Southern School News Archive

The Digital Library of Georgia is pleased to announce the availability of the Southern School News now in the Civil Rights Digital Library and soon the Digital Public Library of America.

The Southern School News Archive provides online access to the complete run of the newspaper, published from 1954 until 1965. The monthly paper was the product of the Southern Education Reporting Service, a Ford Foundation-backed group of Southern newspaper editors who sought to report on issues in desegregation in schools of all sizes and levels — from the smallest rural schoolhouses to large state universities — across the American South. The aim of this project was clear and solid: report the events impartially, dispassionately, and as completely as possible.

The newspaper outlined its mission in each issue:

Southern School News is the official publication of the Southern Education Reporting Service, an objective, fact-finding agency established by southern newspaper editors and educators with the aim of providing accurate, unbiased information to school administrators, public officials and interested lay citizens on developments in education arising from the U.S. Supreme Court opinion of May 17, 1954 declaring segregation in the schools unconstitutional. SERS is not an advocate, is neither pro-segregation nor anti-segregation, but simply reports the facts as it finds them, state by state.

The Southern School News Archive is available through the Civil Rights Digital Library, a rich digital resource that serves as a portal providing a seamless virtual library on the Civil Rights Movement drawing on holdings from more than 75 libraries and allied organizations from across the nation.

Southern School News, October 1963. Featured stories include the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, and debate surrounding President Kennedy's civil rights bill (later to be signed into law as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by President Johnson).
Southern School News, October 1963. Featured stories include the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, and debate surrounding President Kennedy’s civil rights bill (later to be signed into law as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by President Johnson).

As a service hub for the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), the Digital Library of Georgia (DLG) provides digitization and metadata assistance for its partner institutions around the state. The DLG also aggregates and shares metadata about digital items with the DPLA, allowing the DPLA to act as a portal to these collections. Thanks to grants from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Arcadia Fund, the Digital Library of Georgia has digitized and described these items for inclusion in both the DLG and the DPLA.

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Mercer Cluster Archive Now Available

The Digital Library of Georgia and the Mercer University Libraries are pleased to announce the availability of a new online resource: The Mercer Cluster Archive.

http://mercercluster.galileo.usg.edu/

The Mercer Cluster Archive is an online database of Mercer University’s Macon campus newspaper that provides access to over fifty years of the publication ranging from 1920 to 1970. Consisting of over 5,000 newspaper pages, the archive provides images that are both full-text searchable and can be browsed by date. The images were scanned from microfilm held by the Mercer University Libraries’ Special Collections.

Mercer University was established as a private Baptist-affiliated school in 1833 in Penfield, Georgia, where ministerial students were trained in manual labor as well as classical studies. In 1871, the school moved from Penfield to Macon, where one of its campuses remains. The Mercer Cluster began publication as the university’s longest-running student newspaper in 1920. The paper is named for school founder Jesse Mercer’s hymnal, The Cluster of Spiritual Songs, Divine Hymns, and Sacred Poems. Since its inception the newspaper has covered stories and editorials about campus events, sports, sororities and fraternities, local issues, religious affairs, and club activities. The new Mercer Cluster Archive will allow users to explore twentieth century student life at Mercer University from the convenience of their computer.

The Mercer Cluster Archive is a project of the Digital Library of Georgia, a GALILEO initiative that shares Georgia’s history and culture online. Digitization is made possible by the Mercer University Libraries.

Other newspaper archives available through the Digital Library of Georgia include the Atlanta Historic Newspapers Archive (1847-1922), the South Georgia Historic Newspapers Archive (1845-1922), the Macon Telegraph Archive (1826-1908), the Columbus Enquirer Archive (1828-1890), the Athens Historic Newspapers Archive (1827-1928), the Milledgeville Historic Newspapers Archive (1808-1920), the Southern Israelite Archive (1929-1986), and the Red and Black Archive (1893-2006). These archives can be accessed at http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/MediaTypes/Newspapers.html

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