Highlights Archives
Civil Rights and Martin Luther King Jr. Day
"The next will be dynamite," reads a threatening note signed "K.K.K." The note was found wrapped around a rock thrown through Arkansas NAACP President Daisy Bates' living room window in response to her leadership of the effort to integrate Little Rock schools in 1957. Another courageous civil rights pioneer, Rosa Parks, spoke (MP3, 13 MB) of her 1955 arrest for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama. More than a century earlier, African Americans wrote of their wish for freedom, self expression and dignity in the pages of Freedom's Journal, the first African American owned-and-operated newspaper published in the U.S., issued weekly from 1827 to 1829.
These examples represent just a few of the many resources the Wisconsin Historical Society has made available online from its renowned and extensive civil rights collections, especially relevant as we celebrate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
The civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s was one of the most dynamic periods of social interaction and change in U.S. history, especially for African Americans. Although the number of African Americans living in Wisconsin dramatically increased in the 20th century, African Americans have been living and working in Wisconsin since the 18th century. Ever since its founding in 1846, the Society has collected the documentary evidence of the African American experience, providing the foundation for what has become a nationally renowned civil rights collection. It includes the nation's single largest collection of African American newspapers and periodicals, even larger than such holdings at the Library of Congress.
The Society's collections are particularly strong in three areas: civil rights in Wisconsin, particularly Milwaukee; the activities of national civil rights organizations and leaders; and the sit-ins, voter registration drives, and demonstrations in the South in the 1960s. From Freedom's Journal and the voting rights case of Ezekiel Gillespie, to photographs documenting the struggle for equal rights in the 1960s, many of the images and words of the movement are now accessible on the Web.
Milwaukee in the 1950s and '60s was one of the most segregated cities in the nation, and efforts at reform focused primarily on housing and schools. The Society's ever-growing online resource, Turning Points in Wisconsin History, documents the history of Wisconsin's civil rights movement and includes photographs of prominent leaders in housing desegregation like James Groppi and Vel Phillips, as well as photographs of Lloyd Barbee, the lawyer who almost single-handedly took on the Milwaukee School Board. Among other resources, Turning Points contains a fascinating public opinion survey conducted by the Milwaukee Journal in 1965, in which black and white residents comment on race relations in the city, preserving the insights and opinions of hundreds of Milwaukee people whose voices might otherwise be lost to history.
Far afield from Wisconsin, the Society's holdings detail many poignant chapters in the history of the civil rights movement in the South, where so much racial strife occurred. One collection of particular note is the papers of Daisy Bates, who spearheaded the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957, an event that riveted the nation when President Dwight D. Eisenhower was forced to send in federal troops to make integration a reality. Among the many speeches, letters, and clippings are photographs of Bates as well as one of the most arresting physical artifacts of the movement: the rock that was hurled through the window of Bates' Little Rock home. Wisconsin Historical Images also contains a special gallery of civil rights images that includes photographs of demonstrations and sit-ins, as well as images of Martin Luther King Jr. and Southern civil rights activists Carl and Anne Braden, whose papers are housed in the Society's archives.
Recently, the Society has made available online its audio recordings of two major civil rights figures, Rosa Parks and Malcolm X (MP3, 3.18MB). Recorded only months after her 1955 arrest, Parks discusses her arrest for refusing to relinquish her seat on a bus to a white man, and in conjunction with two ministers, describes the start of the bus boycott triggered by her act of defiance. The other recording, a speech by Black Muslim leader Malcolm X, was recorded just six days before his assassination in February 1964 and reveals his disillusionment with the leader of the Black Muslim movement, Elijah Muhammad.
Throughout American history, race relations have been one of the nation's most divisive issues. The collections of the Wisconsin Historical Society have helped to contribute to an understanding of the history of civil rights, and few histories of the movement are written without reference to the Society's holdings. Making some of these records available online and accessible to anyone, anywhere, continues to be a Society priority because these sources make the struggle come alive in a way that nothing else can.
:: Posted January 12, 2006
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