SAA Member Gabrielle Dudley to Serve on Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board

SAA member Gabrielle M. Dudley was confirmed by the US Senate on February 17 to serve on the Civil Rights Cold Case Review Board. Dudley, Instruction Archivist at the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library at Emory University, was recommended by SAA and nominated by President Biden in June 2021. She testified before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee regarding her nomination in January. As a member of the review board, she will examine government records of unpunished, racially motivated murders of Black Americans from 1940 to 1980. The review board was created following the passage of the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Collection Act of 2018 “to provide for the expeditious disclosure of records related to civil rights cold cases, and for other purposes.” Dudley has been working with civil rights collections for more than a decade and is a founding member of the Atlanta Black Archives Alliance. 

“Gabrielle’s confirmation is excellent news,” said SAA President Courtney Chartier. “It’s wonderful that the expertise of an archivist and member of SAA will be instrumental in the difficult and important work on which this review board is embarking. Archivists should be involved in this work and, as a former colleague of Gabrielle’s at Emory, I believe she will be an outstanding member of the review board.”

Dudley is among the first to be confirmed for the review board. Read more about the review board’s creation via CNN and about Dudley and her nomination via Emory University.

Photo courtesy of Emory News Center - Emory University.