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.
Processing an individual’s personal papers can bring to light interesting, and often little known, aspects about that person’s life and work. Recent work on the Marr-McGee Family Papers has revealed a file of materials related to the now infamous Peoples Temple, the organization founded by Jim Jones in the 1950s and the center of a mass-suicide in Guyana, South America, in 1978. The documents and photographs provide a look at how the Temple viewed itself and was viewed by others as supporting civil rights.
