MARBL to Exhibit Items Documenting Joseph Lowery’s Career with the SCLC

In honor of Reverend Joseph Lowery receiving an honorary doctor of divinity degree from Emory University, the Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library is pleased to announce an exhibit documenting Lowery’s career with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.  “One Who Disturbs the Comfortable and Comforts the Disturbed”:  Joseph E. Lowery and the SCLC will feature Read More …

CLIR Hidden Collections Program Symposium

By Courtney Chartier, Project Archivist, Voter Education Project Collection On March 29-30 the Council on Library and Information Resources held a Hidden Collections Program Symposium in Washington, DC. Representatives from all of the institutions involved in the “Working for Freedom” project attended. Left to right: RWWL Archivist Courtney Chartier, AARL Archivist Cheryl Oestreicher, MARBL Archivist Read More …

Joseph E. Lowery, SCLC President 1977-1997

By Sarah Quigley, Project Archivist, Southern Christian Leadership Conference records Born in Alabama in 1921, Joseph Echols Lowery bore witness to the indignities of the Jim Crow south and grew up to become an influential leader of the Civil Rights Movement.  He was a young Methodist minister in Mobile, Alabama during the bus boycotts of Read More …

“To Preach the Gospel to the Poor”

By Sarah Quigley, Project Archivist, Southern Christian Leadership Conference records Ralph David Abernathy assumed the presidency of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1968 following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  Roughly one year later, twelve members of Local 1199B of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union in Charleston, South Carolina were Read More …