Behind the Scenes of the Civil Rights Movements focuses on unearthing and digitizing the histories of civil rights activism by the everyday citizens of Black, Latine, Indigenous, and Asian American/Pacific Islander communities. These histories are recorded in a range of document types: unofficial letters, correspondence, demonstration plan outlines, transportation logs and plans, meeting minutes, programs from worship services, and photographs. Audio and video recordings such as newsreels, interviews, or musical recordings will also be included.
Black Periodicals: From The Great Migration through Black Power includes periodicals that depict the various political, literary, and cultural forms that Black Americans used to advance their vision in the ongoing struggle for liberation and dignity. Magazines and newsletters from women’s organizations, religious groups, labor organizations, and more reveal a diversity of ideological orientations, strategic methods, and aesthetic modes among Black voices throughout the mid-twentieth century. This collection also includes select titles from Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean that reflect the global dimensions of the Black freedom struggle, and will pay particular attention to publications originating in the early 20th century and interwar era, foregrounding connections between this period and the Civil Rights movement and beyond.
The "HIV, AIDS & the Arts" collection aims to create a vital resource for understanding the multifaceted roles that art has played in responding to, reckoning with, and remembering the AIDS crisis. This digital collection is dedicated to exploring how art has served as a form of activism, a medium for healing and bearing witness, and a vehicle for remembrance, rage, grief, and sparks of joy. It will additionally seek to document ways in which groups and institutions, both within and outside of formal art worlds, have worked to support artists impacted by HIV/AIDS. These materials will highlight the continuous struggle to gain attention for health issues, secure necessary support, and extend community, even through solitary art practices.
Independent Voices is an open access digital collection of alternative press newspapers, magazines and journals, drawn from the special collections of participating libraries. These periodicals were produced by feminists, dissident GIs, campus radicals, Native Americans, anti-war activists, Black Power advocates, Hispanics, LGBT activists, the extreme right-wing press and alternative literary magazines during the latter half of the 20th century.