Modern Politics

This collection documents his career, particularly his work on human and civil rights. It includes materials about President Lyndon Baines Johnson's 1966 White House Conference "To Fulfill These Rights," which discussed the way to translate racial equality into economic, housing, and education issues as well as material related to Abram's involvment with the United Nation's Subcommission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities. Restriction: Portions of the collection are restricted and cannot be used without permission of the donor.

he collection includes scrapbooks, minute books, correspondence, photographs, and sound recordings.

The collection consists of materials relating to the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching, Atlanta Urban League, Commission of Interracial Cooperation, Georgia Committee, Fulton-DeKalb Committee on Interracial Cooperation, Georgia Council on Human Relations, and the Greater Atlanta Council on Human Relations.

Correspondence primarily documents Bernd's professional activities as a literary editor and writer for The Macon Telegraph as well as his freelance literary endeavors. A large collection of personal letters from scholar and educator John Donald Wade concern faculty tenure negotiations at the University of Georgia in the 1920s. The correspondence also includes letters to and from Walter F. White of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from 1924-1934 concerning racial prejudice in the South, lynching, and contemporary literature.

Materials include fliers and handbills announcing Party activities such as rallies, concerts, and protests, press releases, newsletters, and other printed material regarding the political activities of the Party. Many of the fliers contain detailed information about the arrests and trials of Party leaders including Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Seale, and Huey P. Newton. A number of fliers and printed materials also concern the United Front against Fascism campaign. Other materials in the collection include conference packets from the Revolutionary People's Constitutional Convention and a hand-lettered poster.

The Civil Rights materials in the collection include newsletters, leaflets, and brochures from organizations like the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

She continued to work in human relations and anti-poverty programs throughout the 1960s and helped organize the Federation of Southern Cooperatives. Materials in this collection consist of correspondence, writings, and other materials pertaining mostly to her involvement in the civil rights movement in Georgia.

The papers contain general correspondence, subject files, writings, newspaper clippings, magazine articles, reports, photographs and other items.

The collection consists of correspondence, speeches, writings, printed material, scrapbooks, photographs, clippings, and memorabilia. They document Jim Cherry's career as superintendent of schools, his civic activities, his broad interest in education, and honors and awards he received.

For the first decade he was at the paper, Churchwell typed his stories at home and dropped them off to his editor each day. He did not have a desk in the newsroom because the Banner was segregated just like the rest of Nashville and the South. Churchwell's pioneering status earned him the nickname, "the Jackie Robinson of Journalism." Although Churchwell covered the Civil Rights Movement during the 1960s, his editors rarely printed the stories. Churchwell won awards for his education reporting in the 1970s and ended his career at the Banner as a columnist. The papers include writings by Churchwell including newspaper columns and articles, speeches, and an incomplete copy of his autobiography, What's That Nigger's Name?

The interviewees were asked questions about the relationship between the races, memories of the Ku Klux Klan, the changing roles of women, and how personal attitudes have changed since 1945.

The collection contains Progressive Party materials, personal and professional correspondence as well as case files from his law practice. The case files include materials concerning specific cases involving issues about segregation and discrimination. A list of cases is available upon request.

The collection includes minutes, reports, correspondence, administrative, and subject files. These materials relate to the Council's work on social concerns such as poverty, drug abuse, daycare, recreation, employment, housing, and aging in the Atlanta area.

When his political career failed to take off, Craig returned to the Klan in the 1970s. The collection contains Klan broadsides, brochures, certificates, press releases, membership cards, meeting minutes, and correspondence.

Born in Anniston, AL, he migrated to Oakland with his family in 1911. His wife Evelyn (1889-1972) was born in San Francisco. The couple married in 1929 and lived in Berkeley throughout their married life. The collection includes books, periodicals, pamphlets, broadsides, and programs documenting Matt Crawford's involvement in the CIO Minority Commission; Negro Commission/Communist Party USA; National Negro Congress; Civil Rights Congress, International Labor Defense, National Negro Labor Council, and other political groups. It also contains extensive correspondence with intimate friends Langston Hughes, Louise Thompson Patterson, and William L. Patterson. A list of books originally found in the Crawford family library is available.

From 1964-1975, she was Southern Field Representative of the American Friends Service Committee. In 1975, she became Director of the Office of Human Services for the City of Atlanta. Her book, Silver Rights, won the 1996 Lillian Smith Award for non-fiction and recounts the story of one rural Mississippi family's struggle for education and for civil rights during the 1960's. Curry's papers include materials relating to her Civil Rights activities, personal papers, and printed material.

