South Carolina has long been a pivotal battleground in American political life, including the struggle for racial equality. The Center for Civil Rights History and Research at the University of South Carolina is dedicated to illuminating the people, places, and organizations that shaped the struggle for equality by recovering and preserving the documents, photographs, oral histories, and moving images that tell that story and making them accessible to South Carolinians and scholars alike. A deep and evolving partnership with University of South Carolina Libraries has been central to the Center’s ability to highlight these collections, bring this history to life for the campus community, and carry it far beyond the university’s walls.
Initially a joint initiative of the Libraries and the McCausland College of Arts and Sciences, the Center for Civil Rights History and Research has been collaborating with the Libraries since its inception in 2015, primarily to build and promote collections around the Civil Rights movement in University Libraries' holdings. According to Dr. Bobby Donaldson, Executive Director of the Center and Associate Professor of History at the university, both the Center and its relationship with the Libraries have gone well beyond those preliminary goals.
“The original intent of the Center was to be a direct partner with the Libraries in building and promoting collections,” says Donaldson. “That was the initial framework, but we’ve expanded our mission into statewide and national outreach, documentary projects, joint exhibitions, and collaborative grant initiatives.”
The Center's stewardship of collections at University Libraries ensures that these important historic documents can be stored, preserved and made accessible either physically or digitally. It also provides the libraries with a partner in collection development activities that focus on the civil rights and African American history of South Carolina. The Center builds connections from the community to the Libraries, opening new avenues for acquiring collections.
From the start of his USC tenure in 1999, Donaldson has cultivated a strong and abiding association with University Libraries. As the library liaison for the History Department and the African American Studies Program, Donaldson created course assignments drawing upon materials housed in the South Caroliniana, the Moving Image Research Collections, Oral History Collections, the South Carolina Political Collections, and an array of electronic research databases. He spent those formative years learning of the breadth of the collections surrounding African American history from colleagues who shaped what the Center has become. Among those colleagues were Dr. Tom Johnson, Caroliniana field archivist; Dr. Grace Jordan McFadden, the first Black woman hired in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences; and Dean Willie Harriford, the first African American Dean at the University and founding director of the African American Studies Program — all of whom helped develop the foundational principles that would form the Center’s mission and goals.
“These were individuals who had tremendous vision and did remarkable work with often very limited resources,” says Donaldson. “Now, with expanded funding, dedicated staff, and the support of our partners at University Libraries, we are able to do what many on campus had long imagined — building the collections, telling the stories, and taking this history to communities across the state and nation.”
As a trained archivist, Donaldson has enjoyed working with library colleagues to identify, acquire, and showcase materials that expand the University’s extensive holdings in civil rights and African American history. The Center was officially born with the acquisition of Congressman James E. Clyburn’s papers — a significant acquisition that Donaldson played an active role cultivating. Clyburn’s collection, in turn, provided a foundational anchor to bring in other collections from Civil Rights activists throughout the state, as well as funding to care for and promote the collections. Drawing on corporate donations and philanthropic investments secured by the Center, Donaldson led efforts to solicit and acquire many of these collections on behalf of University Libraries. Among the collections the Center funded, assisted with, or brought to the Libraries are the papers of Luther Battiste, I.S. Leevy Johnson, Dr. Andrew Billingsley, Harold Boulware, John Roy Harper, Dr. B. J. Glover, Isaiah DeQuincey Newman, South Carolina Representative Alma Byrd, and South Carolina Senator Kay Patterson.
The Center has also been essential in stewarding several remarkable collections, including the Richard Samuel Roberts photographs, the Richard T. Greener papers, and collections from trailblazers at USC — among them the papers of Dr. Harry Wright; Dr. Grace Jordan McFadden’s pioneering oral history project; and the Dean Willie Harriford collection. These acquisitions represent not only the Center’s archival priorities, but the tangible results of years of relationship-building, fundraising and community trust.
Once the collections enter the library's hands, they must be cataloged and processed to make them searchable and accessible to researchers and the public. Alongside funding a full-time processing archivist for civil rights collections, the Center provides funds for the library to hire graduate and undergraduate students to assist in doing this essential work. One recent example of digital collaboration is the ongoing work to digitize the nationally significant photograph collection of Richard Samuel Roberts, which will become available to the public in May.
The Center has also worked with University Libraries to enhance the collection of electronic research databases available to the University of South Carolina community. With corporate funding, Donaldson guided the acquisition of two dozen new databases including ProQuest’s African American newspaper archives; primary source databases such as the records of the NAACP; and documents related to the enslavement of African Americans in the South.
Beyond digital access, the Center has collaborated with University Libraries on joint exhibitions, documentary projects, and community programming events across the state. Whether visiting a classroom in a South Carolina elementary school or an archival conference hosted by the University, the Center's outreach efforts put Library collections directly into the public’s hands. For months leading up to February 2019, Donaldson and Center historians consulted with colleagues across University Libraries to develop an ambitious exhibition from 60 collections entitled Justice for All: South Carolina and the American Civil Rights Movement, viewed by more than 5,000 people in nine months, an example of what the two institutions can accomplish together.
“The Center is able to draw on our expertise and resources when it comes to processing and providing access to the collections. These activities in turn open the collections up to educational use and outreach in venues across the state,” says Dr. Nathan Saunders, Director of the South Caroliniana Library and Associate Dean of Special Collections. “We all understand the importance of having collections preserved and accessible.”
The Center and the Libraries collect and maintain these collections to tell these often-untold stories to a broader audience. The goal of both institutions is to preserve and make available the historical and cultural heritage of South Carolina to the people who, in many ways, are directly a part of that story. As Donaldson sees it, the work is as much about honoring the visionaries who came before as it is about serving the generations to come. The partnership between the Center and the Libraries continues to evolve and expand, but that purpose remains a binding and powerful force in both institutions’ work.
*Image above: Photograph of NAACP event, 1960s. From the Isaiah DeQuincey Newman Papers, South Carolina Political Collections.