Civil Rights Digital Library

A premier online compilation of digital civil rights content is relaunching with a new look and thousands of additional pieces of history.

The milestone marks a new era for the Civil Rights Digital Library (CRDL). This project brings together more than 200 libraries, archives, and museums to provide free online access to historical materials documenting the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. These collaborative partnerships are the bedrock of this national project.

View the entire collection online at https://crdl.usg.edu/.

Barbara McCaskill, an English professor at the University of Georgia who serves as director of the Civil Rights Digital Library and other projects, notes:

“Since its launch in 2008, the Civil Rights Digital Library has played a meaningful role in advancing the understanding of America’s civil rights activism at a time when upticks in racially motivated violence and crime and the erosion of voting rights have attached more urgency than ever to issues of equality, equity, human dignity, and freedom.”

She says:

“The signal achievement of this resource is its varied and unique content about people, places, and events. But it also challenges users to expand their knowledge of civil rights studies beyond national icons such as Dr. King and Rosa Parks, cities such as Atlanta and Birmingham, and beyond the 50s, 60s, and 70s to the present day.“

”As a result, the Civil Rights Digital Library continues to demonstrate a transformative impact on scholarship and instruction, as well as on how we carry ourselves as citizens and come together in community.”

First funded by a National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Civil Rights Digital Library launched in 2008 as part of the University System of Georgia’s GALILEO statewide virtual library initiative. Along with these continuing collaborations, the Digital Library of Georgia , an initiative of GALILEO and the University of Georgia Libraries, administers the site.

In addition, support continues to be provided by the following partners:

Since 2005, the portal has grown from about 100 collections to more than 350 collections of digitized content, including primary sources and educational resources.

The Civil Rights Digital Library contains contributions from statewide and national partners, documenting the civil rights era, including:

The desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas (1957).
The Atlanta Temple bombing (1958),
The Atlanta sit-ins (1960),
The Freedom Rides (1961),
The desegregation of the University of Georgia and Georgia Tech (1961),
The Albany Movement (1961–1962),
The desegregation of the University of Mississippi (1962), Clemson University (1962), and the University of Alabama (1963),
The Birmingham Demonstrations (1963),
The Americus Movement (1963, 1965).

Researchers and visitors can search the content of the Civil Rights Digital Library in numerous ways, including geographic location browsing with an interactive map that identifies civil rights movement-related resources in all 50 states.

The site also contains:

Biographical information for more than 3,000 people active during the civil rights era, which can be browsed alphabetically by surname. Many of these civil rights workers and foot soldiers may not be familiar, but their commitment to the movement formed the backbone of transformative civil rights campaigns and social reform.
New Georgia Encyclopedia (NGE) articles that cover events and individuals associated with the civil rights movement in Georgia. In addition to the concise, authoritative articles, images, multimedia files, and online exhibitions in the NGE further investigate civil rights figures and events. NGE’s content is made possible by Georgia Humanities in partnership with the University of Georgia Press, the University System of Georgia/ GALILEO, the University of Georgia Libraries, and the Office of the Governor.
Raw newsfilm footage from Georgia television stations WSB (Atlanta) and WALB (Albany) preserved through the University of Georgia Libraries’ Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection. These stations covered civil rights events throughout the entire southeastern United States.
Exhibits drawn from materials belonging to partner libraries, archives, and museums across Georgia, created by Georgia graduate students in collaboration with the DLG and NGE.

“By relaunching an expanded site on Sept. 9, 2022, the 65th anniversary of the 1957 Civil Rights Act, the Digital Library of Georgia celebrates the first federal civil rights legislation of the 20th century,” adds Sheila McAlister, director of the Digital Library of Georgia. “The relaunch demonstrates the DLG’s commitment to reflecting and sharing the diversity of experiences in Georgia and nationwide.”

View the entire collection online at crdl.usg.edu

Download the Civil Rights Digital Library 2022 Press Kit here.