The Scottsboro Boys were a group of nine African American men accused of the rape of two white women on the Southern Railroad freight run from Chattanooga to Memphis on March 25, 1931. Their first trial occurred in Scottsboro, Alabama. The collection primarily contains materials collected by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana concerning the rape trials of the Scottsboro Boys from 1932-1940 including correspondence, broadsides, and newspaper clippings. The majority of the collection concerns activites that took place in Boston, Massachussetts. Much of the correspondence consists of mimeographed circular letters concerning the progress of the trial and pleas for financial support from the International Labor Defense National Office, the Boston Scottsboro Defense Committee, the National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners, the Neighborhood Scottsboro Defense Club, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the Scottsboro-Mooney Defense Conference. A few letters are personally addressed to Dana from David F. Jeffreys, Mary E. Moore, Secretary-Treasurerof the local Neighborhood Scottsboro Defense Club, Edmund J. O'Neal, principal of the Montgomery County Training School, and the International Labor Defense National Office. The remainder of the collection consists of a blank petition to Bibb Graves, governor of Alabama, newspaper clippings concerning the trials, an announcement of a play presented by the John Reed Club directed by Dana, and handbills announcing meetings and speeches in Boston, including an announcement of a meeting at which Dana spoke in 1932 and an appearance of Ruby Bates. Published pamphlets accompanying the collection have been catasloged.

His papers contain files on segregation and the materials also detail efforts to maintain segregation in public schools in Georgia.

Derby worked principally in Mississippi and she was a co-founder of the Free Southern Theater. The collection includes correspondence, printed material, and photographs.

Dunbar published five books on social welfare, minorities, and liberalism. The collection includes professional and personal correspondence, lectures, articles, speeches, book reviews, audio recordings of interviews and speeches, typescripts of books, holographs, as well as thirteen issues of "New South," a Southern Regional Council publication.

The papers include notes, printed material, and audio and videotapes documenting the Popham Seminars from 1997-2000.

In the early 1950s Emerson wrote for Collier's magazine. From 1953-1961, Emerson was the chief of Newsweek's Atlanta Bureau, and from 1965-1969 he served as the editor of The Saturday Evening Post. Emerson also wrote The Jesus Story, published in 1971. Emerson often wrote under the byline Bill Emerson.
The papers consist of correspondence, writings, newspaper clippings, printed material, and artwork. The correspondence concerns Emerson's work as a journalist for Collier's and Newsweek, in addition to his tenure as editor of The Saturday Evening Post. the collection also includes some of Emerson's personal correspondence, which documents his other activities, including his work with charity and church organizations. Writings include drafts of essays and columns that later appeared in print, in addition to notes for his speeches. The majority of the newspaper clippings are of Bill Emerson's columns and articles. The collection also includes an original watercolor cartoon of William A. Emerson by political cartoonist, Robert Ariail.

The collection consists of records documenting the process of desegregation and other events relating to racial issues at Emory. Included are documents summarizing the process of integration; copies of various statements issued by Emory faculty and students; a copy of the Petition for Declaratory Judgment and Injunction to the Superior Court of Dekalb County; accounts of activities surrounding campus racial protests that occurred in 1969 (print and audio); and information concerning more recent events that took place in the 1990s.

The organization worked to establish total participation in the Church by all persons regardless of race, class, or national original. This collection consists of statements of purpose, newsletters, official correspondence, and materials related to the Lovett School segregation controversy.

Frady began his writing career in 1966 as a journalist, working in Atlanta and Los Angeles bureaus of Newsweek. He later wrote for the Saturday Evening Post, Harper's, and Life magazines. In 1969 Frady published Wallace, a biography of the Alabama governor and presidential candidate. In the late 1970s, Frady moved to television journalism, and was chief writer and host of Closeup from 1979-1986. Frady wrote several more biographies, including Billy Graham: A Parable of American Righteousness (1979), Jesse: The Life and Pilgrimage of Jesse Jackson (1996), and Martin Luther King, Jr. (2002). He was working on a biography of Fidel Castro when he died on March 9, 2004 in Greenville, South Carolina. The collection consists of the papers of Marshall Frady from 1950-2004, including correspondence, writings, research files, audiovisual materials, and printed material. Writings include notes and drafts of nearly all of his published works, in addition to drafts of several unpublished articles, books, and screenplays.

