Collaboration for Digital Access for Margaret Walker Archives

FAIN: AB-50061-09

Jackson State University (Jackson, MS 39217-0001)
Alferdteen B. Harrison (Project Director: January 2009 to December 2009)
Robert Luckett (Project Director: December 2009 to April 2014)

A project to digitize and provide intellectual context for the papers of African-American writer Margaret Walker Alexander (1915-1998), which are housed in the university's Sampson Library.

The Jackson State University Alexander Research Center (the Center) and the H. T. Sampson Library (the Library) request a two-year $100,000 grant to implement training acquired during Ford Foundation workshops on digitizing the Walker archives for greater access by students, researchers, and teachers. It is the largest single archive of a twentieth-century African American woman writer, Margaret Walker (Alexander) [1915-1998]. The Center has a 110- linear-foot Walker literary archives and the Library has a 22-linear-foot Walker administrative archives. Walker was an award-winning poet, novelist, and influential educator. NEH funding will help digitize 40 percent of the Walker archives and use CONTENTdm to store and manage them. Three humanities scholars and two high school teachers will annotate the archives and write a ten-page essay, a five-page curriculum guide, and a print and online brochure to supplement class room instruction in secondary and post secondary education.

Associated Products

Margaret Walker Center Digital Archives Project (Web Resource)
Title: Margaret Walker Center Digital Archives Project
Author: Robert Luckett
Abstract: Funded by the Ford Foundation, the first stage of this project included twenty-seven staff members and grant consultants who scanned and uploaded more than 130 of Margaret Walker's personal journals, dating from the 1930s to the 1990s and totaling more than 10,000 handwritten pages. Those journals constitute just 10 percent of the Margaret Walker Papers–one of the single largest manuscript collections of a modern, black female writer anywhere in the world. Thanks to a federal grant from NEH, the second stage will allow the Margaret Walker Center to digitize another forty percent of Margaret Walker's collection, making half of her papers available online to the public. For researchers and others who wish to access this material, the website is ready for immediate use.
Year: 2010
Primary URL: http://margaretwalker.jsums.edu/
Primary URL Description: Margaret Walker Personal Papers Digital Archives Project
Secondary URL: http://www.jsums.edu/margaretwalkercenter/collections/digital-archives-project/
Secondary URL Description: Margaret Walker Personal Papers Digital Archives Project Resources

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