Library Blog

by Michael R. Hall, Graduate Processing Assistant, 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.

In two previous dispatches from the audiovisual material of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) records, I have focused on "New Insights Into the Early Political and Philosophical Thought of Jesse L. Jackson" and "Civil Rights Activism and the Crisis in Health Care."  Both blog entries revealed the potential for new research offered by the substantial amount of audio source material in the SCLC collection.  In this third and final dispatch, I would like to discuss a few gems contained in the video sources in the collection.

By Amy E. Elkins, former Manuscript Processing Graduate Assistant, Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books Library (MARBL)

If you're in the Atlanta area and are interested in the digital humanities, please join us for a brown-bag lunch at 12:00 p.m. on Tuesday, July 19, in Jazzman's Cafe, in the basement of Woodruff Library. We'll get to know each other, share some ideas, and start talking about how we and our institutions might work together.

All are welcome! Please RSVP to stewart.varner@emory.edu.

By Amy E. Elkins, former Manuscript Processing Graduate Assistant, Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books Library (MARBL)

Harry Duncan was a printer of fine press books, professor of book arts, and manager of the Cummington Press. Inspired by the expatriate literary life of T.S. Eliot, Duncan left the Midwest after college in pursuit of more exciting prospects in poetry and art.  While pursuing a Master's degree at Duke University, Duncan spent a summer at the Cummington School of Arts, a Massachusetts establishment founded and run by Katherine Frazier. 

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.

Rev. James Hargett was ordained to ministry of the Congregational Church in 1955, and served as an associate minister of the predominately Japanese American Church of the Crossroads United Church of Christ (UCC) in Honolulu from 1955 to 1958.  He was the first African American minister called to serve a Protestant-established church in Hawaii.

The Honolulu (Hawaii) files consist of Hargett's personal minister's record book (1955-1957) which includes information about marriages he performed, as well as sermons he preached while in Hawaii.   

by Michael R. Hall, Graudate Processing Assistant, 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 of us are quite familiar with the tremendous student and youth involvement in the Civil Rights Movement, particularly in the 1960s and '70s with such iconic organizations as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).  We are less familiar, perhaps, with the continued involvement of young people in Civil Rights organizations post 1980.  The records of the Department of Student Affairs of SCLC document the continued investment of students and young people in rights organizations and viceversa.