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The Joseph Echols Lowery and Evelyn Gibson Lowery Collection

In March 2021, the Lowery Trust granted sole ownership of the Joseph Echols Lowery and Evelyn Gibson Lowery Collection of personal papers, sermons, speeches, correspondence, Southern Christian Leadership Conference Women papers, and hundreds of historical photographs and audiovisual recordings to Morehouse College. The Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library was formally designated as custodian of the collection, with responsibilities for housing and providing broad access for students, scholars, researchers, and the global community.

Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery, called the “dean of the civil rights movement,” helped create the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and served as founding vice president alongside founding president Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He later served as SCLC chairman and as president and CEO.

Evelyn Gibson Lowery was a civil rights pioneer and change agent. She established SCLC/ W.O.M.E.N (Women’s Organizational Movement for Equality Now, Inc.), which instituted programs on global issues including HIV/AIDS, computer and GED education for women, mentoring for girls, and civil rights history.

The Joseph Echols Lowery and Evelyn Gibson Lowery Collection includes over 400 linear feet of invaluable materials chronicling the Lowerys’ work with civil and human rights leaders.

The AUC Woodruff Library built a digital exhibit entitled Celebrating the Legacy of Joseph Echols and Evelyn Gibson Lowery to showcase and contextualize some of the priceless items included in this collection. Visit the digital exhibit here: https://glam.auctr.edu/lowery/

See a video announcement of the collection here: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12322/auc.lib.events:0006

For additional information about this collection, please contact the Archives Research Center at [email protected] or 404-978-2052.

New Database Collections for African American and African Diaspora Studies

NAACP Papers Roughly two million pages of internal memos, legal briefings, and direct action summaries from national, legal, and branch offices of the NAACP. “Delivers a first-hand view into crucial issues: lynching, school desegregation, and discrimination in the military, the criminal justice system, employment, and housing, among others.”

African-American Newspapers, parts IV-XIII Building on parts I-III, which Woodruff already owned, this acquisition completed the collection, which contains information about cultural life and history during the 19th century, including first-hand accounts of events and issues of that time. Contains biographies, vital statistics, essays, editorials, advertisements, and other printed matter from the period.

Caribbean History and Culture 1535-1920 “More than 1,200 fully cataloged and searchable books, pamphlets, almanacs, broadsides and ephemera cover the history of this broad region from the 16th century to the early 20th century.”

New Digital Collections in the Library’s Institutional Repository, RADAR

Political Posters Collection
https://radar.auctr.edu/islandora/object/auc.164%3A9999

The Political Poster Collection contains various posters and ephemera depicting political campaigns and social justice issues form 1970-1989. This posters chronicle the political campaigns of elected officials including, school council members, commissioners, Georgia Assembly representatives and  mayoral candidates within Atlanta, Georgia, and the south.

Nora E. Floyd Johnson Memorial Photographs
https://radar.auctr.edu/islandora/object/auc.176%3A9999

Nora Ethel Floyd (1893-1969) was born in Georgia in 1893 and attended Atlanta University from around 1911-1913. She married John Rosamond Johnson in 1913. John Rosamond Johnson was a renowned composer; he and his brother, James Weldon Johnson (a founder of the NAACP and Atlanta University alumnus) wrote the music and lyrics, respectively, for “Lift Every Voice and Sing” (1900), which became known as the The Negro National Anthem. After marrying, the couple moved to New York City in 1914, where John was the director of the Music Settlement School for Colored People. The photographs in this collection feature groups of students and adults from Atlanta University and Morris Brown College participating in football game festivities. Other images include unidentified individuals, female students from Atlanta University, Eugene Dibble, and the marching band.

For more information please contact [email protected]


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