Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library

Join us next week for "How to Plan an Oral History Project" where Archivists Brittany Newberry and Lisa Vallen will lead a one-hour session on how to start planning an oral history project. 🗣️📜

🌐 Register for this online event through the link in our bio!

Coretta Scott King and the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change began campaigning to make Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a holiday in the years following his 1968 assassination. While MLK Day wouldn't become a federal holiday until 1983, by the mid-1970s it had already become a widely-recognized event for African American communities and activists, both in Atlanta and nationwide.

These images are excerpts from the program for an MLK Day benefit concert in 1975, which featured appearances by Marvin Gaye and Muhammad Ali. They come from the collections of the AFL-CIO Civil Rights Department Southeast Division, which was an early backer of the King Center and MLK Day celebrations. GSU is currently digitizing these collections through a grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR).

Join Special Collections & Archives as we welcome former staff members of Atlanta’s underground newspaper The Great Speckled Bird for a lively panel discussion and conversation. We will explore the history and legacy of The Bird and its place in the Atlanta community of 1968-1976. This event will also serve as the grand opening of our new Great Speckled Bird exhibit.

🚨 NEW in Digital Collections! Creative Loafing covers arts, entertainment, music, news, and politics in metro Atlanta. Currently including issues published between the inaugural issue and October 1973, additional issues will be added on an ongoing basis.

https://t.gsu.edu/3HOb9P1

📣 Tomorrow is our remembrance and celebration event for the Atlanta Le***an Feminist Alliance's (ALFA) 50th Anniversary!

It's not too late to join us tomorrow night from 7 to 9 PM EST as we celebrate the first out le***an organization in Georgia!
You can register (for free) here: https://bit.ly/3Q90hio

And you can read more about our illustrious guest speakers here: https://bit.ly/3zowHzB

Pictured: AFLA members participating in a Pride March, 1973
***an

Don't forget about our upcoming celebration of the Atlanta Le***an Feminist Alliance's 50th Anniversary! 🎉

📅 Thursday, June 23rd
⏰ 7 - 9 PM EST

This virtual event is FREE and open to the public.
You can find out more and register here: https://bit.ly/3QeBl9s

Pictured: ALFA members participating in a Pride demonstration, 1976

Save the Date!
📅 Thursday, June 23rd
⏰ 7-9pm EST

We will be hosting a virtual event to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Atlanta Le***an Feminist Alliance (ALFA), whose collection we hold in GSU Special Collections & Archives!

👀 Watch this space - We'll be sharing more details soon.

Opponents of the construction of Plant Vogtle reached out to the AFL-CIO Civil Rights Department in 1980, requesting support against the project by highlighting its potential risks to the predominately African American population near the plant. Among the materials they sent to the AFL-CIO was this anti-nuclear brochure from Environmentalists for Full Employment, a nonprofit started in 1975 to promote cooperation between environmentalists and organized labor. 🌎♻️🌳

This and other records from the AFL-CIO Civil Rights Department Southeast Division are currently being digitized here at the GSU library, with the support of a grant from CLIR.

📅 Save the Date!
Our annual Georgia Women's Movement Spring Event will be held on Wednesday, April 27th from 5 - 6:30pm at GSU's Special Collections & Archives on the 8th floor of Library South.

Join us as we celebrate the remarkable collecting of activists Lucy Hargrett Draper and Chrisy Erickson Strum!

👀 For More Details: https://bit.ly/3umwLgb

📅 Don't forget to join us next week for our 2021 Reed Fink Award researcher presentation!
Mary Bathory Vidaver will be speaking virtually on Tuesday, April 5th at 1PM.

👉Here's the link to join us (for free!): https://t.gsu.edu/3wIw16I

95.5 WSB Radio is celebrating their 100th anniversary this month! 🎉
WSB Radio was the first radio station to broadcast in Atlanta. They went on air for the first time on March 15, 1922 as a subsidiary of The Atlanta Journal newspaper.

👀 You can find out more in our WSB Radio Research Guide: https://bit.ly/3iLUShT
Or in our Radio Broadcasting Digital Exhibit: https://bit.ly/3iGtUZ5

📅 Mark your calendars and join us for our 2021 Reed Fink Award researcher presentation! The 2021 award recipient, Mary Bathory Vidaver, will be presenting virtually via Vimeo.
👀 Watch this space for a link to the livestream closer to April 5th!


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In the 1950s, Franz Daniel, the one-time seminarian and long-time labor leader in the U. S. South, looked back on the movement's victories and failures in the region. Writing to Lucy Randolph Mason, church lady and union publicist in Atlanta, he noted, "the spiritual side of the labor movement is every bit as important as the economic. And it's the part that is so easy to lose sight of." For him and for others, Miss Lucy served as a touchstone of that insight, restoring his commitment and motivation by her constant faith and calm presence in the often vitriolic and violent storm that accompanied the labor movement's battles for recognition. Using materials drawn from Southern Labor Archives, supplemented by other primary source material, this presentation explores the various uses by which individuals and the larger labor movement employed religion and the spiritual side.
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Mary Bathory Vidaver is a Ph.D. candidate in history at the University of Mississippi, a 2021 Social Science Research Council Religion, Spirituality, and Democratic Renewal Fellow, and the 2021 recipient of the Reed-Fink Award for Southern Labor History. Her dissertation project, for which the award has provided research funding, examines how a socially-focused religiosity meshed seamlessly with a commitment to Jeffersonian democracy and broad constructions of civil rights to inspire social activism across multiple generations of white Southerners and across diverse movements in an effort to redeem the region they loved from the sins of both the Old and the New South.