The Civil Rights History Project: Survey of Collections and Repositories

Mississippi oral history project

Repository: University of Southern Mississippi. McCain Library and Archives

Collection Description (CRHP): Civil Rights Documentation Project
USM Libraries cooperated with the USM Center for Oral History to offer more than 60 oral history transcripts on the civil rights movement, such as those by civil rights leaders Charles Cobb, Charles Evers, Aaron Henry, and Hollis Watkins. This collection also includes oral histories of governor Ross Barnett, national White Citizens Council leader William J. Simmons, and State Sovereignty head Erle Johnston. Audio excerpts were added to several of these transcripts. The project was expanded in 2001 by the addition of twenty-two letters from the Joseph and Nancy Ellin Freedom Summer Collection and four diaries of Freedom School teachers in 1964.

Collection Description (Extant): Through the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage, The University of Southern Mississippi has been collecting and preserving the stories of Mississippians since 1971. This oral history collection now contains nearly four thousand interviews, by far the largest in the state and one of the largest in the South. The collection is available to researchers in the Mississippian Room of the McCain Library and Archives and in the Center's offices at USM. The Center also provides access to an increasing number of its oral histories online.

The Center's collection has a recognized strength in the history of the civil rights movement and veterans' histories, yet the Center has collected broadly. The topics dealt with in the collection encompass the breadth of the state's history.

Since 1999, the Center has joined with the Mississippi Humanities Council and the Mississippi Department of Archives and History in the Mississippi Oral History Project (MOHP), funded annually by the Mississippi state legislature. This innovative project was a ground breaking initiative to document the collective memory of Mississippi's culture, heritage, and institutions in the 20th and 21st centuries. The oral history projects within the MOHP are partnerships between the Mississippi Humanities Council, the Center for Oral History, and local communities and organizations to document their own past, capturing and preserving their local history and culture. Community enthusiasm combined with the training, equipment, and expertise of the Center have contributed to the program's great success. After the interview phase, the Center provides for the archiving, transcribing, and public programming of the interviews. The public programming helps fulfill the educational mission of the Center and the MHC and has included curriculum development, radio and film documentaries, theatrical productions, museum exhibits, publications, and community forums.

Collection URL: http://www.usm.edu/oral-history

Existing IDs: n 86846110

Extent: 60 oral history transcripts

Language: English

Interviewees: Sandra Adickes, Reuben V. Anderson, Fred Applewhite, Gladys Austin, Clarence Baker, Constance Baker, Earl Banks, Fred L. Banks, Jr., Rims Barber, Ariel Barnes, O. H. Barnett, Ross Barnett, Gladys Noel Bates, Josephine Bell, Unita Blackwell, Richard Boyd, Earline Boyd, T. P. Brady, Raylawni Branch, R. Jess Brown, Curtis Bryant, Horace Buckley, N.R. Burger, Lillie Burney, Erskine Caldwell, Will Campbell, Andrew Carr, Michael Carr, Henrine Carter, Veola Chase, Obie Clark, Jerry Clower, Charles Cobb, James Cohen, J. P. Coleman, Clinton Collier, Owen Cooper, Emma Corban, Brodie Crump, W. J. Cunningham, Ellie Dahmer, Russell Davis, William Davis, Kenneth Dean, C. J. Duckworth, William Dukes, Dave Dunaway, Brad Dye, Wilson Evans, II, Charles Evers, J. C. Fairley, Ken Fairly, Orene Farese, Julian Feibelman, Herman Glazier, Bennie Gooden, Charles Grant, Winifred Green, Percy Greene, Charles Griffin, Wilbur Griffin, Lawrence Guyot, Pinkey Hall, Fannie Lou Hamer, M. W. Hamilton, Mattie Lou Hardy, Horace Harned, Aaron Henry, Purser Hewitt, Hervey Hicks, Boyce Holleman, Billie Hughes, H. M. Ivy, Barry Davis Jim, Sr., Charles Johnson, Paul B. Johnson, III, Pete Johnson, Sarah Johnson, Earl Johnston, Lillie Jones, Marie Washington Kent, Al Key, Vernon J. Keys, Dewey Lane, Reber Layton, Clay Lee, Arthur Lewis, Nathaniel Lewis, Clarence Magee, Ruby Magee, Darwin Maples, Florence Mars, Joe Martin, Jobie L. Martin, Charles Marx, Oseola McCarty, E. L. McDaniel, Sheila Shiki y Kessler Michaels, William Miller, Thomas Minniece, Otho Austin Monroe, Amzie Moore, Irene Napier, C. B. Newman, James Nix, Mildred Norris, Matthew Page, Mamie Phillips, Charles Phillips, Elizabeth Price, James Randolph, Rev. Sammie Rash, William Raspberry, Minnie Ripley, Larry Rubin, Sarah Harris Ruffin, Iva E. Sandifer, Jane Menefee Schutt, Joseph Schwartz, Terri Shaw, Cecil Shelton, William Simmons, James C. Simpson, E. Hammond Smith, Frances T. Smith, Michael Smith, Eberta Spinks, Sam Spinks, Eldridge W. Steptoe, Jr., Peter Stewart, Jimmy Swan, Ernestine Denham Talbert, Isaac Thomas, Bennie Thompson, W. B. Thompson, Thomas Jefferson Tubb, Hollis Watkins, Zella Weathersby, Phillip West, Kenneth Williams, Mrs. L. A. Wilson, John Wing, R. W. Woullard, Jr., Joseph Wroten, George Yarbrough, Wirt Yerger, Jason York, Kenneth York

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

Subjects:

African American civil rights workers
Civil rights movements--Mississippi
Civil rights workers--Mississippi
Mississippi Freedom Project
Mississippi--Politics and government
Mississippi--Race relations

Genres:

Interviews