The Organizational Records and Personal Papers bring a new perspective to the Black Freedom Struggle via the records of major civil rights organizations and personal papers of leaders and observers of the 20th century Black freedom struggle. The three major civil rights organizations are the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs. Papers of civil rights leaders included in this module are those of the civil rights and labor leader A. Philip Randolph; the long-time civil rights activist and organizer of the March on Washington, Bayard Rustin, and the papers of the pioneering educator Mary McLeod Bethune. Through records of Claude A. Barnett’s Associated Negro Press, this module also branches out to cover other aspects of African American life in the 20th century, like religion, sports, education, fraternal organizations, and even the field of entertainment.
From heart-wrenching personal letters to bills of lading for office supplies, this module offers remarkable insight into the early Reconstruction period in the American South. The correspondence of the U.S. Army’s Office of Civil Affairs reveal efforts to foster democracy and rebuild communities in the divided and war-torn former Confederate states. The files include letters, petitions, court proceedings and internal documents related to elections. Another prominent subject is the fair administration of the election process. Troubles often arose as African Americans prepared to exercise their newly won rights to vote and run for office; many letters in the collection call for military intervention to secure these rights. Also included are Letters Received by the Attorney General pertaining to law and order in southern states from 1871-1884 and records of the Freedmen’s Hospital and the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company.
Slavery in Antebellum Southern Industries presents some of the richest, most valuable, and most complete collections in the entire documentary record of American slavery, focusing on the industrial uses of slave labor. The materials selected include company records; business and personal correspondence; documents pertaining to the purchase, hire, medical care, and provisioning of slave laborers; descriptions of production processes; and journals recounting costs and income. The work ledgers in these collections record slave earnings and expenditures and provide extraordinary insight into slave life. The collections document slavery in such enterprises as gold, silver, copper, and lead mining; iron manufacturing, machine shop work, lumbering, quarrying, brickmaking, tobacco manufacturing, shipbuilding, and heavy construction; and building of railroads and canals.
The Plantation Records in this module documents the far-reaching impact of plantations on both the American South and the nation. As business owners, the commodities produced by plantation owners—rice, cotton, sugar, tobacco, hemp, and others— accounted for more than half of the nation’s exports. The plantation, therefore, played a key role in the development of a nationwide market economy. Plantation records also document the personal lives of plantation owners and their families.
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