He arrived in Atlanta in 1961 to work there as Southern bureau chief for ABC News. During his time as Southern bureau chief, Good traveled throughout the South covering the civil rights movement. The papers consist of audio recordings. The recordings include speeches; reports from marches, rallies, and clashes over school integration; and interviews of civil rights leaders such as Andrew Young, Martin Luther King, Jr., John Lewis and of Klan Wizard Robert Shelton. The tapes document events in Atlanta, Georgia, Notasulga, Alabama, St. Augustine, Florida, Philadelphia, Mississippi, and Jackson, Mississippi.

After serving in World War II, Gremley moved to Kansas City, Missouri in 1952 after accepting the position of Executive Secretary for the newly established Kansas City Commission on Human Relations. Throughout the 1950s, Gremley also taught sociology classes at the University of Missouri at Kansas City and continued publishing articles on intergroup relations and civil rights. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from the University of Kansas City in 1959. Later that year, Gremley resigned from his position in Kansas City to take Executive Director position for the Community Relations Board in Cleveland, Ohio. After two years in Cleveland, Gremley resigned from that position and worked briefly for the Peace Corps administration office in Washington, D. C. The papers include awards, correspondence, photographs, printed materials, speeches, writings, and audiovisual material. Correspondents include the African American writer Richard Wright and his wife Ellen, whom Gremley befriended while working in Paris, France after World War II. The collection also includes correspondence from Gremley to his wife Mary from 1946 to 1966. Writings include drafts of his articles and clipping about Gremley and his work in Chicago, Kansas City, Missouri, and Cleveland, Ohio. A significant portion of the material consists of records collected during Gremley's tenure as the Executive Director of the Kansa City Commission on Human Rights and includes correspondence, commisiion memorandums and reports, and clippings.

In 1964, Griffin worked as deputy director of the U.S. Department of Justice, Community Relations Service. As deputy director, he helped mediate conflicts in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Between 1965 and 1978, Griffin served as the director of the Southern Education Foundation, a foundation dedicated to equal educational opportunities for African Americans in the American South. This collection consists of the personal papers of John A. Griffin. It includes correspondence, reports, audiovisual items, and other material documenting Griffin's work with the Southern Regional Council and the Southern Education Foundation as well as his career as an arbitrator.

This collection covers the years Harding was with Mennonite House, Spelman College, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Documentation Project, and the Institute of the Black World. The collection includes correspondence and a number of black-published periodicals.

Edwin Harleston was active in the Charleston Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), founded in 1917. The collection consists of the family papers of Edwin Augustus and Elise F. Harleston. The papers include correspondence, sketchbooks, diaries, and other material. Also included are the papers of the Harleston's niece, Edwina Harleston Whitlock, who extensively researched her family history.

The collection contains materials relating to race relations and the early civil rights movement in Atlanta.

Herbers joined The New York Times in 1964 and worked there until his retirement in 1987. The collection consists of materials from Herbers' years at The New York Times Washington Bureau. It includes material about the civil rights movement and the Nixon presidency.

fter years of struggling, Killens saw his first novel, Youngblood, published in 1954 to critical acclaim. In 1964 his World War II novel, And Then We Heard the Thunder, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. After the success of Youngblood, Killens received assignments from Harry Belafonte, the popular singer and actor, to write outlines for screenplays as well as story ideas and screen treatments. Like Belafonte, Killens was active in the Civil Rights movement, serving in various capacities in the New York State NAACP and as Chairman of the NAACP's National Cultural Committee. He also supported the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) as well as helping Malcolm X set up the Organization for Afro-American Unity.
The John Oliver Killens papers document Killens' personal, intellectual, professional, and political life. The collection includes correspondence, writings by Killens, writing by others, and printed material. The writings of Killens includes critical writings; forewords and prefaces; essays; speeches; novellas and novels; plays; screenplays; scripts; and story ideas.

In the late 1950s Lomax became active in the Civil Rights Movements and travelled to the South as a reporter for the Tribune. Lomas also published articles, short sotires, and novellas in other publications such as The Nation.
The collection consists of the papers of Almena Davis Lomax, including writings, correspondence, printed material, and audiovisual material. Writings include manuscript and typescript drafts of published and unpublished articles, short stories, and novels. One unpublished work, "Of Masters and Sons," is a novelized depiction of the history of the Texas branch of the Lomax family. Other works include The Women of Montgomery, Ten Most Wanted White Men, and a short story entitled "Milledgeville." Printed material includes clippings from the Los Angeles Tribune, in addition to photocopies of articles by Lomax in other publications.

