By Sarah Quigley, Project Archivist, Southern Christian Leadership Conference records, MARBL
"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.
Many know journalist Stone Phillips from his work on NBC’s “Dateline.” However, many people don’t know that in the summer of 1977, he worked for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Following his graduation from Yale University, Phillips received a grant from the United Methodist Church to plan and implement a summer reading program for juvenile probationers aged 13-15. The grant project was sponsored by the SCLC, and inspired by Fulton County Juvenile Court Judge Romae Powell who believed that there was a connection between reading deficiencies and juvenile delinquency. The goals of the program were “to help each participant improve his or her reading skills, and…to promote self-confidence and positive self-awareness in each individual.” Phillips and his supervisors believed that improving literacy among these teenagers would increase employment opportunities and foster an “understanding of the rights and obligations of citizenship.”[*]
