Collections

This collection contains administrative and topical files that relate to such civil liberties issues as academic freedom, due process, and the rights of children, members of the military, and students; racial and sexual discrimination; the draft; religion in public schools; and state reapportionment. There is case material for the ACLU of Virginia; project files for long-term concerns such as the rights of women, the mentally handicapped; prisoners and migrant farmworkers.

This collection contains speeches and press releases from various officials of the United States Department of Justice. All the items are typescript copies and date generally from the World War II period. Most of the speeches concern domestic legal and economic issues, chiefly civil rights, demobilization, and labor problems.

This collection consists of the files and working papers of Howard Worth Smith who represented Virginia in Congress for some thirty-five years as representative from the Eighth Congressional District. Included are correspondence received and carbon copies of replies, clippings, printed government and other publications, copies of printed bills, reports, press releases, speeches, notes, memoranda, financial records, tape and disc recordings, drawings, and other materials. The papers cover the years 1933 to 1966 when Smith retired from Congress.

This addition to MSS 13347 Julian Bond papers contains lecture materials, outlines, and a chapter by Julian Bond. This includes the following documents: Civil Rights Tour-origins, Montgomery Bus Boycott lecture and outline, and a chapter titled: The Civil Rights Movement Grassroots Leadership- Living "in struggle."

This collection contains printed items pertaining to the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964, a landmark campaign in the Civil Rights Movement aimed at challenging systemic racism and voter suppression in Mississippi. Organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and other groups under the umbrella of the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), the Freedom Summer mobilized over 1,000 volunteers, including many college students, to join Black Mississippians in a massive effort to register African American voters, establish Freedom Schools, and create the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). The associated content is all dated from 1964 and includes brochures, internal "COFO Publications," a "Memo to Accepted Applicants" for the Mississippi Summer Project, a "Security Handbook," internal memoranda, press releases, a pamphlet titled "Genocide in Mississippi," a pamphlet titled "Mississippi: Subversion of the Right to Vote," correspondence between organizers and movement members, "Freedom School Assingments," teaching frameworks for Freedom Schools, reports on bombings in Pike and McComb County, case studies on non-violent movements and demonstrations, a circular published by the Bay Area Friends of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and the "Basis for the Development of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party." Of special interest is a June 22, 1964 internal report discussing the "disappearance of three summer project workers in Neshoba County." On June 21, 1964, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner disappeared near Philadelphia, Mississippi, while working to register Black voters and investigate the bombing of a local church. Their disappearance triggered a massive federal response, led by the FBI under the code name "Mississippi Burning." After weeks of searching, their bodies were discovered buried in an earthen dam. The investigation revealed that members of the Ku Klux Klan, with assistance from local law enforcement, had abducted and murdered the men.

The collection includes biographies about Regina Charon's life and life's work as a lawyer, focusing on civil rights; papers regarding the 1977-1978 Council for Women's Concerns, the Regina Charon Zealous Advocate Award, and fellowships; and photocopies of various issues of the West Virginia University College of Law newsletter from 1975. The collection also includes photographs of Regina Charon's life from childhood through adulthood.

This collection contains the papers of Thomas Gardner, an alumnus of the University of Virginia, a leader in the Southern civil rights and national peace movements of the '60s and '70s, and Professor of Communication at Westfield State University.