Oberlin and Civil Rights Collection, 1920s-2015 | Oberlin College Archives

The Oberlin and Civil Rights Collection is an artificial one consisting of material donated by or relating to Oberlin students who participated in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.  The collection began as collaboration between the Oberlin College Archives, Oberlin alumni from the classes of the 1950s and 60s, and the staff of the Oberlin Alumni Magazine.  Oberlin has a long tradition of student activism, and during the Civil Rights Movement many Oberlin students continued that tradition by traveling throughout the South to protest, conduct voter registration, rebuild burned churches, and work on Civil Rights-era newspapers.  The collection includes material created or collected by students during the 1960s, including correspondence, writings, Federal Bureau of Investigation reports, photographs, and two scrapbooks, as well as recollections of events recorded years later.  It is arranged into five series: Series I. Alumni and Civil Rights; Series II. Correspondence; Series III. Photographs; Series IV. Publications; and Series V. Scrapbooks.

SERIES DESCRIPTIONS

Series I. Alumni and Civil Rights, 1920s-1941, 1960s, 1988, 1997, 2001, 2008, 2011-12, n.d. (15f)

Series I consists of correspondence, writings, notes, and official documents relating to Oberlin students and alumni and their experiences during the Civil Rights movement and across other civil rights issues.  The series is further divided into five subseries:

            Subseries 1. Alumni Civil Rights Stories, 1960s, 1988, 2001, 2011-12, n.d. (2f)

            Includes interview notes and recollections submitted by alumni detailing their experiences in the Civil Rights Movement as Oberlin students in the 1950s and 60s, originally compiled by the Oberlin Alumni Magazine.  In particular includes notes of James Eisenstein, taken in 1960 while traveling through the South.

            Subseries 2. Carl B. Stokes, 1965, 1967, n.d. (4f)      

            Biographical file of Carl B. Stokes, Cleveland’s first African American mayor and Oberlin honorary degree recipient.  Also includes magazine articles and campaign materials.

            Subseries 3. Julie Zaugg, 1962-65, 1997, 2008, n.d. (4f)

            Zaugg was a visiting student at Tougaloo College when she was arrested in October 1963 for attempting to worship with two African-American students at a segregated church.  Includes court documents relating to the case, correspondence by Zaugg, her father Harold Zaugg, and others expressing their reactions to the arrest, and “Notes from a Mississippi Jail” written by Zaugg describing her experiences.

            Subseries 4. Matthew Rinaldi, 1966 (2f)

            Contains two Federal Bureau of Investigation reports of incidents in Mississippi involving Rinaldi and other students while in the state to conduct voter registration.

            Subseries 5. A. Hunter Dupree, 1920s-30, 1941, n.d. (3f)

            Research file for historian A. Hunter Dupree, containing brochures, ephemera, newspaper clippings, and notes on the Ku Klux Klan.

            Subseries 6. Carpenters for Christmas, 1964-65, 1996-97, 2015, n.d. (6f)

            Comprises articles, clippings, correspondence, essays and personal narratives.  Some of the material was received from Marcia Aronoff, Class of 1965 and formerly one of the Carpenters for Christmas.  This material was previously filed in the Subjects Files.  For photographs, see Series III.

Series II. Correspondence, 1963-64, 1968, 1993, 2002, 2005, 2011-12, 2015, n.d. (4f)

Series II contains correspondence describing experiences in the South during the Civil Rights era, including excerpts from “Letters from the South” by Clarice T. Campbell, a teacher at Tougaloo College at the time of Julie Zaugg’s arrest.  Also includes correspondence between alumni and the Oberlin College Archives regarding the donation of materials to the Civil Rights Collection.

Series III. Photographs, 1962, 1964-65 (4f)

The photographs series holds images of Oberlin students during the Civil Rights era in Mississippi.  They document the efforts of Oberlin students to rebuild the Antioch Missionary Baptist Church in Ripley, which was burned to the ground a day after the Freedom Vote in 1963.  The group was called Carpenters for Christmas, as they used their winter break to travel to Ripley, Mississippi to rebuild the church.  Other photographs feature Oberlin students writing for The Mississippi Free Press, a newspaper devoted to Civil Rights issues in Jackson.

Series IV. Publications, 1960 (5f)

The publications series includes newspaper clippings from The Oberlin Review, The Cleveland Press, The Plain Dealer, and local Illinois and Mississippi newspapers about Oberlin students, in particular Julie Zaugg.  Also includes magazine and journal articles about Oberlin alumni Julie Zaugg, Kenneth Witcher Clement, and Frank Parker, and one book, The First Stone by Lewis Wechsler, describing racial integration in Pennsylvania.

Series V. Scrapbooks, 1963-66 (3.12 l.f.)

Two scrapbooks of clippings and photographs describing the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi, compiled by Julie Zaugg, and Chicago, compiled by Carol Matteson Cox.