Selected images:

https://crdl.usg.edu/record/ugabma_wsbn_wsbn44816
Series of WSB-TV newsfilm clips of a civil rights march and resulting arrest; civil rights preachers and local officials speaking at mass meetings; groups of Albany city officials as well as civil rights leaders entering the federal courthouse; and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Reverend Ralph D. Abernathy at a press conference in Albany, Georgia, 1962 July. In this still image, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. expresses his disappointment of the injunction blocking demonstrations issued by federal district judge J. Robert Elliott and his gratitude for the reversal of that injunction by Judge Tuttle. He calls the audience to present their bodies as a significant witness by continuing to move and work for freedom. Courtesy of the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection.

https://crdl.usg.edu/record/ugabma_wsbn_wsbn41989
Series of WSB-TV newsfilm clips of African American civil rights workers, Georgia National Guardsmen, and city officials in Albany, Georgia, 1961 December. Courtesy of the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection.

https://crdl.usg.edu/record/ugabma_wsbn_wsbn36242
WSB-TV newsfilm clip of an unidentified white female civil rights worker describing the challenges she faces in rural southwest Georgia from Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Albany, Georgia, 1962 August 1. This still image includes participants of a mass meeting, possibly at Shiloh Baptist Church, singing the freedom song, “Keep Your Eyes on the Prize.” Courtesy of the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection.

https://crdl.usg.edu/record/ugabma_wsbn_wsbn36237
WSB-TV newsfilm clip of African American student protesters singing as they are arrested by police at the Albany Carnegie Library in Albany, Georgia, 1962 August 2. Courtesy of the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection.

Tags: African American civil rights workers, African American women civil rights workers, civil rights, Civil Rights & Sunbelt Georgia (1945-1980s), Civil Rights Demonstrations, Civil Rights Digital Library, civil rights movements, civil rights workers, desegregation, DLG, exhibitions, Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, Freedom Rides, GALILEO, Georgia Humanities, Georgia. Office of the Governor, history, IMLS National Leadership Grant, Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), New Georgia Encyclopedia, partnerships, primary sources, segregation, television, Temple Bombing, United States. Civil Rights Act of 1957, University of Georgia, University of Georgia Libraries, University of Georgia Press, WALB Newsfilm Collection, Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection, WSB Newsfilm Collection

On the May 17th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision that ruled against segregation in public schools, we are pleased to report that civil rights content from the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection and the University of Georgia Libraries, available in the Civil Rights Digital Library and the Digital Library of Georgia were included in “School Interrupted,” an episode from the second season of the PBS series “The Future of America’s Past.”

This content includes:

a photograph on page 8 of the April 1, 1960 issue of the Southern School News with the caption, “Negro training centers open at Prince Edward,” available at Published between 1954 and 1965 by the Southern Education Reporting Service, an agency of Southern newspaper editors and educators, the Southern School News reported on desegregation in seventeen Southern and border states.

footage from a WSB-TV newsfilm clip dated July 27, 1962, that includes scenes related to the closure of public schools and education for African Americans in Prince Edward County, Virginia. The WSB-TV collection consists of over 5 million feet of newsfilm from WSB-TV in Atlanta, Georgia, and coverage of national civil rights events, such as those in Prince Edward County, Virginia.

On May 17, 1954, the United States Supreme Court in the Brown v. Board of Education case ruled against segregation in public schools. That case included a case against segregated education that was brought against Prince Edward County in 1951. After the Brown ruling, Virginia state officials instituted a plan of “massive resistance” to court-ordered integration, passing laws to close integrated schools and provide tuition grants to displaced white students. After both state and federal courts overturned the school closing law in January 1959, governor J. Lindsay Almond called a special legislative session and announced the end to the state’s policy of massive resistance. That fall, leaders in Prince Edward County chose to close the public school system rather than allow integration. White citizens established the Prince Edward School Foundation as a private school system for the 1,500 white school children in the county. The 1,700 African American schoolchildren were left without educational opportunities in the county. Some were sent to live with relatives in other parts of Virginia and attend classes there, some began college early, and some accepted arrangements to attend school in other states; most remained out of school until the fall of 1964 when federal courts ordered Prince Edward County to reopen its public school system.

In the episode “School Interrupted,” the program highlights a student strike in Prince Edward County that followed the Brown v. Board of Education ruling. The program’s host, Ed Ayers, learns about the drama that unfolded through conversations with two of the student strikers. He discovers how black women activists defied the school closures by starting grassroots schools, and he meets an author whose grandfather helped start the whites-only “segregation academy” Prince Edward Academy. In a museum at the school that started it all, Ed Ayers talks with a descendant of strikers who inspires students today to take up the fight for justice.

Tags: Brown v. Board of Education, civil rights, Civil Rights Digital Library, PBS, Prince Edward County (Va.), University of Georgia Libraries, Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection

Tag: Civil Rights Digital Library

The Civil Rights Digital Library Relaunches With A New Look And Fifteen Years Of Updated Content

Civil rights content from Brown Media Archives and UGA Libraries in the PBS series “The Future of America’s Past”