civil rights leaders research papers

African American History: Primary Sources: Collections, Papers, and Diaries

Collections, papers, and diaries.

• Journals and Magazines
• Military and Reconstruction Records
• Pittsburgh Focused
• 1964 Freedom Summer Project One of the nation's richest collections of Civil Rights movement records, including more than 100 manuscript collections on Freedom Summer
• 20th Century Advice Literature: North American Guides on Race, Gender, Sex and the Family This link opens in a new window Search the full-text of handbooks, manuals, textbooks, etiquette guides, self-help books, instructional pamphlets, and how-to books describing American attitudes towards family dynamics, gender roles, sexual relationships, and race relations.
• African American Communities This collection presents multiple aspects of the African American community through pamphlets, newspapers and periodicals, correspondence, official records and in-depth oral histories, revealing the prevalent challenges of racism, discrimination and integration, and a unique African American culture and identity. Also featured is a rich selection of visual material, including photographs, maps and ephemera.
• African American Women Writers of the 19th Century
• African-American Experience in Ohio 1850-1920 Digitized collection of newspaper articles, photographs, serials, pamphlets, local government records, and manuscript materials which traces Ohio African American history from pre-Civil War abolition efforts through the Civil War and post-war reconstruction years to the political and religious activism of the early 20th century.
• African Diaspora: 1860-Present This link opens in a new window "The collection includes 70,000 pages of never-before digitized primary documents, including personal papers, organizational papers, journals, newsletters, court documents, letters, and ephemera from the Caribbean, Brazil, India, United Kingdom, and France. On completion, The African Diaspora, 1860-Present will include 100,000 pages of international primary and secondary source documents, and 50 hours of video, curated for the Black Studies, African American History, and World History scholar." - web site. Database Guide
• Africans in the New World, 1493-1834 [microform]: from the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University. HUNT MFILM-3 973.0496073 A2586
• Antislavery Pamphlet Collection 1725-1911 Contains several hundred printed pamphlets and books pertaining to slavery and antislavery in New England, 1725-1911. The holdings include speeches, sermons, proceedings and other publications of organizations such as the American Anti-Slavery Society and the American Colonization Society, and a small number of pro-slavery tracts.
• Archives Unbound This link opens in a new window Topically-focused digital collections of historical documents. Currently the Libraries offer 27 collections, 23 of which focus on African American History: Grassroots Civil Rights & Social Activism: FBI Files on Benjamin J. Davis, Jr. Ralph J. Bunche Oral Histories Collection on the Civil Rights Movement The Southern Negro Youth Congress and the Communist Party: Papers of James and Esther Cooper Jackson The Papers of Amiri Baraka, Poet Laureate of the Black Power Movement Fannie Lou Hamer: Papers of a Civil Rights Activitist, Political Activist, and Woman The Greensboro Massacre, 1979: Shootout between the American Nazis and the Communist Workers Party The Quest for Labor Equality in Household Work: National Domestic Workers Union, 1965-1979 FBI Surveillance of James Forman and SNCC Black Economic Empowerment: The National Negro Business League The Black Liberation Army and the Program of Armed Struggle Franklin D. Roosevelt and Race Relations, 1933-1945 Liberation Movement in Africa and African America The Republic of New Afrika Fight for Racial Justice and the Civil Rights Congress Integration of Alabama Schools and the U.S. Military, 1963 African America, Communists, and the National Negro Congress, 1933-1947 Federal Surveillance of African Americans, 1920-1984 Rastafari Ephemeral Publications from the Written Rastafari Archives Project James Meredith, J. Edgar Hoover, and the Integration of the University of MississippiV The Bush Presidency and Development and Debate Over Civil Rights Policy and LegislationV Black Nationalism and the Revolutionary Action Movement: The Papers of Muhammad Ahmad (Max Stanford) ""We Were Prepared for the Possibility of Death:"" Freedom Riders in the South, 1961
• Black Abolitionist Papers This link opens in a new window Primary sources from African Americans actively involved in the movement to end slavery in the United States between 1830 and 1865. The content includes letters, speeches, editorials, articles, sermons, and essays from libraries and archives in England, Scotland, Ireland, Canada, and the United States.
• Black Abolitionist Papers HUNT STACKS-2 E449 .B624 1985 v. 1-5
• Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century: Federal Government Records Major collections in this module include the FBI Files on Martin Luther King Jr.; Centers of the Southern Struggle, an exceptional collection of FBI Files covering five of the most pivotal arenas of the civil rights struggle of the 1960s: Montgomery, Albany, St. Augustine, Selma, and Memphis; and records from the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations, detailing the interaction between civil rights leaders and organizations and the highest levels of the federal government. This module also contains important documentation that shows the longer arc of the freedom struggle both before and after the highpoint of the post-World War II civil rights movement. These topics include forced labor in the first half of the 20th century (in Peonage Files of the U.S. Department of Justice, 1901-1945); migration of African Americans to urban areas that began during World War I; East St. Louis riot of 1917; Scottsboro Boys case and campaigns for the passage of anti-lynching legislation; heroic combat record of the Tuskegee Airmen during World War II; and President Truman's Committee on Civil Rights
• Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century: Federal Government Records, Supplement The Ford administration records in this module consist of the subject files of J. Stanley Pottinger, who was the assistant attorney general in charge of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, which enforced civil rights laws, and the subject files of Anne R. Clarke, who was a special assistant in the Research Unit of the Civil Rights Division's Sex Discrimination Program. The files of Pottinger and Clarke detail the implementation of federal civil rights law from 1973 through 1977 and thus are an important complement to the other Black Freedom modules that focus on the campaigns that led to the passage of landmark legislation like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights of 1965. Records from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library consist of the White House Office of Records Management Subject File on Human Rights and seven collections released as a result of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. The seven FOIA collections cover affirmative action; Bob Jones University; busing and school desegregation; civil rights; fair housing; Martin Luther King Jr. Day; and the Civil Rights Restoration Act, Grove City College, and the Voting Rights Act of 1982.
• Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century: Organizational Records and Personal Papers, Part I The three major civil rights organizations are the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs. Papers of civil rights leaders included in this module are those of the civil rights and labor leader A. Philip Randolph; the long-time civil rights activist and organizer of the March on Washington, Bayard Rustin, and the papers of the pioneering educator Mary McLeod Bethune. Through records of Claude A. Barnett's Associated Negro Press, this module also branches out to cover other aspects of African American life in the 20th century, like religion, sports, education, fraternal organizations, and even the field of entertainment.
• Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century: Organizational Records and Personal Papers, Part 2. This link opens in a new window This Black Freedom module is highlighted by the records of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Africa-related papers of Claude Barnett, and the Robert F. Williams Papers.
• Black Thought and Culture This link opens in a new window Search and display the full text of approximately 100,000 pages of monographs, essays, articles, speeches, and interviews written by leaders within the black community from the earliest times to the present.
• Black Women Oral History Project: From the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe College Can also be requested from Offsite Transcribed interviews with 61 African American women. The women interviewed represent a cross section of women of African descent born about fifteen years before and after 1900. Each volume has a name and subject index.
• Black Workers In The Era Of The Great Migration, 1916-1929 Also: HUNT MFILM-3 331.63 B627 no.1-25 and Guide The movement of southern blacks to northern industrial cities was called the Great Migration. Focusing on both migration and labor, this collection contains records relating to agricultural labor, industrial work, unionism, housing, race relations, returning veterans and their search for employment, and the process of migration from the South to the North. Record groups included are: National War Labor Board, U. S. Housing Corporation, National Mediation Board, U. S. Railroad Administration, U. S. Shipping Board, U. S. Coal Commission, Bureau of Agricultural Economics, U. S. Women's Bureau, Department of War and U. S. Conciliation Services. Only those materials which explicitly mention Black workers, however, are included. The guide describes the contents of each reel, and includes a detailed subject index so that relevant material can easily be identified.
• Booker T. Washington Papers UNT STACKS-2 E185.97 .W274 v. 1-14
• Brown, Homer S. Papers, 1918-1977. UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH, ARCHIVES SERVICE CENTER-AIS MANUSCRIPTS AIS 78:8 Black lawyer, state legislator and judge prominent in Pennsylvania and Pittsburgh politics and government.
• Centers of the Southern Struggle: FBI Files on Selma, Memphis, Montgomery, Albany, and St. Augustine University of Pittsburgh-ULS Thomas Blvd microform storage-Use Get-It Service
• Colonial State Papers (1574 - 1757) This link opens in a new window Over 7,000 manuscript papers and 40,000 bibliographic records concerning English activities in the American, Canadian, and West Indian colonies between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Database Guide
• "Dear Master": Letters of a Slave Family REQUEST FROM OFFSITE
• Documenting the American South A digital publishing initiative that provides Internet access to texts, images, and audio files related to southern history, literature, and culture. Currently DocSouth includes sixteen thematic collections of books, diaries, posters, artifacts, letters, oral history interviews, and songs.
• Documents on Slavery Federal and state statutes, treaties, and other documents.
• East St. Louis Race Riot of 1917 University of Pittsburgh-ULS Thomas Blvd microform storage-Use Get-It Service
• FBI file on the Black Panther Party, North Carolina University of Pittsburgh-ULS Thomas Blvd microform storage-Use Get-It Service
• FBI File on the National Negro Congress University of Pittsburgh-ULS Thomas Blvd microform storage-Use Get-It Service
• Federal Surveillance Of Afro-Americans, 1917-1925: The First World War, The Red Scare, And The Garvey Movement Also: HUNT MFILM-3 305.896073 F293 no.1-25 and Guide From 1917 to 1925 the Justice Department, and its Bureau of Investigation (later named the Federal Bureau of Investigation), along with other agencies of the federal government, investigated Americans who were Socialists, Communists, opponents of World War I, militant labor unionists, ethnic or racial nationalists, and outspoken opponents of the government. This collection includes the surveillance files on African American individuals (e.g. Marcus Garvey, W. E. B. DuBois, Jack Johnson, A. Philip Randolph), groups (e.g. NAACP, UNIA) and periodicals (e. g. Messsenger, Crisis, Chicago Defender, Baltimore Afro-American). The guide describes the contents of each reel, and includes a detailed subject index so that relevant material can easily be identified.
• Frederick Douglass Papers HUNT STACKS-2 E449 .D733
• Frederick Douglass Papers at the Library of Congress Search the papers by keyword, or browse by series.
• Freedman's Bank Records Request from Offsite "Freedman's Bank was created to assist newly freed slaves during and after the American Civil War. Records cover approximately 1864-71 and document names and relationships of those who used the bank. Although the records contain limited genealogical information, they are a valuable source of family history information for those with African-American ancestry. This compact disc contains approximately 480,000 names in pedigree-linked GEDCOM format"--Insert.
• Freedmen's Bureau Online Transcribed marriage, labor, and murder and outrages documents from various states.
• George A. Myers papers, 1890-1929 University of Pittsburgh-ULS Thomas Blvd microform storage-Use Get-It Service
• Green Books From the Introduction to the 1949 edition: With the introduction of this travel guide in 1936, it has been our idea to give the Negro traveler information that will keep him from running into difficulties, embarrassments and to make his trips more enjoyable.
• Heartman Manuscript Collection at Xavier University Library, New Orleans: Manuscripts on Slavery University of Pittsburgh-ULS Thomas Blvd microform storage-Use Get-It Service Documents in English, French and Spanish. Correspondence, depositions, petitions, affidavits, licenses, ships' records, printed bonds, and other papers and records relating to freedmen and slaves in the southern states, chiefly New Orleans, La., and other areas of Louisiana.
• In Motion: The African American Migration Experience Texts, maps, images, etc. on 13 African-American migrations.
• K. Leroy Irvis Papers, 1865-2007 Archives Service Center, University of Pittsburgh The papers of K. Leroy Irvis document the life of one of Pennsylvania’s most prominent politicians. The collection contains a wide variety of material including correspondence, legislative material, interviews, campaign literature, publications, photographs, and newspaper clippings. Areas of concentration in the collection include: the Pennsylvania Legislature, higher education, prison reform, housing, Pennsylvania history, senior citizens, National Democratic Conventions, the development of Pittsburgh’s African-American culture and history, mental health, civil rights, and Irvis’ relationship with his family and constituents.
• Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass HUNT STACKS-2 E449 .D736 v. 1-5
• Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers HUNT STACKS-2 E185 .97.G3 M36 1983 v. 1-10
• Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers Project Jacket text, introduction, and sample documents.
• McKinney, Ernest Rice. Papers, 1929-1942. Archives Service Center, University of Pittsburgh This collection is comprised of correspondence, newspaper clippings, a scrapbook and articles by McKinney, cartoons, and miscellaneous material ranging from publications to newsletters. Some of McKinney’s papers are located at Harvard University and an oral history was conducted at Columbia University.
• Microfilm edition of the Detroit Urban League papers, 1916-1950, at the University of Michigan microform University of Pittsburgh- ULS Thomas Blvd microform storage-Use Get-It Service
• NAACP Papers This link opens in a new window Briefings, and direct action summaries from national, legal, and branch offices throughout the country. It charts the NAACP's work and delivers a first-hand view into crucial issues. With a timeline that runs from 1909 to 1972, the NAACP Papers document the realities of segregation in the early 20th century to the triumphs of the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and beyond.
• New Deal Agencies and Black America in the 1930s University of Pittsburgh-ULS Thomas Blvd microform storage-Use Get-It Service
• Papers of A. Philip Randolph HUNT MFILM-3 305.896073 R19p no.1-35 and Guide Once called "the most dangerous black in America," A. Philip Randolph was a labor leader, civil rights advocate, black activist and Socialist. Included in collection are: Family Papers; General Correspondence, 1926-1979, including that with members of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, prominent American political figures, civil rights leaders and others; Subject File, 1901-1978, which covers a wide variety of topics including the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Committee to End Jim Crow in the Armed Forces, Fair Employment Practices Committee, March on Washington Movement, White House Conferences, and the Youth March for Integrated Schools; Speeches and Writings File, 1941-1978; Biographical File, 1945-1979, which includes articles and biographies about Randolph by a variety of authors; Miscellany File, 1920-1979, which are scrapbooks, one on the early efforts to organize the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, ...
• Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr HUNT STACKS-2 E185 .97.K5 A2 1992 v. 1-6.
• Papers of W. E. B. Du Bois: 1803 (1877-1963) 1965 University of Pittsburgh-ULS Thomas Blvd microform storage-Use Get-It Service
• Peonage Files of the U.S. Department Of Justice, 1901-1945 HUNT MFILM-3 306.363 P419 no.1-26 and Guide Though banned by the 13th Amendment, peonage, the practice of holding a person in servitude or partial slavery in order to pay off a debt, was still in existence in the early half of the twentieth century. Most of the victims of peonage were African American, though some were recent white immigrants. This collection contains court case files, correspondence between the Justice Department and such groups as the NAACP, Southern Tenant Farmers Union, Federal Council of Churches of Christ, Workers Defense League and the International Defense League. There are also the investigative reports of the Bureau of Investigation, which later became the Federal Bureau of Investigation. While the majority of this material covers the South, there is material relating to the West Virginia coal mining industry.
• Records of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Pittsburgh Branch, 1940-1974. Archives Service Center, University of Pittsburgh The Records of the NAACP, Pittsburgh Branch, consist of correspondence, reports of chapter to national headquarters; minutes of Executive Board meetings, reports of chapter’s activities, chapter programs on: segregation in labor and industry, employment, education, housing, and public accommodations; membership campaigns, cards, and record books; financial statements, paid bills, and receipt books. The records also include public relations information, and miscellaneous pamphlets.
• Records of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs, 1895-1992 University of Pittsburgh-ULS Thomas Blvd microform storage-Use Get-It Service
• Records of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia Relating to Slaves, 1851-63 University of Pittsburgh Law Library Microform Collection 1851-1863
• Revised Dred Scott Case Collection Images and transcriptions of legal papers filed in the case of Dred Scott, along with a chronology.
• Robert J. Simonds Papers, 1963-1966 Archives Service Center, University of Pittsburgh Contains correspondence, memorabilia, and miscellaneous material pertaining to civil rights and interracial programs in the Pittsburgh Area Camp Achievement, George Washington Carver Week, Pittsburgh Interracial Home Visit Committee, Project Friendship, SHARE, United Presbyterian Church in the U.S. (Pittsburgh Presbytery) Membership Exchange Plan, and Mississippi Project; includes tape of Jazz for Freedom Concert, 17 January 1965.
• Slavery, Abolition, and Social Justice, 1490-2007 1490-2007 (Carnegie Mellon users only) Search and browse the full text of original manuscripts, pamphlets, books, paintings, and maps. There is extensive coverage of topics such as the African Coast; the Middle Passage; the varieties of slave experience (urban, domestic, industrial, farm, ranch and plantation); Spiritualism and Religion; Resistance and Revolts; the Underground Railroad; the Abolition Movement; Legislation; Education; the Legacy of Slavery and Slavery Today. The database covers all geographic areas.
• Slavery and the Law (1775-1867) Slavery and the Law features petitions on race, slavery, and free blacks that were submitted to state legislatures and county courthouses between 1775 and 1867. These petitions were collected by Loren Schweninger over a four year period from hundreds of courthouses and historical societies in 10 states and the District of Columbia. The petitions document the realities of slavery at the most immediate local level and with amazing candor. Slavery and the Law also includes the important State Slavery Statutes collection, a comprehensive record of the laws governing American slavery from 1789-1865.

