HIST 4990 African American History Dr. Diane Morrow (Special Collections): Primary Sources at UGA Special Collections Libraries

Scope of Collecting

The Russell Library covers the history and politics of Georgia and the United States from 1900 through the present day with emphasis on Georgia elected and appointed officials, political parties, and political activists; civic, lobbying, and policymaking organizations; observers (journalists, scholars, and editorial cartoonists). The Russell Library also covers the history and politics of Georgia through documentation of relevant issues and events. Initiatives include the Georgia Disability History Archive; diplomatic and international affairs, with emphasis on the global economy as it intersects with Georgia business; and the changing demographics and ethnicity in Georgia communities.

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Some Relevant Collections

• American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia Records
  • The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Georgia is a nonprofit corporation founded in 1963 that is focused on protecting civil liberties in the state of Georgia. The records document their litigation and lobbying work, the subjects that they are concerned with, and their daily operations and include correspondence, case files, research files, and publications. Common subjects include the criminal justice system, freedom of religion, freedom of speech and assembly, LGBT rights, open government, racial discrimination, and student and juvenile rights.​
•  Athens Oral History Project
  • ​The Project was initiated in 2014 to document modern Athens history, roughly from the mid-twentieth century to the present. Interviews cover topics such as neighborhoods and communities in Athens, civil rights demonstrations, African American history, as well as personal histories of narrators.
• Mary Frances Early Papers
  • ​This collection documents Mary Frances Early the first African American to graduate from the University of Georgia. Ms. Early’s transcripts, grades, financial aid documents, photographs, diaries, and notebooks illustrate her student life. After graduating from the University of Georgia in 1962, with her master’s in music education, she worked for the Atlanta Public Schools and was involved in local, state and national educational organizations. Ms. Early’s involvement with organizations such as Georgia Music Educators Association, National Endowment for the Arts, and Music Educators National Conference is illustrated by correspondence, photographs, and speeches. Also included are materials regarding her education at Clark Atlanta University (1957) and honors received from the University of Georgia Alumni Association and College of Education. The collection contains correspondence, photographs, programs and event files, official documents from the University of Georgia, diaries, and notebooks.
• Charlayne Hunter Gault Papers

  • ​In 1961, after a two year legal battle, Charlayne Hunter (later Charlayne Hunter Gault) and Hamilton Holmes became the first African Americans to be accepted to the University of Georgia. The two students were met with animosity, and some rioting occurred outside Hunter’s dorm. Both Hunter and Holmes were suspended for their own safety, but a court order allowed them to return to campus a few days later. In 1963, Hunter graduated from UGA with a degree in journalism. Her professional career in journalism has included work for The New Yorker and The New York Times, as well as serving as a foreign correspondent for PBS’s MacNeil/Lehrer Report. In 1997, she became National Public Radio’s chief correspondent for Africa and, in 1999, she became Johannesburg bureau chief and correspondent for CNN. These papers primarily document public reaction to the integration of the University of Georgia and Hunter-Gault’s professional activities as national correspondent and anchor for MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. Correspondence to University Dean of Students Dr. Joseph Williams in 1961 reflects both students’ and state residents’ opinions regarding desegregation. Other materials include Dr. John C. Belcher’s research files and transcripts of oral histories he conducted documenting the integration of the university. Also included is correspondence sent to Hunter-Gault regarding her reporting for the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour from 1979 until 1988

• Foot Soldier for Equal Justice: Horace T. Ward and the Desegregation of the University of Georgia Collection
  • Horace T. Ward: Desegregation of the University of Georgia, Civil Rights Advocacy, and Jurisprudence documents Horace Ward, the first African American to sue for admission to an all-white college or university in Georgia. The papers are mainly photocopies of transcripts from court cases, clippings, and correspondence from former University of Georgia law professor James J. Lenoir and Red and Black student editor Walter Lundy, both of whom resigned positions at the university due to the school’s resistance to desegregation. Specific court cases documented include Ward v. Regents of the University System of Georgia and Holmes v. Danner. 
• ​Robert Brown Papers
  • ​Robert Lofton Brown served in the Georgia State Senate (26th District) from 1991 to 2011 and was a member of the Bibb County Schools Board of Education between 1984 and 1991. Brown was also actively involved in education policy reform in the 1970s and 1980s through his work with the American Friends Service Committee and the Southeastern Public Education Program. Brown's papers document his political career, his civic and social activities, and his advocacy for education reform and civil rights in Macon and beyond.
• Guthrie vs. Evans: Georgia State Prison Research Files
  • This collection consists of material collected by Bradley Chilton pertaining to the  Guthrie vs. Evans trial from 1972-1983, a law suit that led to sweeping reforms in the Georgia prison system. It includes transcripts of court proceedings, court records, minutes, printed material, correspondence, news clippings, blueprints, and photographs regarding conditions in the Georgia State Prison at Reidsville and trial proceedings. Materials were used by Chilton for his dissertation and book, Prisons Under the Gavel.​
• ​Griffin African American Oral History Project
  • ​The Griffin Oral History Project is a collaboration between the Griffin Branch NAACP, the Griffin Campus Library of the University of Georgia, and the Richard B. Russell Library. The seed was planted in the meetings of the Educational Prosperity Initiative which is also chaired by the president of the Griffin Branch NAACP, Jewel Walker-Harps. Collaborators on the project include: Griffin Housing Authority; Spalding County Collaborative; Fairmont Alumni Association; University of Georgia—Athens and Griffin campuses; and the Educational Prosperity Initiative, which is an affiliate of the Spalding County Collaborative and others. Interviewers on the project include: John Cruickshank, librarian at UGA-Griffin Campus Library; Jewel Walker-Harps, President of the Griffin, GA Branch of the NAACP; Art Cain, coordinator of Continuing Education for UGA-Griffin; Be-Atrice Cunningham, project manager for College of Agricultural and Environmental Science for Griffin; and Ellen Bauske, senior public service associate at the Georgia Center for Urban Agriculture in Griffin.

