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Hines' Jazz Archive to Berkeley
Dec 9, 2009
Campus musicians receive gift from pianist Earl Hines' estate

Moreland-Springarn Research Center
Nov 11, 2009
Allegations that the research center could close due to an inadequate budget

Black Educator's papers to Emory
Oct 15, 2009
Ulysses S. Byas Was First Post-Desegregation Black School Superintendent

Shakur papers to Woodruff Library
Oct 9, 2009
Tupac's mother donates his writing for research

Octavia Butler collection
Oct 7, 2009
Huntington receives sci-fi writer Octavia Butler's collection

National oral history project

May 13, 2009


(Source: By LAURA ISENSEE / The Dallas Morning News, lisensee@dallasnews.com, 07:18 AM CDT on Monday, May 11, 2009)



WASHINGTON - At age 17, Eva Partee McMillan started walking the blocks of Freedman's Town to encourage her neighbors to vote. On Election Day, she collected poll taxes from black voters - $1.75 each.

Then, in the 1960s, "Mama Mac" got deeply involved in the civil rights movement when her son Ernie, who organized student protests, was harassed by local authorities and eventually sent to prison.

"At first, I told him to be careful. I bailed him out, but it kept going on," said McMillan, now 87 and living in Richardson.

Soon, people from around the country were calling her, asking about Dallas and seeking her advice.

Stories like McMillan's may soon be recorded and preserved through a proposed national oral history project of the civil rights movement.

The five-year project, quickly approved by Congress and awaiting President Barack Obama's signature, would focus not on iconic figures such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks, but on ordinary people who struggled for equality for black Americans in the 1950s and '60s.

"I like to call it the unseen making the seen possible, like you can't see the wind but you know it's there," said Donald Payton, a historian of Dallas' black community. "The civil rights movement had people like that,"

The project would collect first-hand testimony, on audio or video, and make it available to the public through the Library of Congress and the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The program is set to start in October, and it will cost about $500,000 the first year.

Peggy Bulger, director of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, said the process will begin with a survey of existing oral history projects.

"Many of the collections have focused on people who are still living in the Deep South, whereas the civil rights movement was going on all around the country. It was in New York, Texas, even California," Bulger said.

"We want to fill in those gaps, and that's exactly the exciting thing about it," she said. "There is this huge unknown history about how many people and how many places were involved in the civil rights struggle."

While professional historians would seek testimony from key leaders not interviewed yet, people who want to participate would be able to send in their stories, similar to an ongoing veterans history project.