He also helped formulate Emory's position on race relations. The collection includes bound volumes, printed materials, sermons, correspondence, and a manuscript of his book The Glenn Memorial Story (1985).

The collection consists of family and general correspondence, committee records and correspondence, writings, financial papers and subject files, photographs, scrapbooks, memorabilia, and audiovisual materials. Letters include correspondence with persons involved in the Civil Rights Movement. Topics covered in the subject files include race relations and integration; local, state and national politics, 1948-1968; education and the public schools in the South and Atlanta; the church and the race issue; the Ku Klux Klan and Columbians in Georgia in the 1930s and early 1940s. The collection also includes information on organizations such as the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, the Southern Regional Council, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and segregationist organizations.

The collection includes material related to McMichael's involvement in community organizations and social movements from the 1930s through the 1970s.

The papers contain correspondence, writings, subject files, printed material, photographs and other papers, and the papers of his wife Annie Mae Miller. The correspondence includes incoming and outgoing letters regarding article submissions and academic appointments. Correspondence from civic groups to which he belonged and personal correspondence from family and acquaintances is also included. The writings by Miller include manuscript and typescript copies of article drafts, outlines, poetry, speeches from 1916-1939. Topics of the writings include constitutional law, analysis of the 14th, 15th, and 18th amendments, prohibition, lynching and mob violence, the New Deal, presidential policy analysis, African-Americans and communism, race relations, the Republican Party, African American colleges and universities, and Howard University. Writings by others consist of articles, speeches, and one radio transcript, which discusses James Bland, an African American musician whom Kelly Miller researched. The subject files consist of records from institutions and associations to which Miller belonged and include reports, reviews, and meeting minutes. The subject files also contain records kept by Miller during his tenure as dean at Howard University, such as meeting minutes and reports from the Board of Trustees, the committee on salaries, the alumni association, among others between 1922 and 1935. The printed material series is divided into printed material about Miller, printed material by Miller, and general printed material which he collected. In addition, a set of scrapbooks contains articles by and about Miller. Photographs and other papers include portraits and candid shots of Miller as well as a photo album of Miller with Howard University alumni and family.

The interviews are of various individuals discussing their experiences in the South. Topics of discussion include Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, southern music, the civil rights movement, desegregation, and southern politics. For each interview, there is an original audiocassette tape and a use copy and a project file. The project file consists of a typed transcript of the interview, any related correspondence or research material, and in most cases, a resume or similar biogrpahical information. Interviewees include Freddy Cole, Clarence Cooper, Constance Curry, Frank Edwards, Georga Heery, Hyatt Irwin, Windsor Jordan, Franita Ware, and Linda Poynter Williams.

These stories were then edited, combined, and consolidated by the editors for publication.
The Atlanta bureau files include press clippings, drafts of stories, handwritten notes, press releases, correspondence, and printed materials. Reporters gathered most of these materials while out on assignment. Newsweek correspondents filed stories about the civil rights movement from Albany, Atlanta, Birmingham, Little Rock, McComb, Montgomery, New Orleans, Orangeburg, St. Augustine, and Winston Salem. There are also subject files on organizations such as the NAACP, SCLC, SNCC, and the KKK, as well as files on prominent individuals like Martin Luther King, Jr.

Notable in the correspondence are letters from the King family, including Martin Luther King, Jr. The printed material, which consists of mostly newspaper clippings, documents education, segregation and the Civil Rights Movement among others. Also in the collection are a small number of photographs, Sara Mitchell Parsons's diaries from 1964 and 1970 and a scrapbook from her 1961 campaign for election to Atlanta Board of Education.

The collection includes files from Paschall's tenure as executive director of the GACHR (1961-1967), and from the Community Relations Commission (1967-1968). The collection includes correspondence, minutes, inter-office memoranda, reports, press releases, and clippings as well as materials relating to the League of Women Voters, National Organization for Women, and other organizations.

The collection includes correspondence concerning the film on the Negro in American life to have been made in the Soviet Union in 1932, and records of the Sojourners for Truth and Justice, a national black women's organization co-founded with Beah Richards. Emory also holds the personal library of Louise Thompson Patterson.

The collection includes correspondence, reports, clippings, printed material and collected data which document Pauley's work in the areas of school desegregation, Civil Rights and poverty.

