Archives & Special Collections Subject Guides:
Civil Rights & Race Relations
Education
Foodways
Politics & Government
University of Mississippi
Digital Collections:
Black Power at Ole Miss
Civil Rights Archive
Freedom Riders Oral Histories
Integration of the University of Mississippi Digital Collection
James Meredith Digital Collection
Mississippi School Surveys
John E. Phay Digital Collection
Newspapers:
Newspapers Library Guide (includes information on African American newspapers)
Mississippi Newspapers Library Guide (both online and in microfilm holdings)
Archives List of Physical Copies of Mississippi Newspapers
Manuscript Collections Featured During Archival Orientation:
- Claude F. Clayton Collection. 1934-1969. Claude F. Clayton was a judge in the U.S. District Court of Northern Mississippi from 1958 to 1967 and on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit from 1967 to 1969. Among the court cases represented in his collection are a number of suits involving the desegregation of dining establishments among other civil rights cases. Files from the archives instruction session on the integration of restaurants: Box 3, Folders 1, 5-6, and 34-35. Similar material may be found in the judicial papers of the J.P. Coleman Collection (U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, 1965-1984). Researchers should provide notice at least three business days prior to prospective visits so that staff may transfer requested boxes from the Library Annex (an off-site facility) to the Special Collections Reading Room. Please contact Dr. Leigh McWhite at slmcwhit@olemiss.edu to specify requested material.
- W. Ray Cleere Collection. 1987-1995. W. Ray Cleere served as Mississippi's first commissioner of higher education (1987-1995). This collection contains Cleere's personal files related to the Ayers lawsuit against the state's discriminatory funding practices between historically white and black colleges and universities. Researchers should provide notice at least three business days prior to prospective visits so that staff may transfer requested boxes from the Library Annex (an off-site facility) to the Special Collections Reading Room. Please contact Dr. Leigh McWhite at slmcwhit@olemiss.edu to specify requested material.
- Fannie Lou Hamer Collection. 1966-1978. A major figure in Mississippi's civil rights movement, Hamer was a founding member of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party created in 1966. One of her major projects was the Freedom Farm Cooperative (1969-1974).
- Mary McGuire Manuscript. Circa 1950s. Typed manuscript for an unpublished book entitled "The Forgotten Negro Woman" by an African American woman born in Mississippi. Location: Small Manuscripts 2001-2 (Folder 17).
- Newspapers (Boxed). Box 21 contains scattered issues dating from 1961 to 1966 of the African American Natchez newspaper, City Bulletin.
- Race Relations Collection. 1885-2004, undated. A miscellaneous assortment of material documenting race relations, civil rights, black power, and segregationists, particularly in Mississippi and at the University of Mississippi.
- Dorothye Quaye Chapman Reed Collection. 1968-2021. Reed graduated from the University of Mississippi in 1974 and subsequently served as the first African American Admissions Counselor at UM 1974-1977. Her scrapbooks from these periods document African American life on campus.
- John Rankin Collection. John Rankin served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1921 to 1953. Featured in the archival instruction session: Series 1, Box 13 "Anti-Lynching" folders from the 1930s-1940s; Series 1, Box 28, Folder "Howard University." Researchers should provide notice at least three business days prior to prospective visits so that staff may transfer requested boxes from the Library Annex (an off-site facility) to the Special Collections Reading Room. Please contact Dr. Leigh McWhite at slmcwhit@olemiss.edu to specify requested material.