Southern Christian Leadership Conference Records

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

In honor of Reverend Joseph Lowery receiving an honorary doctor of divinity degree from Emory University, the Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library is pleased to announce an exhibit documenting Lowery’s career with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.  “One Who Disturbs the Comfortable and Comforts the Disturbed”:  Joseph E. Lowery and the SCLC will feature photographs, letters and writings by Lowery that chronicle his 40 year involvement with the organization, both as Chairman of the Board of Directors and as President. 

By Courtney Chartier, Project Archivist, Voter Education Project Collection

On March 29-30 the Council on Library and Information Resources held a Hidden Collections Program Symposium in Washington, DC. Representatives from all of the institutions involved in the “Working for Freedom” project attended.

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 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