For the first time in the 55-year-old civil rights organization’s history, hundreds of boxes of Southern Christian Leadership Conference documents and photographs are now available for public viewing and a historic trove it is.
The SCLC collection opened this month at Emory University’s Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library and includes the contents of 918 boxes of materials. Included in the collection, which was purchased from the organization in 2007 and 2008 for an undisclosed price, are correspondence, reports, memos, notebooks, photographs, flyers, audio and video recordings and minutes of meetings.
The SCLC collection primarily covers activities from 1968 to 2007, said Sarah Quigley, a project archivist at Emory.
“The value of this collection is really immeasurable,” said Quigley. “For scholars and others interested in the history of the civil rights movement, they now have 918 boxes of material that no one has ever seen before.” Those who think the work of the organization faded after the death of its co-founder, the Rev. Martin Luther King, in 1968 might be surprised, she said.
It is among several important collections housed at the library that document African-American life and culture. Among them are collections about blacks in sports and African-American scrapbooks, including one by Pulitzer-prizing winning author Alice Walker that contains her early poetry.
Emory’s MARBL received a grant to preserve and digitize the African-American scrapbooks in its collection and set a best practices standard that others can follow.
Quigley said the SCLC collection includes information about the organization’s later work on access to health care, violence as a public health issue, drug abuse prevention, employment opportunities and other issues that are still being debated today.
“The movement continued, absolutely,” said the Rev. Bernard LaFayette Jr., chairman of the SCLC national board. LaFayette, who was not involved in the sale of the collections, said the SCLC retains additional documents. “That’s why I have made a commitment to keep this organization alive,” he said.
The SCLC was founded in Atlanta in 1957 by several civil rights leaders, including King, the Rev. Ralph D. Abernathy and the Rev. Joseph E. Lowery. Although the organization has undergone leadership and financial struggles in recent years, it continues to operate from its headquarters on Auburn Avenue.
“One of the things I find particularly interesting about the collection is that it takes the history of the SCLC past the traditional time period of the civil rights movement into the ’80s, ’90s and into the 21st Century,” said Ginger Smith, interim director of MARBL. “It really is an ongoing movement that has expanded and adjusted its focus over time without really losing its original purpose. It reminds you that some of the same questions are still on table.”
For Brenda Davenport, going through parts of the collection was like stepping back in time.
Davenport, who learned about the collection from a relative who works at the library, volunteered to help identify people and provide context. She started working at the SCLC as a student volunteer after graduation from Shaw University, eventually working as a staffer to develop national youth programs.
“It was just like, ‘Wow,”’ said Davenport. “There was so much material that I was able to hold. You see that what you wrote on pieces of paper are now parts of history. You look at pictures of times gone by. It was not just names but what was going on in the background that was important.”
The SCLC, she said, helped determine “who I became.”
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