AFROAMER/GEN&WS 625: Gender, Race, & Civil Rights (Spring 2024) : Archival Sources
Wisconsin Historical Society Archives
The Wisconsin Historical Society is has one of the richest collections documenting the Civil Rights Movement in the country. The civil rights collections primarily date from the 1950s through the 1980s and are particularly strong in the areas of the southern movement, principally Mississippi; national organizations; and Wisconsin. Highlights include extensive materials on the Congress of Racial Equality, civil rights advocates Daisy Bates and Amzie Moore, the Highlander Center, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, 75 Freedom Summer volunteers, the Southern Conference Educational Fund, Carl and Anne Braden, James Dombrowski, and many other lesser-known organizations and activists.
We are happy to welcome students into the archives, no appointment needed.
How to Find Archival Collections in the Library Catalog
Digital Wisconsin Historical Society Archival Collections
The Wisconsin Historical Society has digitized some of its most highly-used archival material. Access is open to all.
- Freedom Summer Digital CollectionMore than 25,000 pages from the Freedom Summer manuscripts -- enough to fill several file cabinets -- are available online. In them you will find official records of organizations such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Congress of Racial Equality (CORE); the personal papers of movement leaders and activists such as Amzie Moore, Mary King and Howard Zinn, letters and diaries of northern college students who went South to volunteer for the summer; newsletters produced in Freedom Schools; racist propaganda, newspaper clippings, pamphlets and brochures, magazine articles, telephone call logs, candid snapshots, internal memos, press releases and much more.
- GI Press Collection, 1964-1977While not Civil Rights-focused, this collection of over 900 periodicals created by and for U.S. military personnel during the Vietnam era, contains writings that may interest Civil Rights-era researchers.
- March on MilwaukeeThis digital collection presents primary sources from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries and the Wisconsin Historical Society that provide a window onto Milwaukee’s civil rights history. During the 1960s, community members waged protests, boycotts, and legislative battles against segregation and discriminatory practices in schools, housing, and social clubs. The efforts of these activists and their opponents are vividly documented in the primary sources found here, including photographs, unedited news film footage, text documents, and oral history interviews.
- Vel Phillips PapersThe Vel Phillips papers, 1951-2009, document the life and career of Milwaukee’s Vel Phillips, whose work as a lawyer, city alder, civil rights leader, judge, and Secretary of State profoundly influenced Wisconsin’s civil rights history throughout the latter half of the 20th century. Of particular prominence is Ms. Phillips years-long campaign to pass an open housing ordinance in Milwaukee in the 1960s.
- Wisconsin Sound ArchiveThis oral history collection contains interviews that discuss ways the interviewees participated in the movement or ways the movement touched their lives.
More Digital Collections & Databases
These are just a few of the many rich databases of original source documents that are available digitally. Links marked with an asterisk (*) indicate that it is a library subscription database and will require you to log in with your NetID.
- Black Freedom*The ProQuest History Vault offers researchers the opportunity to study the most well-known and also unheralded events of The Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century from the perspective of the men, women, and sometimes even children, who waged one of the most inspiring social movements in American history. Contains the records of SNCC, CORE, and has the option to explore the NAACP papers as well.
- Black Studies in Video*Black Studies database that brings together documentaries, interviews, and archival footage surveying the black experience. The database provides access to California Newsreel's African American Classics collection, and includes films covering history, politics, art and culture, family structure, social and economic pressures, and gender relations.
- Civil Rights History Project - Library of CongressThis collection consists of nearly 150 oral history interviews with individuals directly involved in the Civil Rights Movement.
- Civil Rights Movement ArchiveThis website was created by veterans of the Southern Freedom Movement (1951-1968). It is freely available on the web, noncommercial, and not affiliated with an institution.
- Civil Rights Movement from DPLAMaterial from the Digital Public Library of American, which is a consortium of libraries, archives, and museums from across the country. Access original documents held at institutions nationwide.
- Collections on Black ExperiencesThe Black Metropolis Research Consortium gathers information about archival collections held by member organizations that document African American and African diasporic culture, history, and politics, with a specific focus on materials relating to Chicago. Includes the Green Book Database.
- Rose Parks Papers - Library of CongressThe papers of Rosa Louise Parks (1913-2005) span the years 1866-2006, with the bulk of the material dating from 1955 to 2000. The collection documents many aspects of Parks's private life and public activism on behalf of civil rights for African Americans. An array of personal papers contains family papers, correspondence, writings, and notes that reveal much about the material conditions of her life. Events surrounding her arrest in 1955 for violating Montgomery, Alabama, segregation laws by refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger, as well as the subsequent Montgomery Bus Boycott, are described in many of her writings, notes, and correspondence from 1955 to 1956.
On This Page
This page provides guidance on finding archival material pertinent to your research area both online and in-person.
But what, exactly are archives? Unlike materials held in libraries, which have all been published (meaning, they were created with the intention of making many copies available to many people), archives are unpublished material. They are evidence of everyday life and business created for a purpose other than having them used by outside people. Archives can be any format of material, such as letters, diaries, meeting minutes, photographs, or tweets. Archival collections are kept together in groups based on their creator.
Local Archives
Archival sources are available in physical format in many locations on campus Madison. This is a list of some locations of interest: