The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi: Providing Access at the 50th Anniversary

FAIN: PW-51692-14

University of Southern Mississippi (Hattiesburg, MS 39406-0001)
Louis Kyriakoudes (Project Director: July 2013 to May 2015)
Jeanne L. Gillespie (Project Director: May 2015 to August 2016)

The digitization, indexing, and online publication of 483 oral history interviews documenting the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi.

The Center for Oral History & Cultural Heritage at The University of Southern Mississippi seeks two years of funding in order to preserve and to make widely available to scholars and the public oral histories related to the history of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi. Recorded on analog media, these media are currently available only to scholars who can access the collection in person and they are in danger of degradation due to age and media. We ask for funding to support the digitization of these oral histories, compilation of detailed recording logs, and cataloging through the University Libraries. Digital media will then be shared, with complete metadata, to scholars and the public by publishing not only in the Southern Mississippi card catalog, but also through the Mississippi Digital Library (http://www.msdiglib.org) and the Civil Rights Digital Archive.

Associated Products

Oral History Collection in the University of Southern Mississippi's Digital Collections (Acquisitions/Materials Collection)
Name: Oral History Collection in the University of Southern Mississippi's Digital Collections
Abstract: This archive contains more than 650 entries from Mississippi's struggles for civil rights, including digital audio, digitized transcriptions and/or audio logs as well as other documentation related to Mississippi Freedom Summer and to the events of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi.
Director: Jeanne Gillespie, Ph.D.
Year: 2015
Address: Collection is all digital.
Primary URL: http://digilib.usm.edu/cdm/search/collection/coh/page/1
Primary URL Description: Browse page for the Oral History collection in the Digital Collections at The University of Southern Mississippi

"Digitizing the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement: A Lesson in Access, Preservation and Collaboration" (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: "Digitizing the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement: A Lesson in Access, Preservation and Collaboration"
Author: Hayden Noel McDaniel
Abstract: A presentation of the lessons learned in the implementation of the NEG Preservation and Access grant "The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi: Providing Access at the 50th Anniversary"
Date: 10/17/2015
Conference Name: Meeting of the Society of Alabama Archivists

Oral histories of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement:  An NEH-Funded Preservation and Access Project on the 50th Anniversary of Freedom Summer (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: Oral histories of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement:  An NEH-Funded Preservation and Access Project on the 50th Anniversary of Freedom Summer
Abstract: Oral history has stood at the methodological forefront of civil rights scholarship. The first wave of oral historians sought to preserve the stories of movement leaders. More recently, oral history historians have played a fundamental interpretive role in transforming our understanding of history of civil rights activism by discovering the complex interactions between local activists and the national movement. Oral histories have allowed scholars to draw upon the stories of hundreds of civil rights activists, and thus shift the focus of our understanding of how the movement developed and functioned away from a focus on national leaders and their organizations to the community leaders and local activists whose organizing gave the movement its energy and direction. Since its founding in 1971, USM’s Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage has been preserving the stories of those who organized, protested, and fought for civil rights in Mississippi and across the nation. The Center’s collections stand as the largest oral history archive of the Mississippi movement.
Author: Hayden Noel McDaniel
Author: Louis Kyriakoudes
Date: 11/13/2015
Location: The University of Southern Mississippi University Research Awards Day

Growing Up Civil Rights: Youth Voices from Mississippi’s Freedom Summer (Article)
Title: Growing Up Civil Rights: Youth Voices from Mississippi’s Freedom Summer
Author: Hayden Noel McDaniel
Abstract: Mississippi’s past was characterized by a color line that “was drawn in the attitudes and habits of its people, black and white,” and was such a part of the society that its “canon of racial exclusion or separation…was in substantial part informal.”1 Mississippi in the Jim Crow South entrenched a de facto system of segregation so intense that it did not necessitate the same degree of de jure segregation as other southern states.2 Parents and adults in the African-American community educated their youth and equipped them with the tools they needed to face a virulently racist Mississippi. The lessons young adults learned were derived from either direct adult prescription or by reacting to what they saw as their elders’ compliance with entrenched social mores of white dominated society. Youth took their discontent with Mississippi society to the streets and institutions and infused the 1960s phase of the civil rights movement with their own brand of activism. Otha Burton described this experience as a recognition of “knowing not only who you are but the world you live in. And maybe understanding that world. Understanding that there was a black and white America.”3 This established an awareness of racism in the black community and an increasing intolerance for allowing this separation to exist. Just as children took their lessons about navigating Mississippi society, they also took hold of their parents’ and elders’ activist involvement as motivating factors that propelled them into the invigorating roles youth played during the movement.
Year: 2015
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: The Southern Quarterly Fall 2015
Publisher: The University of Southern Mississippi College of Arts & Letters

Research Associate (Staff/Faculty/Fellow Position)
Name: Research Associate
Abstract: We created and filled the position of Research Associate for this grant.
Year: 2015

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