All known legal materials on slavery in the United States and the English-speaking world. This includes every statute passed by every colony and state on slavery, every federal statute dealing with slavery, and all reported state and federal cases on slavery, as well as every English-language legal commentary on slavery published before 1920, which includes many essays and articles in obscure, hard-to-find journals in the United States and elsewhere

• Southern Life and African American History, 1775-1915, Plantations Records, Part 1 The Plantation Records in this module documents the far-reaching impact of plantations on both the American South and the nation. Plantation Records are both business records and personal papers because the plantation was both the business and the home for plantation owners. Business records include ledger books, payroll books, cotton ginning books, work rules, account books, and receipts. Personal papers include family correspondence, diaries, and wills. As business owners, the commodities produced by plantation owners--rice, cotton, sugar, tobacco, hemp, and others--accounted for more than half of the nation's exports. Note: You can see exactly what is in this collection if you go click on Browse (under colored banner) and then scrolling down the Browse Collections until you see "Southern Life and African American History, 1775-1915, Plantations Records, Part 1" and clicking on the carrot.
• Southern Life and African American History, 1775-1915, Plantation Records, Part 2 These records come from the holdings of the University of Virginia and Duke University. One of the extraordinary collections from the University of Virginia, especially for the study of slavery, is the papers of General John Hartwell Cocke. The papers of the Berkeley family from 1653 to 1865 are exceptional for the 18th and 19th centuries on such matters as land and crop sales, slave and medical accounts, and family and overseers' correspondence. The massive collection from the wealthy Bruce family is valuable for overseer correspondence and business records as well as for personal correspondence, women's diaries, and slave records. Other collections from University of Virginia include correspondence from overseers; documents on slave sales, runaway slaves, discipline, diet, health, and the work loads of adults and children; plantation management, and westward migration to Arkansas and Louisiana prior to the Civil War. Note: You can see exactly what is in this collection if you go click on Browse (under colored banner) and then scrolling down the Browse Collections until you see "Southern Life and African American History, 1775-1915, Plantations Records, Part 2" and clicking on the carrot.
• Urban League of Pittsburgh Records, 1915-1963 Archives Service Center, University of Pittsburgh The records of the Urban League of Pittsburgh, founded in 1918, contain minutes, correspondence, department reports, photographs and Urban League Fellows theses from 1915-1963, with a concentration of materials between 1918-1945. Many of the records were destroyed in a fire that occurred in the League offices in 1945. The collection is divided into 9 series according to subject and are arranged chronologically and alphabetically. The strength of the collection concerns African-American employment and training. Topics such as federal housing projects, youth employment, worker discrimination and African-American welfare work. The records contain extensive material about the National Urban League, Negro Industrial Welfare Workers, National Vocation Opportunity Campaign and Camp Weldon Johnson. The photographs separated from the general collection maintain the file numbers present in this finding aid.
• Virginia Runaways Browse or search transcribed runaway slave advertisements from Virginia newspapers, 1736 to 1790. Also on the site are court and official records, planters' letters, diaries and accounts, literature and travel accounts, a tour a reconstructed slave quarter, and other images.
• Works of Alexander Crummell University of Pittsburgh-ULS Thomas Blvd microform storage-Use Get-It Service Alexander Crummell (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Slave Narratives

• Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 to 1938 Contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project (FWP) of the Works Progress Administration, later renamed Work Projects Administration (WPA).
• North American Slave Narratives Books and articles that document the individual and collective story of African Americans struggling for freedom and human rights in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries. This collection includes all the existing autobiographical narratives of fugitive and former slaves published as broadsides, pamphlets, or books in English up to 1920. Also included are many of the biographies of fugitive and former slaves and some significant fictionalized slave narratives published in English before 1920.
• Slave Narratives, a Folk History of Slavery... Typewritten records prepared by the Federal Writers' project, 1936-1938, assembled by the Library of Congress project, Work Projects Administration.

Local Archives

• Archives Service Center, University of Pittsburgh Search "african americans" to see the collections available.
• John H. Heinz History Center, African American The African American Collection, comprised of archives and museum artifacts located at the History Center, is dedicated to the preservation, dissemination, and interpretation of the life, history and culture of Africans and African Americans in Western Pennsylvania.

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A New Civil Rights Movement, a New Journal

Freedomways , the African American journal of politics and culture chronicled the civil rights and Black freedom movements starting in the early 1960s. Read it on JSTOR.

Freedomways , the African American journal of politics and culture that for nearly a quarter century chronicled the civil rights and Black freedom movements beginning in the early 1960s, started in 1961, a year that was a kind of transitional one for the civil rights movement. The sit-ins that had begun in early 1960, and the continuing demonstrations and emerging fervor, had made national headlines, but the movement hadn’t yet achieved the national stature that it would a couple of years later. Nevertheless, the civil rights movement was still a significant, if not yet overwhelming, news media story. The 1961 Freedom Rides, in which Black and white movement volunteers tested a recent Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation on interstate bus travel by sitting together on trips through the South, brought headlines, photographs and television news footage of racist mobs, burning buses and bloodied civil rights activists.

In addition to this, the Cold War still raged. John F. Kennedy had been elected on a platform of liberal policies at home and anti-Communist assertiveness abroad. The war in Vietnam was a set of kindling getting ready to blaze. Domestic McCarthy-era persecutions of American Communists and those who associated with them had not yet abated. Several political prisoners remained incarcerated. Anti-Communist trials of political activists were continuing. The Communist Party itself would be indicted under the McCarran Act, which demanded that the Party plead guilty to being the government’s almost cartoonish caricature of the organization and register itself and its members under those terms or face draconian fines and prison sentences. Yet despite all this, the winds of change were in the air. One example involved one of the country’s most prominent political prisoners, the Black American Communist activist Henry Winston , who had been convicted under the Smith Act a decade earlier. He had been blinded in prison due to medical neglect, and an international campaign was mounted demanding his release. In July, 1961, President Kennedy would commute Winston’s eight-year prison sentence. Winston would go on to lead the Communist Party, USA as its chair for two decades.

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At the same time, a new generation of nationally prominent Black artists, not content to portray themselves as apolitical figures, embraced the new freedom movement. Some of these artists would become associated with Freedomways over the years. Among them were Lorraine Hansberry, whose A Raisin in the Sun was the first prominent Broadway drama written by a Black writer; actors Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee , and Harry Belafonte; visual artists like Margaret G. Burroughs, Charles White, Jacob Lawrence , Elton Fax, Romare Beaden, Elizabeth Catlett Mora; pioneering cartoonists Brumsic Brandon, Jr. , and Ollie Harrington; musicians like drummer and modern jazz pioneer Max Roach, as well as trumpeter Bill Dixon, saxophonist Archie Shepp, and their cohorts in what was called the jazz avant garde; and a host of new writers, led by novelists James Baldwin , Alice Childress, Rosa Guy, John Oliver Killens, and Julian Mayfield, and including a host of poets (Alice Walker published some of her earliest poems and stories in the journal), essayists, and political analysts. My own contributions to the journal came late in its run, with a couple of book reviews, and, in 1984, with an article on jazz .

The foregoing history was the setting in which a small group of African American left wing activists, headed by the then-legendary and notorious W.E.B. Du Bois, founded yet another Greenwich Village-based little magazine. Freedomways was unusual even in the world of little magazines of the era, where what may have looked unusual to mainstream society was actually, in the diverse intellectual world of the Village in the late 1950s and early 1960s, quite commonplace. But what distinguished this magazine were qualities that came not only from its editorial personnel and outlook, but from its history as well.

Key Figures

Within the context of the domestic Cold War, the African American community was one of the few places where the organized left still enjoyed a reservoir of good will as well as personalities that commanded widespread respect. Among the top Communists tried and jailed by the federal government at the end of the 1940s was New York City Councilman Benjamin J. Davis, one of the most important Black elected officials in the country. Du Bois, who was arguably the most highly educated American of his generation, had spent more than half a century pursuing a career that splendidly blended activism and scholarship. He was a guiding figure in the effort to create the philosophical and political framework for the civil rights movement. Yet the federal government had indicted and tried him on charges of being an unregistered agent of a foreign power for the “crime” of heading an effort that collected 2.5 million signatures to ban the atom bomb. Du Bois was acquitted. Others, such as Trinidad-born Claudia Jones, who had been one of the leaders of the country’s youth movement during World War II and became a prominent Communist leader, were deported. Still others, like Paul Robeson, had his passport revoked and was hounded and harassed by Federal authorities throughout the 1950s.

Robeson had founded a newspaper, Freedom , which gathered many African American left wing writers. It would only last a few years, but the group of writers that supported it would go on to become part of the nucleus for Freedomways . Founded as “A Quarterly Review of the Negro Freedom Movement” (it would later drop “Negro” from its subtitle, indicating that the Black freedom movement could no longer be thought of as a strictly parochial affair), the new journal’s earliest editors included not only Du Bois; Shirley Graham, an experienced, world traveling novelist, biographer, playwright, and journalist, served as the journal’s first editor. She was married to Du Bois. Early editorial board members also included John Henrik Clarke, the prominent academic historian W. Alphaeus Hunton, who was a leader in the movement for solidarity with the newly assertive, and increasingly victorious, anti-colonial movements in Africa (Hunton would spend his final years in Africa, in Gambia, Ghana, and Zambia, where he died in 1970), and Augusta Strong, a linguist, journalist, and educator who had been active in the Southern Negro Youth Congress (SNYC) of the 1930s and 1940s, a group that historians credit as having trained many of those who would go on to play significant roles in the 1960s movements.

