Scope and Content
The collection contains 145 filmed oral history interviews of 175 participants in the United States civil rights movement and their family members. Also includes interview transcripts and photographs. The oral histories were conducted by historians Julian Bond, Taylor Branch, David P. Cline, Emilye Crosby, John Dittmer, Will Griffin, Hasan Kwame Jeffries, Joseph Mosnier, LaFleur Paysour, Dwandalyn Reece, Patricia Sullivan, and Kieran Walsh Taylor. Most of the interviews were filmed by John Bishop.
The interviews were conducted with activists who were also lawyers, judges, doctors, farmers, journalists, professors, union organizers, teachers, and musicians, among other occupations. The interviews cover a wide variety of topics within the civil rights movement, such as the influence of the labor movement, nonviolence and self-defense, religious faith, music, and the experiences of young activists. Most interviewees belonged to national organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), or the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). They also belonged to specialized and local groups including the Medical Committee for Human Rights (MCHR), the Deacons for Defense and Justice, the Cambridge (Maryland) Nonviolent Action Committee, Law Students Civil Rights Research Council (LSCRRC), the National Student Association (NSA), the Nonviolent Action Group (NAG), and the Newark Community Union Project. Some interviews were conducted in groups with families, couples, or participants of the same event. Several of the interviews were conducted with the children of civil rights leaders including Clara Luper, Robert Hicks, Gayle Jenkins, Ralph Abernathy and Oliver Hill, Sr. Interviews were also conducted with activists who worked in cities that are not well-known for their civil rights movement history, including Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Saint Augustine, Florida; Seattle, Washington; and Bogalusa, Louisiana. Major civil rights movement events discussed in the interviews include the Albany Movement, the Selma to Montgomery Rights March, the Orangeburg Massacre, the March on Washington, the Freedom Rides, Mississippi Freedom Summer, the riots of 1968, and the murder of Emmett Till.