The Civil Rights History Project: Survey of Collections and Repositories

Hall's Hill oral history project

Repository: Arlington County Public Library. Virginia Room.

Collection Description (CRHP): The interviews include discussion about massive resistance and local businesses that were for and against desegregation of public schools. Interviews with educators, activists, and family members of four students are included. The collection includes many recordings of events where the children who desegregated the schools, now grown, tell their stories first-hand.

Origin Info: These interviews were conducted by Dr. Margaret Mulrooney's Oral and Local History class at Marymount University.

Date(s): 2003

Digital Status: No

Extent: 14 interviews

Finding Aid: The interviews have individual catalog records in the Arlington Public Library's online catalog.

Language: English

Related Archival Items: A copy of the interview of civil rights activist Kathryn H. Stone is also at the University of Virginia, which has her papers. The Arlington Community Archives, part of the Virginia Room's collection, holds many records of the school system and the personal papers of those involved in the struggle, such as Dorothy Hamm and Barbara Marx. The Virginia Room also has vertical files, photographs, and biographies dealing with school desegregation locally. See the website http://library.arlingtonva.us/departments/libraries/info/africanamericanhistory/librariesinfoaabrownvboard.aspx.

See also the publication "Up on the hill: an oral history of the Halls Hill Neighborhood in Arlington County, Virginia" (2003) and the documentary "It's Just Me...The Integration of the Arlington Public Schools."

Interviewees: Mervin E. Williams, Lula Mae Graham, Idabel Jones, Harrison Taylor, James E. Taylor, Lillian Ambers, Ernest W. Bowen, Josephine Pollard Mitchell, Mary P. Kobiltz, Saundra Green, Amanda Lewis, Benny Robinson, Hartman Reed, Priceton Simms, Evelyn B. Simms, Vivian Bullock

Rights (CRHP): Contact the repository which holds the collection for information on rights

Subjects:

African American neighborhoods
African American students--Virginia
African Americans--Civil rights--Virginia
Arlington (Va.)
Business enterprises
Civil rights movements--Virginia
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
School integration--Massive resistance movement
School integration--Virginia

Genres:

Interviews
Sound recordings
Transcripts