At the journal’s helm was Esther Cooper Jackson, another veteran writer and activist, who had been a leader of the SNYC and received some prominence during the 1950s as the wife of Smith Act defendant James E. Jackson, a prominent Black Communist who spent several years a fugitive after refusing to surrender to authorities to serve his term as a political prisoner. From the very first issue of Freedomways , Cooper Jackson was its managing editor — in effect the editor in chief — and would continue in that role during the journal’s entire 25 year run. She was its main organizer, and it was she who, most important of all, maintained the journal’s high standards of literary integrity, its array of prominent contributors from all wings of the freedom movement, and its enduring relevance.

Her primary collaborator on the journal in this effort was Jean Carey Bond, an essayist, fiction writer, member of the Harlem Writers Guild, and the niece of Benjamin J. Davis, who joined the journal in 1962 as a book reviewer. She continued to write reviews and essays, and she eventually shared editorial duties with Jackson, first as a contributing editor before becoming associate editor. Margaret G. Burroughs, who served for many years as the journal’s first art editor, was a prominent Chicago artist and a founder of the institution that is now the Du Sable Museum of African American History. John Devine, a labor activist from Philadelphia, would succeed Burroughs as art editor in 1963, and would serve as the only white member of the magazine’s editorial board. He remained with the magazine for the rest of its run. Burroughs would also continue with Freedomways as a contributing editor. Most of the people named so far in this essay would contribute to the magazine at one point or another as editors and writers, and the magazine would produce special issues on Robeson , Du Bois , and Hansberry , and on topics ranging from Harlem, Africa, Mississippi, the Middle East, and the Caribbean, to education and the Black image in the media.

It would be easy to conclude from this history that Freedomways was just another staid and dogmatic periodical, pontificating already digested truths about current affairs while relying on the certainties of a dubious ideology to make sense of and simplify the challenges of a complex reality. (This is a conclusion one can draw from what remains the most significant myth-making critique of the journal yet published, Harold Cruse’s anticommunist attack in his widely-read The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual [1967], an assault best answered by browsing the journal itself.) Such a description would miss the reality of Freedomways by a wide mark. For one thing, the magazine maintained its formal independence from political ideologies and organizations throughout its existence; and while it is true that many Communist and other left wing contributors helped solidify its political identity as a magazine of the left, what also distinguished this periodical was that it was a true tribune and mirror of the actual freedom movement that was changing the country’s social reality.

A Voice of the Movement, a Voice for the Movement

Part of the journal’s strength came from the fact that the voices one found in Freedomways were the voices of the movement itself. The first issue contained, among other things, a stunning nine-page historical essay by Du Bois, tracing the story of “The United States and the Negro” from 1861 to 1961; a report from Conakry by Alphaeus Hunton on the newly independent Guinea; John Henrik Clarke’s report on his trip to Cuba (the same trip that Le Roi Jones, aka Amiri Baraka, famously chronicled in his “Cuba Libre” essay of the same year); a speech to the United Nations by Kwame Nkrumah, the president of Ghana; and a militant, pro-integrationist artistic manifesto by Elizabeth Catlett, praising the founding the National Conference of Negro Artists (which still exists as the National Conference of Artists), and denouncing the forced segregation imposed on Black artists, as well as on all African Americans at the time. The second issue contained an essay by one of the Freedom Riders who survived the attack in Alabama that left his bus a burned out hulk. Joanne Grant was already a well-known left wing journalist (she was the associate editor of the National Guardian, the country’s biggest-circulating radical weekly newspaper, and would go on to publish important work in African American studies) when she contributed first-hand reporting on Southern activism to an early issue. A 1962 letter from Julian Bond (credited to “Horace Julian Bond”), then a staff member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), offers readers one of the first histories of that pivotal organization. Bond, who died in 2015, also contributed an essay on nonviolence to the Spring, 1963 issue.

One singular contribution of Freedomways to the growth in public awareness of African American history and culture was the “Recent Books” feature that appeared in the back pages of every issue. This was an annotated bibliography compiled and written by associate editor Ernest Kaiser, a Black writer and essayist who was also one of the best-known librarians of the day. He spent forty years as librarian, archivist, and research associate at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. His bibliographies constituted a kind graduate-level bibliography in Black Studies, long before such studies became standard university fare.

Part of the radicalism of Freedomways was its insistence on being a journal that was edited and managed by Black writers and literary figures that also welcomed the contributions of white writers. The poet Walter Lowenfels was the only significant modernist American poet to be convicted under the Smith Act; he contributed poems and essays to early issues. Anne Braden, a well-known white activist based in Louisville, Kentucky, wrote on “The White Southerner in the Integration Struggle” for the Winter, 1963 issue. NAACP researcher Herbert Hill contributed a pair of analytical articles to early volumes of the journal.

Activists that wanted help explaining why it was that the South seemed so ripe for the emergence of a historic movement for social change in the late 1950s and early 1960s could look to the theoretical writings in Freedomways by one of their own. J.H. O’Dell had been a union activist in Louisiana and staff member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, with duties ranging from fund raising to voter registration. He had been a Communist until the McCarthy-era repressions impacted the CPUSA organization and membership in the South, limiting the organization’s public presence in the region. The intervention by the Attorney General of the United States, Robert F. Kennedy, into the movement’s internal affairs illustrated how the government’s hounding of political radicals was brought to bear on the movement itself. Kennedy demanded that King fire O’Dell and other left wingers, or face open, official hostility. King complied. Nevertheless, O’Dell kept his ties to the movement while becoming more involved with Freedomways, and his first article for the magazine, “The Negro People in the Southern Economy,” appearing in the Fall, 1963 issue, was a landmark study of its kind.

