Civil Rights History Project

By Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African American History and Culture

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Description

On May 12, 2009, the U. S. Congress authorized a national initiative by passing The Civil Rights History Project Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-19). The law directs the Library of Congress (LOC) and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) to conduct a survey of existing oral history collections with relevance to the Civil Rights movement to obtain justice, freedom and equality for African Americans and to record new interviews with people who participated in the struggle, over a five year period beginning in 2010. The activists interviewed for this project belong to a wide range of occupations, including lawyers, judges, doctors, farmers, journalists, professors, and musicians, among others. The video recordings of their recollections cover a wide variety of topics within the civil rights movement, such as the influence of the labor movement, nonviolence and self-defense, religious faith, music, and the experiences of young activists. Actions and events discussed in the interviews include the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (1963), the Albany Movement (1961), the Freedom Rides (1961), the Selma to Montgomery Rights March (1965), the Orangeburg Massacre (1968), sit-ins, voter registration drives in the South, and the murder of fourteen year old Emmett Till in 1955, a horrific event that galvanized many young people into joining the freedom movement. Many interviewees were active in national organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Other interviewees were key members of specialized and local groups including the Medical Committee for Human Rights, the Deacons for Defense and Justice, the Cambridge (Maryland) Nonviolent Action Committee, and the Newark Community Union Project. Several interviews include men and women who were on the front lines of the struggle in places not well-known for their civil rights movement activity such as Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Saint Augustine, Florida; and Bogalusa, Louisiana. Several of the interviews were conducted with the children of local civil rights leaders including Clara Luper and Gayle Jenkins. This site also guides researchers to collections in several Library divisions that specifically focus on the Civil Rights movement as well as the broader topic of African American history and culture. The Civil Rights History Project Collection (AFC 2010/039) contains 401 items consisting of video files, videocassettes, digital photographs and interview transcripts, with several more such items to be added once the interviews conclude in 2015.

Episode Date
Harry Blake
Sep 18, 2014
Robert J. Brown
Sep 18, 2014
Virginia Simms George
Sep 18, 2014
Ekwueme Michael Thelwell
Sep 18, 2014
John Carlos
Sep 18, 2014
Oliver W. Hill, Jr.
Sep 18, 2014
John and Jean Rosenberg
Sep 18, 2014
Kay Tillow
Sep 18, 2014
D'Army Bailey
Sep 18, 2014
Cecilia Suyat Marshall
Sep 18, 2014
John Dudley, Eleanor Stewart, Charles Jarmon, Frances Suggs, Harold Suggs, and Samuel Dove
Sep 18, 2014
Luis Zapata
Sep 18, 2014
William Lucy
Sep 18, 2014
Lisa Anderson Todd
Sep 18, 2014
Walter Tillow
Sep 18, 2014
Scott Bates
Sep 18, 2014
Lonnie C. King
Sep 18, 2014
Linda Fuller Degelmann
Sep 18, 2014
Bill Russell
Sep 18, 2014
Aaron Dixon
Sep 18, 2014
Charles Siler
Sep 18, 2014
Samuel Berry McKinney
Sep 18, 2014
Clarence B. Jones
Sep 18, 2014
Gloria Claudette Grinnell
Sep 18, 2014
William S. Leventhal
Sep 18, 2014
Cleveland Sellers
Sep 18, 2014
Martha Prescod Norman Noonan
Sep 18, 2014
Joan Trumpauer Mulholland
Sep 18, 2014
Rick Tuttle
Sep 18, 2014
Ben Caldwell
Sep 18, 2014
H. Jack Geiger
Sep 18, 2014
Robert G. Clark, Jr.
Sep 18, 2014
Rosie Head
Sep 18, 2014
Julia Matilda Burns
Sep 18, 2014
Euvester Simpson
Sep 18, 2014
Walter Bruce
Sep 18, 2014
Mary Jones
Sep 18, 2014
Mary Jenkins
Sep 18, 2014
Louise Broadway
Sep 18, 2014
Grace Miller
Sep 18, 2014
Sam Young, Jr.
Sep 18, 2014
Johnnie Ruth McCullar
Sep 18, 2014
Robert McClary
Sep 18, 2014
Sam Mahone
Sep 18, 2014
Lucius Holloway, Sr., and Emma Kate Holloway
Sep 18, 2014
Clifford Browner
Sep 18, 2014
Amos C. Brown
Sep 18, 2014
Mildred Pitts Walter
Sep 18, 2014
Steven McNichols
Sep 18, 2014
Elmer Dixon
Sep 18, 2014
Carrie M. Young
Sep 18, 2014
William Lamar Strickland
Sep 18, 2014
Dorie Ann Ladner and Joyce Ladner
Sep 18, 2014
David Mercer Ackerman and Satoko Ito Ackerman
Sep 18, 2014
Candie Carawan and Guy Hughes Carawan
Sep 18, 2014
Kathleen Cleaver
Sep 18, 2014
Shirley Miller Sherrod
Sep 18, 2014
Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons
Sep 18, 2014
Robert Bagner Hayling
Sep 18, 2014
Gwendolyn Annette Duncan
Sep 18, 2014
Barbara Edna Vickers
Sep 18, 2014
Purcell Maurice Conway
Sep 18, 2014
Audrey Nell Hamilton and JoeAnn Anderson Ulmer
Sep 18, 2014
Thomas Walter Gaither
Sep 18, 2014
Phil Hutchings
Sep 18, 2014
William G. Anderson
Sep 18, 2014
Dorothy Foreman Cotton
Sep 18, 2014
Pete Seeger
Sep 18, 2014
Emmett W. Bassett and Priscilla Tietjen Bassett
Sep 18, 2014
Junius W. Williams
Sep 18, 2014
Alfred Moldovan
Sep 18, 2014
Gloria Hayes Richardson
Sep 18, 2014
Jack Greenberg
Sep 18, 2014
John Elliott Churchville
Sep 18, 2014
Freeman A. Hrabowski
Sep 18, 2014
Simeon Booker and Moses James Newson
Sep 18, 2014
Courtland Cox
Sep 18, 2014
Evans Derrell Hopkins
Sep 18, 2014
Esther M. A. Terry
Sep 18, 2014
William Saunders
Sep 18, 2014
Cecil J. Williams
Sep 18, 2014
Ernest Adolphus Finney
Sep 18, 2014
Matthew J. Perry
Sep 18, 2014
Joseph Echols Lowery
Sep 18, 2014
Charles Melvin Sherrod
Sep 18, 2014
Charles F. McDew
Sep 18, 2014
Gwendolyn M. Patton
Sep 18, 2014
Anne Pearl Avery
Sep 18, 2014
Geraldine Crawford Bennett, Toni Breaux, and Willie Elliot Jenkins
Sep 18, 2014
Cynthia Baker Anderson and Fletcher Anderson
Sep 18, 2014
Anne Sobol and Richard Barry Sobol
Sep 18, 2014
James Oscar Jones
Sep 18, 2014
Calvin Luper
Sep 18, 2014
Marilyn Luper Hildreth
Sep 18, 2014
Wheeler Parker
Sep 18, 2014
Simeon Wright
Sep 18, 2014
Jamila Jones
Sep 18, 2014
Doris Adelaide Derby
Sep 18, 2014
Ruby Nell Sales
Sep 18, 2014
C. T. Vivian
Sep 18, 2014
Lawrence Guyot
Sep 18, 2014
Gertrude Newsome Jackson
Sep 18, 2014
Myrtle Gonza Glascoe
Sep 18, 2014
Mildred Bond Roxborough
Sep 18, 2014
Robert L. Carter
Sep 18, 2014