Submitted by Christina Zamon, SGA VP/ Membership Committee Chair
On Saturday, nine members of the Society of Georgia Archivists were treated to a two-hour tour by Atlanta Preservation Center Executive Director David Y. Mitchell. Despite the heat outside, the group enjoyed learning about L.P. Grant, his origins, family, and the history of the oldest existing house in Atlanta. We were able to walk through the windows just as the Grant family did to get out to the cool shade of the porches and porticos, learn how the stucco was made and about the “Grant Park Green” color of the window trim.
Vader, the unofficial mascot of the property also came by to say hello to us.
David made it clear that our work as archivists is essential to the larger role in preserving historic homes and neighborhoods and without us they could not do their important work. After the tour we had a great conversation with lots of questions about the house and the role it has played in the history of Atlanta.
The Society of Georgia Archivists is thankful to David for taking time out of his Saturday to allow us to visit and tour the space. If you missed the tour you can always sign up for one on your own: https://www.atlantapreservationcenter.com/lp_grant_mansion. Thanks also to SGA’s Membership Committee for coordinating such an insightful tour. To learn more about SGA membership and all the benefits it includes visit our website, https://soga.wildapricot.org/membership.
By Lowery Project Team Members Amber L. Moore (Project Archivist) and Cathy Miller (Digitization Project Manager), Atlanta University Center’s Woodruff Library
In May 2021, the family of late civil rights icons Joseph and Evelyn Lowery have gifted a priceless collection of official and personal papers, photographs, writings, speeches, audio and video recordings, and other mementos to Morehouse College. The Joseph Echols and Evelyn Gibson Lowery Collection includes over 400 linear feet of invaluable materials chronicling the Lowerys’ work with civil and human rights leaders.
Over the next several months, grant funded project archivists and archival assistants will provide expert care to organize, describe, and digitize the collection to ensure broad accessibility – both physically and digitally. The Joseph Echols and Evelyn Gibson Lowery Collection expands the body of primary-sourced materials available for teaching, learning and research in the Atlanta University Center and to scholars around the globe.
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. During the historic Selma to Montgomery March for voting rights in Alabama, which commenced with the violent beating of nonviolent marchers on what came to be known as “Bloody Sunday,” Lowery led the delegation delivering a list of demands to segregationist former Alabama Governor George Wallace. His peaceful activism for justice resulted in numerous arrests and having his property seized by the state of Alabama in a historic libel suit, which resulted in a vindication by the U.S. Supreme Court and a precedent protecting the free speech rights of the press and citizen advocates.
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. She created 13 monuments honoring civil rights heroes while also creating a civil rights heritage tour. She graduated from Clark College, now Clark Atlanta University.
The Joseph Echols and Evelyn Gibson Lowery Collection will be archived and curated at the Atlanta University Center (AUC) Robert W. Woodruff Library and used to provide scholars, researchers, students, and the general public with an authentic understanding of the impact, sacrifice, and legacy of these civil rights pioneers. Select audiovisual and textual materials are in the process of being digitized from the collection and made available through the AUC Robert W. Woodruff Library’s online repository, RADAR. Currently, the digital collection contains a mix of videos documenting activities of the SCLC and SCLC/W.O.M.E.N., photographs, and full text searchable versions of SCLC Magazine, the national magazine of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The digitized assets from The Joseph Echols and Evelyn Gibson Lowery Collection can be explored here.
This will be the first in a series of posts here to the SGA blog where the Lowery Collection team will be sharing information about our processes and stories discovered from the collections during the work of processing and digitization. We hope you will be as excited to read these posts as we are to share the information with you.
Reparative Description from Two Sides: Cataloging and Processing
Thursday, June 23, 2022, 12:30-4:00 PM (EST)
Location: Zoom
This workshop is for archivists and special collection librarians who wish to increase their abilities in limiting harmful language in their organization’s finding aids and catalog records through reparative description. This workshop will help archivists and librarians to identify and build upon best practices in description and cataloging to create policy, guidelines, and implement reparative description in their own organizations. Discussion leaders will present on prominent topics and issues, and participants will learn how to approach description, identify authoritative organizations and documentation, and discuss situations with leaders in this work as well other learners through the roundtable discussion.
Instructors: Beth Shoemaker and Tierra Thomas
Moderator: Laura Starratt
Beth Shoemaker is the Rare Book Librarian at Emory University’s Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archive & Rare Book Library in Atlanta. Her work includes cataloging, collection development, teaching and curating exhibits in the Emory Libraries. Her research interests include how practicing catalogers approach ethics in the workplace. Since its formation in 2018, she has been co-chair of the Cataloging Ethics Steering Committee, which released a final draft of the Cataloguing Code of Ethics in January 2021. Beth is a graduate of the University of Illinois Graduate School of Library and Information Science.
Tierra Thomas is an early career archivist living in Decatur, Georgia. She earned her MSLS at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill – School of Information and Library Science. As an undergraduate, she studied History and African American Studies at Georgia State University. Most recently she finished her contract term as Visiting Archivist for Southern Jewish Collections at Emory University. She has served as a member of the Anti-Oppressive Language Working Group at Emory University’s Rose Library and the Conscious Editing Steering Committee at UNC-CH’s Wilson Library. Her research focuses on social justice and equity and centering those ideals in an archival setting.
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