Tag: oral histories

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Oral history interviews of W. W. Law, civil rights workers, and 20-century Savannah civil rights history are now available freely online  

Interview with W. W. Law, Part 2 of 2 ; B-Roll of Green Meldrim House and Beach Institute African-American Cultural Center.

Selected by statewide cultural heritage stakeholders and funded by the DLG’s competitive digitization grant program, this collection is the Walter J. Brown Media Archives’s fourth collaboration with the DLG and is available here: https://dlg.usg.edu/collection/ugabma_wwlaw.

The content for this project consists of oral history interview videos with W. W. Law and other Savannah, Georgia, community members involved in the Civil Rights movement. The tapes were shot just prior to Mr. Law’s death and are the longest and most detailed interviews he did on his life and career as a Civil Rights activist.

The footage was shot in 2001 by Lisa Friedman with the help of the late oral historian Cliff Kuhn for the purpose of creating a documentary on the life of W. W. Law. Although that project never came to completion, it still managed to yield important historical content about Savannah civil rights workers and community leaders, including Aaron Buschbaum, Dr. Clyde W. Hall, Edna Branch Jackson, Ida Mae Bryant, Rev. Edward Lambrellis, Richard Shinholster, Tessie Rosanna Law, Dr. Amos C. Brown, Mercedes Arnold Wright, Carolyn Coleman, E.J. Josey, Walter J. Leonard, and Judge H. Sol Clark.

W. W. Law was fired from his job working for the post office in 1961 because of his civil rights work but was reinstated after an intervention by NAACP leaders and U.S. President John F. Kennedy. As with all civil rights movements in American towns and cities, stories of lesser-known activists in the Civil Rights Movement and the historical impact made by community leaders like Law and the others interviewed in this project are invaluable for researchers interested in the history of civil rights in Georgia.

Luciana Spracher, director of the City of Savannah Municipal Archives,  defines the importance of digital access to this content and the stewardship of this audiovisual work that was granted to the Brown Media Archives and made accessible through this DLG subgrant:

“The City of Savannah Municipal Archives’s W. W. Law Collection represents his life’s work, as left behind by him at the time of his death in 2002. The Walter J. Brown and Peabody Awards Collection’s collection of W. W. Law material includes video interviews where Mr. Law discussed his life and legacy less than a year before his death, as well as interviews with people, well-represented in the papers of our collections that document civil rights activities in Savannah. Both collections complement and enhance understanding of the other. The opportunity to hear these individuals recall the events represented in our collections is invaluable to students and historians who are studying and learning from them. Greater discoverability of the interviews online will assist researchers in seeking insight into the Civil Rights Movement in Savannah, as well as the larger Movement in Georgia and the United States.”

[View the entire collection online]

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About the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection:

The Walter J. Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collection is home to more than 350,000 analog audiovisual items, over 5,000,000 feet of newsfilm, and over 200,000 digital files. It is the third-largest broadcasting archive in the country, behind only the Library of Congress and the UCLA Film & Television Archive. The Archives comprise moving image and sound collections that focus on American television and radio broadcasting and Georgia’s music, folklore, and history; this includes local television news and programs, audio folk music field tapes, and home movies from rural Georgia. In the Peabody Collection alone, there are more than 50,000 television programs and more than 39,500 radio programs. Its 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. Learn more at libs.uga.edu/media/index.html

About the Digital Library of Georgia

The Digital Library of Georgia (DLG) serves as Georgia’s statewide cultural heritage digitization initiative. It is a joint project between the University of Georgia Libraries and GALILEO. The DLG collaborates with Georgia’s cultural heritage and educational institutions to provide free online access to historic resources on Georgia. The DLG not only develops, maintains, and preserves digital collections and online resources, but also partners to build digitization capacity and technical infrastructure. It acts as Georgia’s service hub for the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) and facilitates cooperative digitization initiatives. The DLG serves as the home of the Georgia Newspaper Project, Georgia’s print journalism preservation project.

Visit our website at dlg.usg.edu
Facebook: http://facebook.com/DigitalLibraryofGeorgia/ 
Twitter: @DigLibGA
Instagram: @diglibga 
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Interview with W. W. Law, Part 2 of 2 ; B-Roll of Green Meldrim House and Beach Institute African-American Cultural Center.
Title : [wwlaw-0010] Interview with W. W. Law, Part 2 of 2 ; B-Roll of Green Meldrim House and Beach Institute African-American Cultural Center. Image courtesy of the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
Interview with Mercedes Arnold Wright, Part 3 of 3 ; B-Roll footage of still photographs with voiceover.
Title :  [wwlaw-0042] Interview with Mercedes Arnold Wright, Part 3 of 3 ; B-Roll footage of still photographs with voiceover. Image courtesy of the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection

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Materials from the Augusta Jewish Museum documenting more than two centuries of Jewish life, culture, foodways, and tradition are now available online.