In addition to her journalistic endeavors, Pendergrast worked for Planned Parenthood Atlanta, Georgia Council on Human Relations, and Atlantans for Peace. The collection consists of correspondence, mainly with prominent political and media figures, and photocopies of Mrs. Pendergrast's scrapbooks.

Both of these families produced future mayors of Atlanta: Ivan Allen, Jr., who was the only southern politician to go to Washington, D.C. to speak in favor of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and Maynard H. Jackson, the first African American mayor of a Southern city. This collection consists of materials relating to Where Peachtree Meets Sweet Auburn: A Saga of Race and Family. It includes interviews, interview transcripts, research materials, notebooks and audio materials relating to the history of the Allen and Dobbs families as well as the history of modern Atlanta. Of particular interest are the interviews and interview transcripts, which recount the racial, political, economic and social life of 20th century Atlanta.

He was involved in many political, social, civic and professional organizations, including the Georgia Commission on Interracial Cooperation, the Committee for Georgia of the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, and the Southern Regional Council. The collection consists mainly of correspondence dealing with Rainey's organizational activities.

He started working at Rich's in 1924 and he served as chairman of the Board from 1961 until 1972. His papers include material related to race relations in Atlanta and how the civil rights movement affected polices at Rich's. For example, the company's employee magazines reflect changing societal attitudes about segregation and race relations in the workplace. There are also materials relating to sit-ins and other protests from 1958-1961.

The collection includes correspondence, sermons, writings, clippings, printed and audiovisual materials, and memorabilia as well as some materials relating to the 1958 bombing of The Temple.

The majority of the collection contains research material for Rozier's book, Black Boss: Political Revolution in a Georgia County (1982). The collection consists of newspaper clippings, correspondence, annual reports, biographical files, notecards, and other material about the Georgia Council on Human Relations and Hancock County, Georgia. The collection also includes drafts and edits of individual chapters of Rozier's book.

William H. Scott, Jr. (1887-1976) was the son of William H. Scott and Laura Ann Fields Scott. Scott followed his father's interest in politics and was active in the National Equal Rights League. He wrote for radical periodicals, including The Clarion and The New Negro. The collection consists of the papers of the William H. Scott family from 1878-1918, and includes correspondence, scrapbooks, photographs, pamphlets, broadsides, sermons, writings, and other collected material of William H. Scott and his son William H. Scott, Jr. The majority of the correspondence concerns the political activities of William H. Scott. Also of interest in the collection are a number of letters written by William H. Scott, Jr. to his wife while he was serving in the military from 1918-1919. The correspondence details black life in the army during the Jim Crow era. Scrapbooks contain newspaper clippings from African American newspapers concerning politics, African American history, and family history. Sermons and writings are by both William H. Scott and William H. Scott, Jr. Photographs are mostly of family members and many were taken by William H. Scott, Jr. Printed material consists of pamphlets and announcements concerning political and religious activity in the African American community in Massachusetts and Washington, DC, during the early 20th century. The collection also includes a Civil War era sword.

The Sibley Commission sought a way to keep Georgia's public schools open after the U.S. Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision. The collection includes Sibley's personal and professional files, including correspondence, speeches, legal and financial records, photos, and printed items.

Later, he worked as editor of the Raleigh News and Observer. He was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his weekly column. After his retirement, Sitton taught at Emory University, his alma mater. The collection contains Sitton's personal and professional papers, including correspondence, printed materials, speeches and writings. The correspondence, by-lines and columns, and speeches date from the period after Sitton left The New York Times. The scrapbooks, though, contain clippings of his work from the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Material in the collection documents the nonviolent direct action initiatives of the organization, including boycotts, marches, rallies, protests, hearings, and other programs designed to secure and protect civil rights in America. The records reflect not only the day to day administration of the organization, but also the planning and management of special programming and events, and the involvement of individual leaders in thw wider religious, political, and civil rights communities.
Materials reveal SCLC's major activities from the 1970s through the 2000s, including publishing and public relations; national conventions; interactions with local chapters and membership; engagement of youth in the Civil Rights Movement; various marches and rallies throughout America; and major programs such as the Citizenship Education Program, Poor People's Campaign, Operation Breadbasket, the Ministers Leadership Training Program, the Alabama Tri-County Project, the Crisis in Health Care for Black and Poor Americans hearings, the Wings of Hope Anti-Drug Programs, and the Stop the Killing, End the Violence campaign. The records of the "Martin Luther King Speaks" radio program feature transcripts of speeches and interviews with major figures of the Civil Rights Movement, Women's Movement, Student Movement, and artistic community.
The records of the Southern Christian Leadership Foundation (SCLF), a separate nonprofit organization founded in 1966 to raise money for SCLC, are also included in the collection. In conjunction with the SCLC's own financial records, they reveal much about the organization's fiscal life, including both donations to SCLC and SCLF's own charitable work.

