Digital Civil Rights Radio

FAIN: MD-226668-15

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Chapel Hill, NC 27599-1350)
Seth M. Kotch (Project Director: June 2014 to April 2017)

Development of a website that makes accessible and interprets digitized recordings of non-commercial, independent radio station broadcasts providing local accounts of the civil rights and black power movements.

"Digital Civil Rights Radio" seeks to explore a digital project around a growing body of historic radio recordings from non-commercial, often black-owned, radio stations that operated in the 1970s and 1980s. These stations, founded by activists inspired by but unsatisfied with the gains of the civil rights movement, expanded upon and redirected the movement's energy in response to local needs and the politics of the Black Power movement. These recordings, not heard since they originally aired, require digitization. And moreover, they call out for a public re-airing. This project will take the initial steps toward developing a robust, public facing digital infrastructure around the recordings, making them visible, accessible, and crucially, hearable for the first time in decades. And it will integrate them into an immersive digital experience that when coupled with public programming will model a new style of effective, engaged humanities scholarship.