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In 2009, the Civil Rights History Project Act initiated a joint oral history project sponsored by the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. The first phase of the Civil Rights History Project included a nationwide survey of oral history collections on the African American civil rights movement. This resulted in a database hosted at the American Folklife Center at http://www.loc.gov/folklife/civilrights/survey/index.php. It includes information about 1530 collections from 685 libraries, museums and archives across the country (the database does not provide access to the interviews themselves).
The second phase of the project included the production of new interviews. The Smithsonian contracted with the University of North Carolina’s Southern Oral History Program and has acquired 108 high definition video oral histories with well-known leaders of the movement as well as its “foot soldiers” and front-line activists. The interviews were conducted by historians Joe Mosnier, David Cline, Hasan Kwame Jeffries, Will Griffin, and Emilye Crosby. In March, the first 55 interviews will be available on the Library of Congress website (the link is not live yet, but will be www.loc.gov/collections/civil-rights-history-project/). Some of the interviewees included in this first batch are Robert L. Carter, Lawrence Guyot, C.T. Vivian, the sisters Joyce and Doris Ladner, Courtland Cox, Ruby Sales, Junius Williams, Freeman Hrabowski, and a great friend of the AFC who was also its first “intern,” the late Pete Seeger. In the interview, Pete talks about how he debuted the civil rights anthem, “We Shall Overcome,” over fifty years to an audience of activists including Reverend Martin Luther King. Groups of interviews focused on cities that are not very well-known for their civil rights movement history, including Oklahoma City, St. Augustine, Florida, and Bogalusa, Louisiana. By the beginning of summer 2014, the rest of the interviews will be added to the site, as well as the Library of Congress Youtube channel and iTunes.
From February to September, the Civil Rights History Project will sponsor a lecture and concert series at the Library of Congress, titled “Many Paths to Freedom: Looking Back, Looking Ahead at the Long Civil Rights Movement.” The American Folklife Center plans to host one public event per month in various spaces at the Library. The series kicked off on February 27, with a screening of filmmaker Glen Pearcy’s 2011 documentary about the civil rights movement in Albany, Georgia called “One More River to Cross.” Pearcy donated his original film footage from the 1960s from this project and another documentary about Cesar Chavez and farmworkers in California to the American Folklife Center in 2012. In May, the Library of Congress will host a panel of activists who participated in Freedom Summer, including Bob Moses. All of these events will later be available as webcasts at http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/index.php.The schedule of programming for the rest of the year is available at: http://www.loc.gov/folklife/civilrights/events/index.html.
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