While other civil rights documentaries concentrate on national leaders and national organizations, "Will the Circle Be Unbroken?" focuses on "the essential local character of the places and people who collectively became the Movement." In order to capture the undocumented side of the movement, the producers conducted over a hundred of original interviews with civil rights activists and combed through archives all across the country for oral histories and other materials. "Will the Circle Be Unbroken?" aired on Public Radio International (PRI) affiliates across the country in 1997, and it won a prestigious George Foster Peabody Award the same year.
The "Will the Circle Be Unbroken?" program files consist of interview transcripts, audiovisual materials, scripts, program research files, and production files. The largest part of the collection is made up of materials related to the interviews, including tapes and transcripts of interviews conducted by the SRC as well as transcripts and tapes from other archival repositories. The program research files consist of inventories of archival collections, correspondence with archival repositories as well as historical materials, including biographical sketches, chronologies, notes, newspaper clippings, articles, excerpts from books, and guides for each city. The production files relate to the production and administration of documentary. Of particular interest in this series are the comments from listeners about the documentary as well as the station carriage lists, which list the stations that carried "Will the Circle Be Unbroken?" in the United States.

In 1965 he became director of the Southern Student Human Relations Project, U.S. National Student Association. The collection consists of pamphlets, newspaper clippings, news bulletins, periodicals, and handbills related to the anti-war and civil rights movements as well as the war of poverty.

Interviewees include John Abt, Randolph Blackwell, William Holmes Borders, James Dombrowski, Viginia Durr, Floyd Hunter, Curtis MacDougall, Claude Pepper, John Popham, Glenn Rainey, Pete Seeger, Studs Terkel, Strom Thurmond, and F. Palmer Weber.

She was also active in the Georgia Interracial Committee, Atlanta Urban League, Georgia Conference on Social Work, the Fellowship of the Concerned, and President Truman's Committee on Civil Rights. The collection includes correspondence, newspaper clippings, biographical information, copies of records of the Committee on Civil Rights, and a scrapbook and record books for the Women's Missionary Society of the Methodist Church.

Until its division in 1981, the "old" 5th Circuit had jurisdiction over the six states in the South. The 5th Circuit served as the federal appellate court one level below the Supreme Court, and it comprised the country's largest and busiest Constitutional court during the civil rights movements. The Tuttle judicial papers include correspondence, docket books, records relating to court administration, case files and opinions, and a small number of personal papers. The majority of the case files begin in 1965-1966. However, there are some case files from earlier civil rights cases such as Meredith v. Fair and Armstrong et al. v. Board of Education of the City of Birmingham.

He served in the United States Army before becoming involved with the UNIA in 1919. He was associated with Marcus Garvey as a part of the Pan-African movement. Harvey was elected President-General of the UNIA from 1950-1978. He died on June 27, 1978 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The collection contains papers of Thomas W. Harvey from circa 1924-1972 related to his involvement with the Universal Negro Improvement Association. The papers include pamphlets and other printed material, correspondence, including 80 letters signed by Marcus Garvey, and reports of the UNIA.

He served as the NAACP regional director for New York from 1950-1960; he served as the president of the Albany NAACP Branch in the 1960s and 1970s. Vodery owned the Vodery News Syndicate, which published a number of local newspapers, including Read magazine and the Buffalo Broadcaster.
The papers include correspondence, printed material relating to the NAACP, photographs, and publications collected or printed by Vodery. The majority of the collection concerns Vodery's work with the NAACP and incldues correspondence, reports and speeches by Vodery and others, conference material, and press releases. The remainder of the collection contains material related to his publishing ventures, including final publications, mock-ups, and photographs. The collection also contains publications collected by Vodery related to union labor and civil rights.

The collection consists of personal and professional papers of Pat Wattersand includes correspondence, subject files, awards, book reviews, and an unpublished manuscript "Add Obits."

The collection includes correspondence, minutes, subject files, reports, financial records, press releases, clippings, photographs and other items documenting Wilkins' roles in various organizations.

She also participated in other civic, cultural, and women's organizations. The collection includes correspondence, manuscript articles and addresses, clippings, photographs, scrapbooks, and biographical material.