FEATURED GALLERY | Highlights from over three million photographs, negatives, cartoons, lithographs and posters in our holdings

Daisy Bates at Broken Window, Little Rock, Arkansas, May 29, 1958. WHS Image ID 32538

September 25th marks the 50th anniversary of a pivotal event in the history of civil rights in America, the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School in 1957. Although segregated schools were prohibited under the 1954 Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, many communities were slow and often violently unwilling to comply. The events leading up to the opening of Central High to African Americans are well-documented in the Society's archival collections. The most important of these collections are the papers of Arkansas NAACP President Daisy Bates, who led the effort to integrate the Little Rock schools. In honor of this anniversary, Bates and the "Little Rock Nine" are the subject of this month's featured gallery.

View the Gallery »

BROWSE THE COLLECTIONS | A selection of the more than 30,000 digitized visual materials in our online image database

WHS Produces Digital Reproductions

The WHS Images Digital Lab produces quality giclée print reproductions made from high resolution scans of original source material from our holdings. Custom orders are printed on matte or semigloss papers using large format printers and archival pigmented inks.

Additionally, our lab will produce custom digital file reproductions for commercial publishers in traditional print, editorial and advertising as well as for new media projects like websites, CD-ROMs and podcasts. All sale proceeds directly benefit the acquisition, preservation and maintenance of the physical and online collections.

Contact business manager Lisa Marine by email at lisa.marine@wisconsinhstory.org for details.

Civil Rights

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. 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, including the nation's single largest collection of African American newspapers and periodicals.

Sherwin H. Gillett Photographs

Born in 1869 on a farm near Madison, "Sherm" Gillett took orders for postcards and sold scenes to local stores and pharmacies. He later acquired portrait studios in Muscoda and Boscobel and, to make ends meet, periodically took to the road, photographing virtually every town in southwestern part of the state. The Society retains 2,700 of his Wisconsin town views, mainly taken between 1905 and 1935.

Place File: Jefferson

Over the last two years, WHS has been scanning and cataloging its collection of images of Wisconsin places. Consisting of over 10,000 items, the collection highlights main street views, prominent buildings in each community, local monuments and other features of interest. Each month our newsletter features a selection of images from a Wisconsin place. This month's featured city is Jefferson, Wisconsin.

DISCOVER THE VISUAL MATERIALS COLLECTIONS

Currently less than 2% of our total visual materials collections are available online, but we continue to add hundreds of new images to our online image database each month. The Archives online catalog (ArCat) provides access to information about thousands of collections containing photographs and other images. Need help with your search? Drop us a line and we'll be happy to help you find the image you're looking for!

The WHS Images Update is a monthly email newsletter that features gallery exhibits drawn from the Wisconsin Historical Society's visual materials archives as well as highlighting collections in our online image database. To join our mailing list, see our newsletter sign up page. You may unsubscribe from our email updates at any time by clicking here.

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Available online | www.wisconsinhistory.org/whi/