“Working for Freedom: Documenting Civil Rights Organizations” is a collaborative project between Emory University’s Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library, The Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History, The Amistad Research Center at Tulane University, and The Robert W. Woodruff Library of Atlanta University Center to uncover and make available previously hidden collections documenting the Civil Rights Movement in Atlanta and New Orleans. The project is administered by the Council on Library and Information Resources with funds from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Each organization regularly contributes blog posts about their progress.
For more information about the collection described in this post, please contact the Archives Research Center at Atlanta University Center, archives [at] auctr [dot] edu
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Media Contact:
August 16, 2011 Nicholyn Hutchinson
404-978-2114 / nhutchinson [at] auctr [dot] edu
The Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library announces the opening of the Voter Education Project (VEP) Organizational Records. An Atlanta-based civil rights organization, the VEP was originally a branch of the Southern Regional Council.
Established in 1962, the VEP distributed grant funds to voter registration and education projects throughout the South during the civil rights movement. Among others, the VEP funded programs administered by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). In addition, the VEP conducted extensive research on Southern elections, voting patterns, and minority elected officials. The organization was also known as a reliable source for reports on voting and elections.
The VEP collection is comprised of more than 300 linear feet of documents and includes materials such as detailed files on funded projects and their results; statistics on voting and voters; executive director’s files; planning documents on voting campaigns and voter education workshops; memorabilia; and photographs.
The VEP Organizational Records processing was funded by a $250,000 Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives grant awarded to the AUC Woodruff Library by the Council of Library and Information Resources (CLIR). The processing of the VEP collection was part of a collaborative project to process civil rights movement collections in which the Library partnered with Emory University, Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History, and the Amistad Research Center.
The collection’s finding aid can be found at http://findingaid.auctr.edu/vep/search. For more information, contact the Archives Research Center at 404-978-2052 or archives [at] auctr [dot] edu.