Selected by statewide cultural heritage stakeholders and funded by the DLG’s competitive digitization grant program, this collection is the Augusta Jewish Museum’s first collaboration with the DLG and is available here:

Augusta Jewish Museum Collection

The collection contains historical materials dating from 1850 to 2022 that come from a diverse group of Jewish creators, including youth, women, clergy, fraternities, and congregations that offer unique insights into the greater Augusta, Georgia region’s Jewish life, philanthropy, foodways, and experiences.

Rabbi David Sirull of the Adas Yeshurun Synagogue in Augusta emphasizes the importance of making this work accessible freely online.

“It is important that we remember our place in history as we move to the future. The Augusta Jewish Museum allows for valuable content to be procured, preserved, and disseminated that tells the story of Jewish heritage in the Central Savannah River Area that encompasses the Augusta, Georgia area…This content is invaluable to researchers in defining the ways of Jewish life in the Southeast.”

About the Augusta Jewish Museum 

The Augusta Jewish Museum and its programming chronicle the life, history, and contributions of the Jewish community in the Central Savannah River Area. The museum also educates about Jewish traditions, remembering the Holocaust, and Israel–the land and its people. Their website is: https://www.augustajewishmuseum.org/.

About the Digital Library of Georgia

Based at the University of Georgia Libraries, the Digital Library of Georgia is a GALILEO initiative that collaborates with Georgia’s libraries, archives, museums, and other institutions of education and culture to provide access to key information resources on Georgia history, culture, and life. This primary mission is accomplished by developing, maintaining, and preserving digital collections and online digital library resources. DLG also serves as Georgia’s service hub for the Digital Public Library of America and as the home of the Georgia Newspaper Project, the state’s historic newspaper microfilming project. Visit the DLG at dlg.usg.edu.

Selected images from the collections:

Book of Handwritten Poetry, Rosina Hendricks Levy. Paper-bound book of poetry bound with twine into a single volume, handwritten pages. Rosina’s Book of Poetry is an essential part of local Jewish history as a rich, female, first-person perspective of the beginning of the Jewish congregation in Augusta.
Title: Book of Handwritten Poetry, Rosina Hendricks Levy URL: https://dlg.usg.edu/record/augjm_augjmc_2019-003-010 Collection: Augusta Jewish Museum Collection Courtesy of the Augusta Jewish Museum Description: Paper-bound book of poetry bound with twine into a single volume, handwritten pages. Rosina’s Book of Poetry is an essential part of local Jewish history as a rich, female, first-person perspective of the beginning of the Jewish congregation in Augusta. Rosina Hendricks, daughter of the first Jewish family who arrived in Augusta in 1802, authored this book that remains unpublished. Written throughout her adult life, the book includes poems written to her husband and children, on life in Georgia and the South, and on Judaism and her experiences as a Jewish woman. She played a key role in establishing the religious school that would eventually become the Congregation Children of Israel.

 

 

“United for Worship and Charity” by Jack Steinberg. Staple-bound booklet about the history and community of Congregation Children of Israel, authored by Jack Steinberg.
Title: “United for Worship and Charity” by Jack Steinberg
URL: https://dlg.usg.edu/record/augjm_augjmc_2022-005-004
Collection: Augusta Jewish Museum Collection
Courtesy of the Augusta Jewish Museum
Description: Staple-bound booklet about the history and community of Congregation Children of Israel, authored by Jack Steinberg
Daughters of Israel Cook Book, page 8 of 88. Synagogue Cookbook (1950s), Paper spiral bound with plastic spine, published by the Adas Yeshurun Synagogue’s (AYS) Daughters of Israel.
Title: Daughters of Israel Cook Book, page 8 of 88
URL: https://dlg.usg.edu/record/augjm_augjmc_2021-054-001
Collection: Augusta Jewish Museum Collection
Courtesy of the Augusta Jewish Museum
Description: Synagogue Cookbook (1950s), Paper spiral bound with plastic spine, published by the Adas Yeshurun Synagogue’s (AYS) Daughters of Israel.
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