“The Negro People and the Southern Economy” summed up both the conditions under which Black people lived in the region, charted how those conditions had changed in the nearly two decades since the end of the Second World War, and helped clarify some of the issues that catalyzed the civil rights movement. O’Dell firmly located the movement not only in the world of ethical and moral concerns, but in economic ones as well, focusing on jobs, occupational access, income, and unemployment. The movement, he concluded, was “crossing the threshold of its present, and entering a new period in its historical development.” It should be remembered that this article was written in the weeks after the 1963 March on Washington. This “ new period ,” O’Dell said, “ is increasingly marked by the struggle for economic well-being and greater political power, the two basic conditions necessary for the full enjoyment of ‘equal rights ’” (italics in original). Following “The Negro People and the Southern Economy,” All told, writes Ian Rocksborough Smith, in an invaluable 2003 study of the journal’s history, “O’Dell would have a tremendous impact on the magazine, penning over sixty percent of the staff editorials, writing twenty key strategy pieces over the twenty-five years of the magazine’s existence, and playing a central role in soliciting materials from activists for publication.” Freedomways would continue to chronicle, reflect, and advocate for these concerns, and for others as well. It came out early, for instance, against the war in Vietnam in 1965 (starting with an editorial written by O’Dell), published a two-issue special on the Middle East in 1983, and championed the presidential runs of Rev. Jesse Jackson, for whom O’Dell would serve as a principal advisor.

This essay has charted the early history of Freedomways , but the breadth, scope, and impact of the journal can hardly be successfully recounted in this short space. Let this short account serve, then, as an introduction, and as an invitation to read the entire run of this extraordinary publication . When read as a whole, this journal, founded by a small group of left wing intellectuals who were trying to find their way beyond the repression of the McCarthy era and contribute to the burgeoning movement of Black people for civil and human rights, offers an unprecedented and intimate view into the most important social movement of our time. By the end of its run, Freedomways had become something close to a journal of record of the mid-to-late 20th Century African American freedom movement.

READ THE FULL RUN OF FREEDOMWAYS ON JSTOR

Editor’s note: This essay first appeared as a Reveal Digital blog post in August of 2018.

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National Historical Publications & Records Commission

The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Stanford University

Additional information:   https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/publications/king-papers

A comprehensive edition of the papers of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929 –1968) clergyman, activist, and leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for his role in the advancement of civil rights using nonviolent civil disobedience. King has become a national icon in the history of American progressivism. A Baptist minister, King became a civil rights activist early in his career. He led the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957, serving as its first president. With the SCLC, King led an unsuccessful struggle against segregation in Albany, Georgia, in 1962, and organized nonviolent protests in Birmingham, Alabama, that attracted national attention following television news coverage of the brutal police response. King also helped to organize the 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech. This edition of speeches, sermons, correspondence, and other papers of America’s foremost leader of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. The project was initiated by the King Center in Atlanta before moving to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford.

Seven completed volumes of a planned 14-volume edition

Martin Luther King, Jr. addresses the crowd at the Civil Rights March, August 28, 1963. National Archives.

