropic organizations (Series VI), including the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Home Trust Company, both of which shared staff, officers, and office space with the Corporation for a period of time.

The main portion of the collection is made up of letters, documents, notes, manuscript and typescript articles and speeches, and scrapbooks and notebooks which are contained in 270 envelopes, folders, manuscript boxes, and bundles. Another 153 bundles, boxes, folders, and envelopes are devoted chiefly to clippings, tear sheets, pamphlets, and books and other printed matter. Proofs of the printing plates for one of Mr. Bancroft's works on Carl Schurz are preserved in eleven envelopes. Pictorial material includes two envelopes of photographs, one envelope of photostats, thirty-four photographs, and eighty-five framed photographs, many with manuscript letters by or relating to the subject of the photograph. The collection is rich in the papers and personal correspondence of Frederic Bancroft and includes notes and various other source materials for his books dealing largely with African Americans, the South, the Civil War, Seward, Calhoun, and the life and work of Carl Schurz. Also, a wealth of material by and about Edgar Bancroft (1857-1925), Frederic's brother and U.S. ambassador to Japan.

Guichard Parris papers consist of correspondence, diaries, manuscripts, notes and printed material from his personal files, his files on the history of the National Urban League, manuscript material for Blacks in the City; A History of the National Urban League, Boston, Little, Brown, 1971 (co-authored with Lester Brooks) and administrative files of the National Urban League. Parris' personal files include folders on his organizational affiliations outside the National Urban League; of particular interest are copies of his correspondence with Mary McLeod Bethune while he was affiliated with the National Youth Administration. Bethune is among the cataloged correspondence, as are Theodore Roosevelt and Ruth Standish Baldwin.

There are substantial gaps for the years 1921-1939.

A collection concerned with the various phases of black life in America, containing clippings, pamphlets, photographs, pictures, extracts from periodicals, and a representative group of approximately 350 letters, signatures, manuscripts, and documents. Among the letters are several each from Countee Cullen, Frederick Douglass, Alexander Dumas, fils, William Lloyd Garrison, Claude McKay, Abraham Lincoln, Henry Mencken, William Pickens, Albert A. Smith, and Booker T. Washington. Also, eighteen slavery documents.

Includes application forms, articles, brochures, correspondence, financial statements, lists of participants, minutes, newsletters including "Stirring in the Mulberries : Skandalon" news clippings, regional and urban projects, reading lists, reports, SIM handbook, and statement of purpose.