African American STEM undergraduates may confront challenges that can impede their graduation and matriculation into the workforce. Mentoring has been shown to be a mechanism to help these students persist. Yet, an understanding of the effects of the learning that occurs in mentoring relationships on protégés' self-authorship development (i.e., the ability to compose their own reality) has rarely been examined in research. The purpose of this exploratory research is to investigate the mentoring techniques and strategies that African American mentors use to help support their African American protégés' development and foster their persistence. In this study, we also introduce a new way to frame the practice of mentoring using the learning partnerships model to understand the role of mentorship in the development of African American STEM undergraduates. Utilizing Magolda's (2004c) learning partnerships model as a framework, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 10 African American STEM mentors using an interpretivist research approach. After our thematic analysis of the interview data, the 4 major themes that emerged were that mentors: (a) co-construct self-authorship strategies with protégés; (b) work with their protégés to help them learn how to build persistence; (c) want their protégés to recognize their own strengths to exude confidence; and (d) learn about their African American protégés' experiences. In alignment with dimensions of the learning partnerships model, mentors' engagement with protégés contributes to protégés' development as self-authors of their experiences. In this way, mentors help African American undergraduates to persist, graduate, and enter the STEM workforce.