FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — To celebrate and contribute to the 50^th anniversary of the 1957 Little Rock Central High School Integration Crisis, the University of Arkansas Libraries’ Special Collections Department is undertaking a project titled “Land of (Unequal) Opportunity: Documenting the Civil Rights Struggle in Arkansas.”

Student demonstrations at Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical, and Normal College in Pine Bluff circa 1961. From Orval Faubus Papers (MS F27) in Special Collections. Used by permission.

Tom W. Dillard, head of the Special Collections department, announced that the project involves identifying and digitizing 1,000 original documents, illustrations, video and audio recordings (a minimum of 500 documents and 500 images) on the history of civil rights in Arkansas. This project is supported in part by a grant from the Arkansas Humanities Council and the Department of Arkansas Heritage. The digitization will begin on Feb. 1 and is expected to be completed by July 31.

While emphasizing the 1957 Little Rock Central High School Integration Crisis, the scope of the civil rights project will also incorporate materials from earlier and later eras so that the events of 1957 are placed in their historical context. Some of the most compelling documents and images will be reproduced as posters. A set of ten lesson plans, a detailed bibliography and a timeline on Arkansas civil rights history will also be developed. Documents and images will be digitized and electronically stored by the UA Libraries, thereby providing permanent access to the materials for researchers, students, teachers and the general public.

The Special Collections Department is the largest academic archives in the state, with holdings of books, manuscripts, audio and video recordings, music and more than 100,000 photographs. Archivists anticipate that most of the documents and images chosen will come from the holdings in the UA Special Collections Department such as the Daisy Bates Papers, Orval Faubus Papers, Federal Bureau of Investigation records, oral history interview transcripts, Southland College Papers, WPA interviews, editorial cartoons, the 1871 Arkansas Civil Rights Act, writings by Arkansas African-American attorney Scipio A. Jones, and photographs from the Geleve Grice and Larry Obsitnik collections.

Special Collections is also searching other archival repositories for appropriate items. The department solicits nominations from the public of items suitable for this project. The UA Special Collections Department may be contacted at 365 N. McIlroy Avenue, Fayetteville, AR 72701, or by e-mail at specoll@uark.edu or by phone at (479) 575-5577.