Sunday, June 15, 2008

University of Virginia Library Acquires Papers of Civil Rights Leader Julian Bond

Civil Rights Leader Julian BondThe University of Virginia Library has acquired the personal papers of civil rights activist, former Georgia state senator and representative, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) chairman, and university professor Julian Bond.
One of the first African Americans to reach national prominence in politics, Bond began his political career in as a founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), known for its voter registration drives in the South.

The collection holds 47,000 items, including photographs, recordings, and drafts of more than three hundred speeches. It contains Bond’s correspondence with influential civil rights activists, and memorabilia from the many organizations, schools, and events that he supported. The collection also chronicles Bond’s service in the Georgia General Assembly, and documents his 1976 presidential run and leadership of the NAACP. The papers complement the Library’s existing collection of records of the Southern Elections Fund, an early political action committee that Bond founded to aid the election of rural Southern black candidates.

“The Bond Papers give us a fascinating picture of an extraordinary life,” said Karin Wittenborg, University Librarian. “The collection is a wonderful addition to the study of history and the civil rights movement here at U.Va., and I look forward to seeing them used by students and faculty.”

“I am overjoyed that my papers have found a home at the University of Virginia Library,” said Mr. Bond. “The University is where I’ve spent the bulk of my academic career and where scholarship of the civil rights era is valued. I hope scholars and students will find the Bond papers a useful resource in helping shape future thinking about the civil rights era.”

The holder of twenty-five honorary degrees, Bond is a Professor in the Corcoran Department of History at the University of Virginia and a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at American University in Washington, D.C. In 2002, he received the Freedom Award from the National Civil Rights Museum. The Bond Papers are described in the Library’s online catalog and can be viewed in the Albert and Small Special Collections Library on U.Va.’s central Grounds. ###

RELATED: Press Contact: Charlotte Morford, Dir. of Communications, U.Va. Library 434) 924-7041, cwm6z@virginia.edu

posted by sookietex at 3:59 PM

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Links to this post:

Create a Link

<< Home



From Slavery to Freedom: The African-American Pamphlet Collection
From Slavery to Freedom: The African-American Pamphlet Collection, 1822-1909 presents 396 pamphlets from the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, published from 1822 through 1909, by African-American authors and others who wrote about slavery, African colonization, Emancipation, Reconstruction, and related topics. The materials range from personal accounts and public orations to organizational reports and legislative speeches. Among the authors represented are Frederick Douglass, Kelly Miller, Charles Sumner, Mary Church Terrell, and Booker T. Washington.




View My Stats

Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938

Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and assembled and microfilmed in 1941 as the seventeen-volume Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves.

African-American Sheet Music, 1850-1920

African-American Sheet Music, 1850-1920

This collection consists of 1,305 pieces of African-American sheet music dating from 1850 through 1920. The collection includes many songs from the heyday of antebellum black face minstrelsy in the 1850s and from the abolitionist movement of the same period.

Post-Civil War music reflects the problems of Reconstruction and the beginnings of urbanization and the northern migration of African Americans. African-American popular composers include James Bland, Ernest Hogan, Bob Cole, James Reese Europe, and Will Marion Cook.