“It was the Freedom Riders in Parchman [the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman], where we created new songs as well as sang freedom songs. The joy of the place was there as we sang. Guards and so forth did not understand it. I remember making up songs one Sunday morning as we created our ...
The St. Louis Civil Liberties Committee began on May 7, 1920, with about a dozen volunteers, both men and women. For its first decades, the group and its actions remained focused on advocacy and education about civil rights. By 1932, the national ACLU noted that St. Louis was focusing “chie...
Do you want to do one-of-a-kind primary research for the greater good? Are you intrigued by historical work that can explain today’s current trends? We are looking for student interns to work with the ACLU of Missouri’s archival collections at Washington University Libraries. Intern...
Information privacy and access to information — on computers, in government records, by news outlets — is not a new concern in our nation. This is one of the main messages Lizzie Franclemont found while working as the ACLU of Missouri’s archive intern. Spring 2018 Intern Majori...
This month, Special Collections Blog will be highlighting a few of our many collections on African American history. Some of our most interesting material comes from the Henry Hampton Collection and the interviews he conducted for his fourteen part PBS documentary series, Eyes on the Prize. Eyes ...
Spending the fall 2017 semester working with the American Civil Liberty Union of Missouri’s archived records has offered me a truly unique opportunity to examine the history of an American institution. The American Civil Liberties Union was present for almost the entirety of the twentieth c...
The Washington University Libraries’ Film & Media Archive has completed the preservation and digitization of the rare civil rights documentary The Streets of Greenwood (1963). The project was made possible by a 2016 Basic Preservation Grant from the National Film Preservation Foundation (NFPF...
Henry Hampton, acclaimed director, civil rights activists, and founder of film company Blackside, Inc. was born and raised in Richmond Heights, MO and attended St. Louis University High School. He studied literature at Washington University and graduated in 1961. His influence was keenly felt by ...
Activism led by Wash. U students has been alive and growing over the most recent years. However, it is important to realize that student activism has been a very important (and often glossed over) history of Washington University. Students of a Democratic Society was founded at Wash. U. in 1965 a...
Washington University Film & Media Archive was awarded $150,000 from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission’s Digital Dissemination of Historical Records program to digitize and reassemble the interview outtakes from the seminal documentary series, Eyes on the Prize. By F...
