Over the past year, the library has been preparing and organizing Max Roach's personal collection from his body of work over several decades.

The collection includes more than 100,000 items, including 80,000 manuscripts and papers, as well as photographs, music manuscripts and hundreds of sound and video recordings.

The collection also includes Max Roach's correspondence with author Maya Angelou, Coretta Scott King and other leading figures in the civil rights and black power movement.

Max Roach worked with other such jazz greats as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Mingus and Thelonious Monk to develop the jazz style known as bebop.

Larry Appelbaum, a music specialist and jazz curator at the library explains:

"Max is a major figure, not just in jazz but in American music. He represented much more than just a musician or even a composer. He was at the nexus of music, civil rights and black power because he was among that wave of socially conscious musicians."

Max Roach and his family began looking for a home before he died in 2007. Now all materials are available to researchers in the library's Performing Arts Reading Room on Capitol Hill.