Civil Rights Digital Library

by Rusty Tanton, June 9, 2008 - 9:35am

The University of Georgia has developed a national database of Civil Rights -related materials. Here's how Doug Shipman at the Center For Civil and Human Rights Partnership describes it:

For many years libraries and institutions across the country have had extensive collections of papers, oral histories, videos and photographs illuminating the modern Civil Rights Movement, but accessing them required going to those physical spots or visiting each website. The fine folks at the University of Georgia have developed a national database of these holdings in one easy to use website.

[. . .]

The CRDL features a collection of unedited news film from the WSB (Atlanta) and WALB (Albany, Ga.) television archives held by the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia Libraries.

A quick tour of the site led me to this WSB archive footage of a press conference held by Coretta Scott King on April 6, 1968, two days after her husband Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. The look on her face is just heartbreaking.

Many thanks to UGA for putting these materials online. It looks like it will be an amazing resource.