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• African America, Communists, and the National Negro Congress, 1933-1947 This link opens in a new window Why search here? Search here for primary resources on the National Negro Congress to learn more aout its efforts to secure the right of the African American people to be free from discrimination and oppression. Content type: Primary sources, correspondence, conference proceedings, meeting minutes, newspaper articles Coverage dates: 1933-1947 more... less... This collection includes material related to the National Negro Congress, the Negro Industrial League (1933), the Joint Committee on National Recovery (1933-1935), and the Negro Labor Victory Committee (1942-1945). Language: English Keywords: Archives Unbound
• Black Economic Empowerment: The National Negro Business League This link opens in a new window Why search here? Explore primary sources related to the National Negro Business League, including documents by its founder Booker T. Washington as well as other leaders and on various league activities. Content type: Primary sources, newspaper articles, correspondence, annual reports, meeting minutes Coverage dates: 1901-1928 more... less... This collection comprises the National Negro Business League files in Part III of the Booker T. Washington Papers in the possession of the Library of Congress. Language: English Keywords: Archives Unbound
• Black Nationalism and the Revolutionary Action Movement: The Papers of Muhammad Ahmad (Max Stanford) This link opens in a new window Why search here? Good source for primary souces on the Revolutionary Action Movement, as well as on other lesser-known Black nationalist movements. Content type: Primary sources, newspaper articles, magazine articles, ephemera, correspondence, meeting minutes Coverage dates: 1962-1999 more... less... From the collection of Maxwell Curtis Stanford, Jr., known since 1970 as Muhammad Ahmad, a civil rights activist and founder of the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), a Black power organization active during the 1960s. Language: English Keywords: Archives Unbound
• Black Liberation Army and the Program of Armed Struggle This link opens in a new window Why search here? Access FBI documentation regarding the Black Liberation Army (BLA) to learn more about this underground, Black nationalist-Marxist militant organization. Content type: Primary sources, FBI reports, correspondence, pamphlets Coverage dates: 1970-1983 more... less... Language: English Keywords: Archives Unbound
• Bush Presidency and Development and Debate Over Civil Rights Policy and Legislation This link opens in a new window Why search here? Great for discovering primary sources dealing with the development of civil rights policies during George H.W. Bush's vice-presidency and presidency. Content type: Primary sources, government documents, presidential records Coverage dates: 1981-1991 more... less... Language: English Keywords: Archives Unbound
• Fannie Lou Hamer: Papers of a Civil Rights Activist, Political Activist, and Woman This link opens in a new window Why search here? Discover primary sources that shine light on the life and work of the voting rights activist and civil rights leader, Fannie Lou Hamer. Content type: Primary sources, correspondence, financial records, programs, newspaper articles, images Coverage dates: 1966-1978 more... less... Language: English Keywords: Archives Unbound
• Federal Surveillance of African Americans, 1920-1984 This link opens in a new window Why search here? Search here to learn more about the federal scrutiny, harassment, and prosecution of African American individuals and organizations in the U.S. during the twentieth century. Content type: Primary sources, government reports, correspondence, memos Coverage dates: 1920-1984 more... less... The collection includes files on individual leaders, including Malcolm X, and on Black-led organizations, including the NAACP. Language: English Keywords: Archives Unbound
• Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century This link opens in a new window Why search here? Good for discovering primary sources from the federal government and important national organizations documenting the civil rights movement throughout the 20th Century. Content type: Primary sources, government documents, correspondence, manuscripts, archival collections Coverage dates: 1890s-1990s more... less... Included collections: Federal Government Records; Federal Government Records, Supplement; Organizational Records and Personal Papers, Part 1; Organizational Records and Personal Papers, Part 2 Language: English Keywords: History Vault
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• Fight for Racial Justice and the Civil Rights Congress This link opens in a new window Why search here? Access records of the Civil Rights Congress to learn more about the spirit and tactics of this early civil rights organization and its efforts to fight discrimination against labor leaders, African Americans, and other minorities. Content type: Primary sources, correspondence, case files, transcripts, legal briefs Coverage dates: 1946-1955 more... less... Language: English Keywords: Archives Unbound
• Final Accountability Rosters of Japanese-American Relocation Centers, 1944-1946 This link opens in a new window Why search here? Main database for alphabetical lists of evacuees at Japanese-American relocation centers, including such demographic information as name, family number, sex, date of birth, citizenship status, alien registration number, method of original entry. Content type: Government reports Coverage dates: 1944-1946 more... less... Includes rosters from the following internment camps: Central Utah, Colorado River, Gila River, Granada, Heart Mountain, Jerome, Manzanar, Minidoka, Rohwer, Tule Lake. Language: English Keywords: Archives Unbound
• Franklin D. Roosevelt and Race Relations, 1933-1945 This link opens in a new window Why search here? Search here for materials from FDR's Official File to learn more about the early development of the Civil Right's Movement including texts on segregation, race riots, and employment discrimination. Content type: Primary sources, government documents Coverage dates: 1933-1945 more... less... Language: English Keywords: Archives Unbound
• Grassroots Civil Rights & Social Activism: FBI Files on Benjamin J. Davis, Jr. This link opens in a new window Why search here? Explore digitized documents assembled by Dr. Gerald Horne regarding Benjamin J. Davis, Jr.'s grassroots organizing and civil rights work, including meeting minutes and reports about politcal debates. Content type: Primary sources, government documents Coverage dates: 1941-1990 more... less... Language: English Keywords: Archives Unbound
• Integration of Alabama Schools and the U.S. Military, 1963 This link opens in a new window Why search here? Search here for digitized records detailing U.S. Army plans to intervene in Alabama if school integration caused unrest. Content type: Primary sources, government reports Coverage dates: 1963 more... less... Language: English Keywords: Archives Unbound
• James Meredith, J. Edgar Hoover, and the Integration of the University of Mississippi This link opens in a new window Why search here? Access digitized FBI documentation of James Meredith's battle to enroll at The University of Mississppi in 1962, including his correspondence with the NAACP and letters he received from around the world during his ordeal. Content type: Primary sources, government reports, correspondence Coverage dates: 1961-1962 more... less... Language: English Keywords: Archives Unbound
• Liberation Movement in Africa and African America This link opens in a new window Why search here? Explore digitized FBI surveillance files on the activities of the African Liberation Support Committee and All African Peoples Revolutionary Party. Content type: Primary sources, FBI surveillance and informant reports, correspondence, news clippings, pamphlets, speech excerpts Coverage dates: 1970-1985 more... less... Language: English Keywords: Archives Unbound
• Papers of Amiri Baraka, Poet Laureate of the Black Power Movement This link opens in a new window Why search here? Explore materials by and about Amiri Baraka, a prominent African American writer and activist, gathered together by Dr. Komozi Woodard in the course of his research. Content type: Primary sources, poetry, organizational records, plays, speeches, correspondence, oral histories Coverage dates: 1913-1998 more... less... The materials cover Baraka's involvement in the politics in Newark, N.J. and in Black Power movement organizations such as the Congress of African People, the National Black Conference movement, the Black Women's United Front, as well as Baraka's increasing involvement in Marxism. Language: English Keywords: Archives Unbound
• Ralph J. Bunche Oral Histories Collection on the Civil Rights Movement This link opens in a new window Why search here? Explore interviews of influential leaders and participants that provide first-hand accounts of the Civil Rights Movement from the 1950s through the early 1970s. Content type: Primary sources, interview transcripts Coverage dates: 1967-1973 more... less... Interviews conducted between 1967-1973 cover events going back to the 1950s. Language: English Keywords: Archives Unbound
• Republic of New Afrika This link opens in a new window Why search here? Explore primary sources from the FBI that document the intelligence activities, informants, and surveillance of the social movement Republic of New Afrika as it fought for independence and reparations. Content type: Primary sources, government documents Coverage dates: 1968-1980 more... less... Language: English Keywords: Archives Unbound
• Southern Negro Youth Congress and the Communist Party This link opens in a new window Why search here? Discover primary sources from the papers of James E. and Esther Cooper Jackson that shed light on the founding and leadership of the Southern Negro Youth Congress and the Communist Party of the United States. Content type: Primary sources, news clippings, correspondence, lectures, research notebooks, speeches, subject files, legal documents Coverage dates: 1932-2000 more... less... Language: English Keywords: Archives Unbound
• Greensboro Massacre, 1979 This link opens in a new window Why search here? Discover documents that shed light on the events surrounding the march of industrial workers and Communists, the "Death of the Klan" march, that turned deadly in North Carolina, including march organizers' motivations, investigations of the shootings, and community healing efforts. Content type: Primary sources, government reports, correspondence, news clippings, wiretap transcripts, memoranda Coverage dates: 1979-1981 more... less... Includes documents from the FBI, local and state police, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department Language: English Keywords: Archives Unbound
• Quest for Labor Equality in Household Work: National Domestic Workers Union, 1965-1979 This link opens in a new window Why search here? Explore labor history and the women's rights movement through the records of the United Domestic Workers Union, including minutes, legal documents, financial records, and extensive correspondence. Content type: Primary sources, correspondence Coverage dates: 1965-1979 more... less... The subject files illustrate the Union's involvement in the Black community, the Manpower Program, the Career Learning Center, the Homemaking Skills Training Program, Maids Honor Day, the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA), and various federal agencies. Language: English Keywords: Archives Unbound
• NAACP Papers This link opens in a new window Why search here? Search here for information on the NAACP and its leadership, structure, annual conferences, major speeches, and campaigns. Content type: Primary sources, speeches, correspondence, press releases, organizational records, government documents, newspaper articles Coverage dates: 1900s more... less... Language: English Keywords: History Vault
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Civil Rights Law Research

• Civil Rights Legislation
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Originally written by former Harvard Law School Library reference librarian, Meg Kribble, this guide is a work in progress and suggestions on resources and types of resources that would be helpful to HLS researchers are welcome. 

While the initial focus of this guide was on the 20th century African-American civil rights movement, we are expanding to include material covering the civil rights struggles of other groups in the United States as well. 

Some "best bets" for getting started below. 

• Civil Rights resources on Lexis
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• Civil Rights texts & treatises on Westlaw

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• Request a Research Consultation Need resources that aren't covered in this guide or just want some personalized research advice? Members of the Harvard University community and researchers at HLSL may request an appointment with a research librarian who may provide advice on defining your topic, developing your research strategy, locating and using subject-specific data sources, and identifying potential research problem areas.

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Rustin, Bayard

March 17, 1912 to August 24, 1987

A close advisor to Martin Luther King and one of the most influential and effective organizers of the civil rights movement, Bayard Rustin was affectionately referred to as “Mr. March-on-Washington” by A. Philip  Randolph  (D’Emilio, 347). Rustin organized and led a number of protests in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, including the 1963  March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom . While Rustin’s homosexuality and former affiliation with the Communist Party led some to question King’s relationship with him, King recognized the importance of Rustin’s skills and dedication to the movement. In a 1960 letter, King told a colleague: “We are thoroughly committed to the method of nonviolence in our struggle and we are convinced that Bayard’s expertness and commitment in this area will be of inestimable value” ( Papers  5:390 ).

