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By Amber L. Moore, Project Archivist, Amistad Research Center

Amistad staff are pleased to announce that the guide for the Ronnie Moore Papers is available online.  Ronnie M. Moore is a civil rights activist, community development consultant and photographer from New Orleans.  He was a field secretary in the South for the Congress of Racial Equality (1961-1965) and the executive director of the Scholarship, Education and Defense Fund for Racial Equality, Inc. (1965-1973).

Gilbert & George are famous British visual and conceptual artists who have been working together since they met in art school in 1967. The Raymond Danowski Poetry Library contains two of their "postal sculptures," "The Limericks" from 1971 and "Pink Elephants" from 1973. As Gilbert & George conceived it a postal sculpture was a series of cards with text and image sent out to friends, galleries and collectors.

By Sarah Quigley, Project Archivist, Southern Christian Leadership Conference records

Born in Alabama in 1921, Joseph Echols Lowery bore witness to the indignities of the Jim Crow south and grew up to become an influential leader of the Civil Rights Movement.  He was a young Methodist minister in Mobile, Alabama during the bus boycotts of the 1950s, and a founding member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1957.  He was active in the movement throughout the 1960s, marching alongside King from Selma to Montgomery in 1965.  He also was Chairman of the Board of Directors of the SCLC through much of the 1960s and 1970s.  In 1977, following the resignation of Ralph David Abernathy, Lowery assumed the presidency of SCLC, which he held until 1997.

By Allison Hughes, Archival Assistant, Voter Education Project Collection

The 1980s were a time of expansion for the Voter Education Project (VEP). In 1984 VEP began a campaign to increase the number of women registered to vote as well as increase the number of women in elected and appointed offices, and began to conduct research that would help to meet those goals. This project was titled the Women’s Vote Project (WVP) and was under the direction of Eleatha O’Neal. While VEP primarily had provided grants to other groups or institutions and continued to do so, the WVP was strictly a campaign run by the VEP.

By Cheryl Oestreicher, Project Archivist, Andrew J. Young Papers

The Andrew Young Papers, located at Auburn Avenue Research Library, contain documents spanning Young’s entire career – from his days at Hartford Theological Seminary in the early 1950s through his current activities at GoodWorks International, and includes material from his participation in the Civil Rights Movement.

By Amber L. Moore, Project Archivist, Amistad Research Center, Tulane University

Dr. James Egert Allen (1896-1980), educator, community advocate, civil rights activist, and author, was an active promoter of African American studies in New York.  He was the first president of the New York Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (1933-1938), a longtime public school teacher in New York City (1926-1946), and the author of three books:  The Negro in New York (1964), Black History:  Past and Present (1971) and The Legend of Arthur A. Schomburg (1975).

By Sarah Quigley, Project Archivist, Southern Christian Leadership Conference records

Ralph David Abernathy assumed the presidency of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1968 following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  Roughly one year later, twelve members of Local 1199B of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union in Charleston, South Carolina were fired by Medical College Hospital after trying to organize a union in the hospital.  Following the dismissal, over 60 other employees walked out and began a strike that lasted through the summer.  Strike leadership soon contacted the SCLC to enlist the organization’s support.  Over the next several months, Abernathy, along with other civil rights leaders, conducted nonviolence training workshops for demonstrators, spoke in churches and led rallies in protest of the firings