• Samuel J. Hardman Research Files on the FBI Investigation of the Moore's Ford Lynching

  • ​The Samuel J. Hardman Research Files on the FBI Investigation of the Moore's Ford Lynching includes Hardman's redacted copies of FBI documents and his article written about the lynching.

• Jacqueline H. Barrett Papers 

  • ​The Jacquelyn H. Barrett Papers document her career as Sheriff of Fulton County where she managed the operation of Georgia’s largest Sheriff’s Department and oversaw the operations of the Fulton County Jail. The papers include speech and event files, policy and procedural manuals, photographs, reports, campaign files, schedules, and plaques and awards.

• Reflections on Georgia Politics Oral History Collection 

  • ​The Reflections on Georgia Politics Oral History Collection consists of interviews with politically prominent Georgians conducted by Bob Short since 2007. Interviewees include former governors, members of both the U.S. and Georgia Congresses, secretaries of state, lobbyists, journalists, lawyers, activists, and relatives of prominent politicians. Included with these oral histories are a few public programs recorded at Young Harris College in 2006-2007. Most interviews were recorded in the homes and offices of interviewees or in the Bob Short Oral History Studio at the University of Georgia. The conversations cover many topics at the intersection of politics and public life in modern Georgia, with a particular strength in gubernatorial contests, the Civil Rights movement, reapportionment, the development of Atlanta, the rise of the Republican party in Georgia, political journalism, and the interaction between religion and politics.

    • Leroy Johnson 

    • Michael Thurmond

    • Thurbert Baker 

    • Bob Holmes

    • Tyrone Brooks

    • Lonnie King

    • Willie Bolden

    • Julian Bond

    • John Lewis

    • Andrew Young

    • Stacy Abrams

Scope of Collecting

The Hargrett Rare Book & Manuscript Library at the University of Georgia Libraries is the repository for millions of individual items including family papers, diaries, letters, theatrical papers, corporate and organizational papers, and the official repository for university history. The manuscripts area collects primarily materials relating to Georgia and Georgians, though the international performing arts collections form a second major strength. Additionally, manuscripts houses over five hundred thousand images, made up of drawings, paintings, photographs, daguerreotypes, tintypes, cased images, slides and negatives. The University of Georgia Archives is the official repository preserving over two centuries of the University of Georgia’s history through official records, images, plans, publications and artifacts.

The Hargrett Library advances the research, instructional, and public service mission of the University of Georgia by collecting, preserving, and providing access to the published and unpublished works that document the history and culture of Georgia. The Hargrett Library promotes the state’s literary, cultural, social, and economic legacy; and it builds collections of distinction in other areas, including natural history, ecology and environmentalism, history of the book, performing arts, women’s history, journalism and print media, and University history.

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Some Relevant Collections

• Photo Album of African American Colleges and Students
• African American schools in Monroe County, Georgia photographs
• Maurice C. Daniels papers
• Homer C. Jarrett letters
• Robert E. Williams photographs
• Mary Frances Early papers
• Georgia State Federation of Colored Women Clubs leaflet
• W. E. B. Du Bois letter
• Hall Johnson Photographs
• Civil Rights Ephemera Collection
• Horace A. Bohannon oral history interview
• First Congregational Church (Athens, Ga.) record book
• St. Paul's A.M.E. Church (Madison, Ga.) minute book
• Dr. Ida Mae Johnson Hiram papers
• William Tate UGA integration files
• Freedmen labor contracts
• John J. Knox papers
• Homer C. Jarrett letters
• Athens Model Cities Program 

Scope of Collecting

The Walter J. Brown Media Archive & Peabody Awards Collection was started in 1995 and currently preserves over 250,000 titles in film, video, audiotape, transcription disks, and other recording formats dating from the 1920s to the present. Our mission is to preserve, protect, and provide access to the moving image and sound materials that reflect the collective memory of broadcasting and the history of the state of Georgia and its people. 

The Peabody Awards Collection is the flagship of the archives, and contains nearly every entry for the first major broadcast award given in the United States. Entries begin in 1940 for radio and 1948 for television, and we receive at least 1,000 new entries every year --programs by local, national, cable, and international producers. The collection provides a cultural cross-section of television from its infancy to the present day, featuring news, documentary, entertainment, educational, and children's programming. The judging for the Peabody Awards is conducted by the Peabody Awards Office in the Grady School of Journalism from panel of distinguished television scholars, critics, and media professionals. The award ceremony is held every year in New York in late spring.Georgia history is highlighted in three newsfilm collections. The WSB Newsfilm Collection contains raw news footage from 1949 to 1981. More than 5 million feet of film clips shows the history of Atlanta and the Southeast, spans the entire civil rights movement, and covers such social and cultural events as the desegregation of the University of Georgia. Major leaders and political figures, including Julian Bond, Jimmy Carter, Maynard Jackson, Martin Luther King Jr., Lester Maddox, Richard Russell, Carl Sanders, Herman Talmadge, George Wallace, and Andrew Young, are featured in the collection.

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