Highlights Archives
Civil Rights Collections
With the observance of another Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, it is fitting that the Wisconsin Historical Society showcase one of the major strengths of its library and archives — incredibly strong collections that document the American civil rights movement. From Freedom's Journal, the first African-American newspaper in the nation, to photographs that document the struggle for equal rights into the 1960s , the Society's holdings form one of the top civil rights collections in the United States.
The holdings are particularly strong in three areas: civil rights in Wisconsin, particularly Milwaukee; activities of national civil rights organizations and leaders; and 1960s sit-ins, voter registration drives, and demonstrations in the South. The Wisconsin holdings include the papers of James Groppi, the one-time Catholic priest who is probably the most recognized figure in Wisconsin's civil rights history. The collections also include extensive records from Milwaukee civil rights activist Lloyd Barbee and others documenting the decades-long struggles to desegregate Milwaukee schools.
Far afield from Wisconsin, in the heart of the deep South where so much racial strife took place, the Society's holdings detail many poignant chapters in the history of the civil rights movement. One of these that captured national headlines this month is a collection tied to the arrest of Edgar Ray Killen, 79, accused of one of the most heinous crimes in the history of the movement — organizing the slaying of three young civil rights workers in Mississippi in June 1964. The arrest, 40 years later, has focused renewed attention on a collection of the personal papers and photographs belonging to one of the victims, Andrew Goodman. On January 6 in Philadelphia, Mississippi, Killen, a former Ku Klux Klan member, was charged with the murders of civil rights workers James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman. Their murders galvanized the Civil Rights movements at the time, and were reintroduced to the nation in the 1988 film, Mississippi Burning. The papers related to Goodman are one of the most chilling collections in the Society's civil rights holdings. One item, which today carries an eerie sense of foreshadowing, is a Mississippi map on which Goodman circled the small towns of Meridian and Philadelphia. It was while driving between these two communities that the three victims were abducted, beaten and murdered.
The Goodman collection is only one small part of a civil rights collection that Professor Timothy Tyson of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Afro-American studies department calls "the best in the country" and one of the "most important intellectual asset[s]" on the Madison campus. The archives' largest, and probably most prominent, civil rights collection is the records of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). The organization's 1947 "Journey of Reconciliation" and 1960s lunch counter sit-ins and "freedom rides" were influential in ending discrimination in interstate travel and accommodations.
Another prominent collection is the papers of Daisy Bates, who spearheaded the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas — an event that riveted the nation in 1957 and was only accomplished after President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent in federal troops. The emotions of the case are clearly evident in the collection's photographs, speeches, clippings and in letters that range from disgusting, anonymous hate mail to glowing statements of praise.
In a recent acquisition, just last year the Society acquired a speech by Black Muslim leader Malcolm X, recorded just six days before he was assassinated in February 1964. In the speech, Malcolm X expresses his disillusionment with Black Muslim leader Elijah Muhammad, a conflict thought to be a factor in his assassination.
Throughout American history, race relations have been one of the nation's most divisive issues. The library-archives collections contribute to an understanding of the history of race relations, a necessary element in the continuing efforts to resolve those issues. Scholars from across the country visit to consult the civil rights holdings. Indeed, few histories of the civil rights movement are written without reference to the Society's collections. At the Madison headquarters and via the statewide Area Research Center network, college, high school, even middle school students from across the state, regularly consult these civil rights holdings. Civil rights topics are popular among the thousands of Wisconsin middle and high school students participating in the annual History Day competition. These sources make the struggles of the movement come alive in ways that textbooks cannot. In Professor Tyson's words, the Society's collections allow his students to "learn about the [civil rights] movement in a far deeper and more sophisticated way than I could hope to share with them anywhere else."
:: Posted January 12, 2005
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