Born on 17 March 1912, Rustin was one of 12 children raised by his grandparents, Janifer and Julia Rustin, in West Chester, Pennsylvania. Rustin’s life-long commitment to  nonviolence  began with his Quaker upbringing and the influence of his grandmother, whose participation in the  National Association for the Advancement of Colored People  resulted in leaders of the black community, such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Mary McLeod Bethune, visiting the Rustin home during Rustin’s childhood. After graduating from West Chester High School, Rustin studied intermittently at Wilberforce University, Cheyney State Teachers College, and City College of New York.

While a student at City College of New York in the 1930s, Rustin joined the Young Communist League (YCL). Drawn to what he believed was the Communists’ commitment to racial justice, Rustin left the organization when the Communist Party shifted their emphasis away from civil rights activity in 1941. Shortly after his YCL departure, Rustin was appointed youth organizer of the proposed 1941 March on Washington, by trade union leader A. Philip Randolph. During this period he joined the  Fellowship of Reconciliation  (FOR) and co-founded the  Congress of Racial Equality  (CORE). Rustin organized campaigns and led workshops on nonviolent direct action for both organizations, serving as field secretary and then race relations director for FOR. During World War II he spent more than two years in prison as a conscientious objector. In 1947 Rustin was arrested with other participants of CORE’s Journey of Reconciliation, a test of the Supreme Court rulings barring segregation in interstate travel that provided a model for the  Freedom Rides  of 1961. After spending 22 brutal days on a North Carolina chain gang, Rustin published a report in several newspapers that led to reform of the practice of prison chain gangs.

In 1948 Rustin went to India for seven weeks to study the Gandhian philosophy of nonviolence. Several years later, he traveled to Africa on a trip sponsored by FOR and the  American Friends Service Committee , where he worked with West African independence movements. Despite his successful tenure with FOR, Rustin was asked to resign from the organization in 1953, after his arrest and conviction on charges related to homosexual activity. The following year he was appointed executive secretary of the War Resisters League, a position he held until January 1965.

Rustin became a key advisor to King during the  Montgomery bus boycott . He first visited Montgomery in February 1956, and published a “Montgomery Diary,” in which, upon observing a meeting of the  Montgomery Improvement Association , he wrote: “As I watched the people walk away, I had a feeling that no force on earth can stop this movement. It has all the elements to touch the hearts of men” (Rustin, “Montgomery Diary,” 10).

Rustin provided King with a deep understanding of nonviolent ideas and tactics at a time when King had only an academic familiarity with  Gandhi . Rustin later recalled: “The glorious thing is that he came to a profoundly deep understanding of nonviolence through the struggle itself, and through reading and discussions which he had in the process of carrying on the protest” (D’Emilio, 230–231). King recognized the advantages of Rustin’s knowledge, contacts, and organizational abilities, and invited him to serve as his advisor, well aware that Rustin’s background would be controversial to other civil rights leaders. As King’s special assistant, Rustin assumed a variety of roles, including proofreader, ghostwriter, philosophy teacher, and nonviolence strategist.

Rustin was also instrumental in the formation of the  Southern Christian Leadership Conference  (SCLC), proposing to King in December 1956 that he create a group that would unite black leaders in the South who possess “ties to masses of people so that their action projects are backed by broad participation of people” ( Papers  3:493 ). Rustin developed the guidelines for discussion for the founding meeting of SCLC in January 1957. Although Rustin helped draft much of King’s memoir,  Stride Toward Freedom , Rustin would not allow his name to be credited in the book, telling an associate: “I did not feel that he should bear this kind of burden” ( Papers  4:380n ).

Rustin was instrumental in organizing the 1957  Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom . He authored several memos to King outlining the goals of the march and advised King on what topics he should cover in his address. With Randolph, he also coordinated the 25 October 1958 and 18 April 1959  Youth Marches for Integrated Schools .

In 1963 Randolph began organizing the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Despite the concerns of many civil rights leaders, Rustin was appointed deputy director of the march. In less than two months Rustin guided the organization of an event that would bring over 200,000 participants to the nation’s capital.

From 1965 until 1979, Rustin served as president, and later as co-chair, of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, an organization of black trade unionists dedicated to racial equality and economic justice. From this position, Rustin promoted his view that future progress for African Americans rested on alliances between blacks, liberals, labor, and religious groups. 

Anderson,  Bayard Rustin , 1998.

D’Emilio,  Lost Prophet , 2003.

King to Edward P. Gotlieb, 18 March 1960, in  Papers  5:390–391 .

King to Rustin, 10 March 1958, in  Papers  4:380–381 .

Rustin, “Montgomery Diary,”  Liberation  (April 1956): 7–10.

Rustin to King, 23 December 1956, in  Papers  3:491–494 .

Civil Rights Movement

• Emmett Till Archives
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• Personal Papers

Organizational Papers

• Oral Histories & Interviews
• News & Media
• Politics & Government
• Law Enforcement & Surveillance
• Contemporary Research
• Finding Books & Articles

What can I find in Organizational Papers?

Collections of papers, such as those listed here, frequently include items such as personal and professional correspondence, newspaper clippings, financial records, memos, and diaries. Papers from organizations may also have items such as meeting minutes and membership rolls. Because much of this information comes from "behind closed doors," collections of papers can frequently provide a different perspective than what is present in the speeches and press releases of the time.

While the majority of these collections come from prominent African American groups, sets dealing with the KKK and other right wing organizations are included to provide context from the opposition to the civil rights movement.

• American Committee on Africa, 1952-1985
• Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, 1925-1969
• National Association of Colored Women's Clubs, 1895-1992
• Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 1954-1970
• Revolutionary Action Movement, 1962-1992
• League of Revolutionary Black Workers, 1965-1976
• American Civil Liberties Union Papers, 1912–1990 This link opens in a new window American Civil Liberties Union Papers, 1912-1990, spans most of the 20th century. it focuses on civil rights, civil liberties, race, gender, and issues relating to the U.S. Supreme Court. American Civil Liberties Union Papers, Part II: Southern Regional Office is comprised of never-before-digitized materials documenting the ACLU’s legal battle to enforce the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in thirteen Southern states. FSU Libraries owns access to Parts I and II of this collection. Also available on microfilm. Film 4116, 96 reels. Guide: Micr E 185.61 .C596 more... less... Abbreviation: aclupap Vendor: Gale Coverage: 1912-1990 Subjects: African-American Studies, Communication, History, Law, Political Science Type: Historical / Primary Sources, Reports

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