By Amber L. Moore, Project Archivist, Amistad Research Center
"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.
Rev. James Hargett was ordained to ministry of the Congregational Church in 1955, and served as an associate minister of the predominately Japanese American Church of the Crossroads United Church of Christ (UCC) in Honolulu from 1955 to 1958. He was the first African American minister called to serve a Protestant-established church in Hawaii.
The Honolulu (Hawaii) files consist of Hargett's personal minister's record book (1955-1957) which includes information about marriages he performed, as well as sermons he preached while in Hawaii.