Library Tutorials

What is the Civil Rights Digital LIbrary?

The Civil Rights Digital Library (CRDL) promotes an enhanced understanding of the Civil Rights Movement through its three principal components:

• a digital video archive delivering 30 hours of historical news film allowing learners to be nearly eyewitnesses to key events of the Civil Rights Movement
• a civil rights portal providing a seamless virtual library on the Civil Rights Movement by aggregating metadata from 75 libraries and allied organizations from across the nation
• instructional materials to facilitate the use of the video content in the learning process

The CRDL links to primary sources and other educational materials from libraries, archives, museums, public broadcasters, and others on a national scale. The CRDL features a collection of more than 30 hours of unedited news film from the WSB (Atlanta) and WALB (Albany, Ga.) television archives held by the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia Libraries. These moving images - about 450 clips - cover a broad range of key civil rights events, including the desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas (1957); the Atlanta Temple bombing (1958); Atlanta sit-ins (1960); Freedom Rides (1961); desegregation of the University of Georgia and Georgia Tech (1961); the Albany Movement (1961-1962); desegregation of Ole Miss (1962) and University of Alabama (1963); and Americus Movement (1963, 1965); Birmingham demonstrations (1963); among many other topics.

CRDL is a partnership among librarians, technologists, archivists, educators, scholars, academic publishers, and public broadcasters. The initiative receives support through a National Leadership Grant for Libraries awarded to the University of Georgia by the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

(Information from GALILEO)

Direct Link to the Civil Rights Digital Library

Civil Rights Digital Library Materials