CLIR Hidden Collections Grant

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

By Courtney Chartier, Project Archivist, Voter Education Project Collection

The Voter Education Project (VEP) was formed in 1962 as a program of the Southern Regional Council (SRC). It was the brainchild of then U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, who wanted to establish a government funded voter registration program that would eliminate the need for public protests by civil rights organizations. Kennedy went so far as to ask several of the leading civil rights groups to cease protest activities for a short time; while the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) agreed to this, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) did not.

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

Fifty-five years ago, Andrew Jackson Young, Jr. was ordained as a minister at the Central Congregational Church in New Orleans. The eldest of two brothers, Young was expected to follow his father’s footsteps and become a dentist. After graduating from Howard University in 1951 (age 19), he struggled to figure out his path in life. That summer, Young had a spiritual awakening on the top of King’s Mountain in North Carolina. Later, he attended a retreat, volunteered with the United Christian Youth Action, and took introductory classes at Hartford Theological Seminary. Also influenced by Nicholas Hood, minister at Central Congregational Church in New Orleans, by the end of 1951 Young knew he wanted to be a minister.

By Laura J. Thomson, Director of Processing, Amistad Research Center

It is a new era of access for the Amistad Research Center thanks to the Center’s recent implementation of innovative archival collection management software. Archon, a collection management system for archives and manuscripts collections developed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has assisted in revealing the richness of Amistad’s holdings, has sparked staff to take on additional preservation projects, and has enhanced public relations in a variety of ways.

The CLIR (Council on Library and Information Resources) Cataloging Hidden and Special Collections Program recently awarded $900,000 to support “Working for Freedom: Documenting Civil Rights Organizations,” a collaborative project designed to bring to public notice more than a dozen “hidden” manuscript collections housed in Atlanta and New Orleans archives.