Black Economic Empowerment: The National Negro Business League
Booker T. Washington, founder of the National Negro Business League, believed that solutions to the problem of racial discrimination were primarily economic, and that bringing African Americans into the middle class was the key. In 1900, he established the League "to promote the commercial and financial development of the Negro," and headed it until his death. Coverage: 1901-1928.
Black Nationalism and the Revolutionary Action Movement: The Papers of Muhammad Ahmad (Max Stanford)
This collection of records reproduces the writings and statements of the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) and its leaders. It also covers organizations that evolved from or were influenced by RAM and persons that had close ties to RAM. Source Library: Personal Collection of Dr. Muhammad Ahmad. Coverage: 1962-1999.
Correspondence from German Concentration Camps and Prisons
Collection consists of items originating from prisoners held in German concentration camps, internment and transit camps, Gestapo prisons, and POW camps, during and just prior to World War II. Most of the collection consists of letters written or received by prisoners, but also includes receipts for parcels, money orders and personal effects; paper currency; and realia, including Star of David badges that Jews were forced to wear. Coverage: 1936-1945.
Federal Surveillance of African Americans, 1920-1984
Between the 1920s & 1980s, the Justice Department and the FBI engaged in widespread investigation of those deemed politically suspect. This collection includes source materials for the major social movements and key figures in early twentieth century black history, and provides a window into the development of America's first systematic domestic surveillance apparatus. Source Library: Federal Bureau of Investigation Library. Coverage: 1920-1984.
Fight for Racial Justice and the Civil Rights Congress
The Civil Rights Congress (CRC) was formed in 1946 by a merger of three groups with ties to the Communist Party: the International Labor Defense, the National Negro Congress, and the National Federation for Constitutional Liberties. The records in this collection represent the files of the national office of the CRC, including case files, publications, correspondence, etc. Coverage: 1946-1955.
Greensboro Massacre, 1979: Shootout between the American Nazis and the Communist Workers Party
On November 3, 1979, a rally of black industrial workers and Communists was planned in Greensboro, North Carolina, against the Ku Klux Klan. During the rally, a caravan of Klansmen and members of the American Nazi Party drove by the area where the anti-Klan activists were congregating. The confrontation led to gunfire and the deaths of five protest marchers. This collection of documents from the FBI, local and state police, and other law enforcement agencies sheds new light on the motivations of the Communist organizers, the shootings, subsequent investigations, and efforts to heal the Greensboro community. Coverage: 1979-1981.
Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees: The West's Response to Jewish Emigration
The Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees (IGCR) was organized in London in August 1938 as a result of the Evian Conference of July 1938, which had been called by President Roosevelt to consider the problem of racial, religious, and political refugees from central Europe. Source Library: U.S. National Archives. Coverage: 1938-1947.
James Meredith, J. Edgar Hoover, and the Integration of the University of Mississippi
This collection contains extensive FBI documentation on James Meredith's battle to enroll at the University of Mississippi in 1962 and the white political and social backlash, including his correspondence with the NAACP and positive and negative letters he received from around the world during his ordeal. Source Library: Federal Bureau of Investigation Library. Coverage: 1961-1962.
Republic of New Afrika: Independence, Reparations, and Citizenship
This collection provides documentation collected by the FBI and chronicles the activities of the social movement organization The Republic of New Afrika (RNA), including activities of national and local leaders, power struggles within the organization, its growing militancy, and its affiliations with other Black militant organizations. Source Library: Federal Bureau of Investigation Headquarters Library. Coverage: 1968-1980.
Southern Negro Youth Congress and the Communist Party: Papers of James and Esther Cooper Jackson
Contains clippings, correspondence, James Jackson's lectures, research notebooks, speeches, and writings (published and unpublished), internal documents pertaining to the Southern Negro Youth Congress and to Freedomways, materials pertaining to the Smith Act indictments of Jackson and other communists, Communist Party internal documents, and memorabilia and other biographical materials. Source Library: Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Archives, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, New York University. Coverage: 1932-2000.
U.S. Relations with the Vatican and the Holocaust, 1940-1950
Correspondence, reports and analyses, memos of conversations, and personal interviews exploring such themes as U.S.-Vatican relations, the Vatican's role in World War II, Jewish refugees, Italian anti-Jewish laws during the papacy of Pius XII, and the pope's personal knowledge of the treatment of European Jews. Source Library: U.S. National Archives. Coverage: 1940-1950.
We Were Prepared for the Possibility of Death: Freedom Riders in the South, 1961
Freedom Riders rode interstate buses into the segregated South to test the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Boynton v. Virginia, which outlawed racial segregation in terminals serving buses that crossed state lines. The Freedom Rides bolstered the credibility of the Civil Rights Movement and called national attention to violent disregard for the law in the southern United States. Source Library: Federal Bureau of Investigation Library. Coverage: 1961.