ECSU History Now and Tomorrow - The Art of Preservation

FAIN: PG-52468-15

Elizabeth City State University (Elizabeth City, NC 27909-9913)
Parnell Bartlett (Project Director: May 2014 to April 2015)
Juanita Midgette-Spence (Project Director: April 2015 to September 2016)

The purchase of powder-coated steel shelving to house manuscripts, publications, recordings, and other archival materials that detail the history of this historically black university. The wide-ranging collection includes 2,000 linear feet of departmental records, records of the university’s chief executives, monographs, sheet and recorded music, and legal documents related to a 1978 federal “consent decree” for a lawsuit seeking equalization of facilities and resources for HBCUs in North Carolina.

Elizabeth City State University (ECSU) is a publicly supported HBCU, founded in 1891 as a training school for teachers in rural North Carolina’s colored schools. ECSU offers 41 baccalaureate and master’s degree programs to 2,400 students of diverse cultural backgrounds. The Archives houses 2,000 feet of records and photographs documenting 120 years of higher educational offerings to North Carolina’s African-American citizens. ECSU requests funding of $5,982 to support the next phase of Archives’ long-term collections care plan: to purchase and install powder-coated steel shelving for the Archives’ cold vault, a climate-controlled storage area housing ECSU’s collections of personal papers, publications, and artifacts. The 2009 Lyrasis preservation survey report stated, “It is essential that proper and adequate shelving and housing be acquired for the materials in ECSU’s Special Collections and Archives.”