By Courtney Chartier, Assistant Head, Archives Research Center, Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library
"Working for Freedom: Documenting Civil Rights Organizations" is a collaborative project between Emory University's Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library, The Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History, The Amistad Research Center at Tulane University, and The Robert W. Woodruff Library of Atlanta University Center to uncover and make available previously hidden collections documenting the Civil Rights Movement in Atlanta and New Orleans. The project is administered by the Council on Library and Information Resources with funds from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Each organization regularly contributes blog posts about their progress.
Become involved in the movement when he organized the first student sit-in in Nashville, where he was a student at the Baptist Theological Seminary and then Fisk University. He was involved in the first CORE sponsored Freedom Ride in 1961.
Lewis was elected Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1963. While Chairman he orchestrated SNCC’s Mississippi Freedom Summer (1964) and spoke for the organization at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (1965).
