This publication series highlights selected scholarly and research contributions of the Atlanta University Center (AUC) community. The bibliographies, which are compiled by the Robert W. Woodruff Library of the Atlanta University Center, illustrate the richness of faculty contributions within each institution and across the AUC community.
As president of Morehouse College for twenty-five years and as president of Atlanta University for five years, Dr. Hope conducted a great volume of correspondence with black leaders and with numerous white philanthropists and supporters of Negro civil rights. As an officer and member of various local, regional, and national church groups, fraternal organizations, civil rights groups, and professional associations, Dr. Hope also engaged in voluminous correspondence with blacks and whites of all walks of life. Mrs. Hope, although most closely associated with Atlanta's Neighborhood Union, was also an officer and member of several charitable, feminist, and civil rights organizations. The Hopes numbered among their personal correspondents almost all of the major black educational, political, and civil rights figures of the first half of this century as well as many prominent white persons. Finding aid only.
The Freedmen's Aid Society was an agency of the Methodist Episcopal Church created after the Civil War for the purpose of establishing schools and colleges for African Americans in the South. A great part of the work of the society was in supporting teachers in various institutions begun by or connected with Freedmen's Aid, and in preparing young men for the ministry. Finding aid only.
The United Negro College Fund (UNCF) is a philanthropic organization that provides scholarship funds for black education. This collection includes UNCF organizational records. Finding aid only.
Grace Towns Hamilton (1907-1992) was a civic leader and Georgia General Assembly member. She is known as the first African American woman elected to the Georgia General Assembly. She represented the Vine City area of Atlanta in the Georgia House of Representatives from 1965 to 1984. Maps in the collection span from 1960 to 1981 with the bulk of the material from 1963 to 1975. They consist of Atlanta Neighborhoods, Atlanta Congressional Districts, Georgia counties, and election precincts of Fulton County, GA. Images in the collection span from 1910 to 1984 with the majority of materials from 1910 to 1930. They consist of Hamilton’s family, childhood, and individual portraits.
Anna E. Hall was born near Bainbridge, Georgia on March 1st, 1870. She lived a religiously oriented childhood with her mother, a seamstress, and expressed the desire to serve as a missionary while a student at Clark University (now Clark Atlanta University) in Atlanta, Georgia, where she completed the normal course on May 12, 1892. With the generosity of influential people who were made aware of her desire to be a missionary, she was able to enter the New England Deaconess Training School in Boston, Massachusetts in 1899 and graduated May 22, 1901 as the first African American to attend the school. Her missionary work was realized in December of 1906, when she travelled to Monrovia, Liberia to teach the Kroo (Kru) people. Her second year she was asked to go to the southern part of the Republic, Garraway, where she became the successor to the Director of the Julia A. Stewart Memorial Girls Home and School, Garraway Mission.
Morris Brown College, a private, liberal arts institution located in Atlanta, Georgia, was founded in 1881 by the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church for the " moral, spiritual and intellectual growth of Negro boys and girls. "The original site for the school was located at Boulevard and Houston Street in Northeast Atlanta. On October 5, 1885, Morris Brown College opened with nine teachers and 107 students. By 1908 the school boasted an enrollment of nearly 1,000 students. It continued to offer instruction in industrial trades as well as academic fields and awarded two-year degrees in addition to four-year bachelor's degrees, but over time administrators placed greater emphasis on the development of the school's college-level curriculum. Morris Brown joined the Atlanta University Center in 1941, and along with Atlanta University, Clark College, Spelman College, and Morehouse College formed the largest consortium of HBCUs in the country. They remained members of the AUC until 2002. This collection contains photographs depicting Morris Brown College campus life spanning 1900 to 1990. Images include athletics, building and grounds, students and alumni, departments, events, faculty and staff, groups and organizations and individuals.
The catalog for Gammon School of Theology, later named Gammon Theological Seminary (now part of the consortium, The Interdenominational Theological Center) provides information on the degree programs, course offerings, policies, procedures, financial costs, buildings, services, administration staff, Board of Trustees, and faculty. Early years of the catalog also included lists of matriculating students and alumni.
Originally called the Tattler, the Wolverine Observer was a student-run publication serving Morris Brown College and its community. The paper became the Wolverine Observer in 1935 and initially published monthly under the direction of Professor V. C. Clinch. This monthly publishing goal found itself limited, however, and often the paper only published a few times during active school sessions. By the 1960s, the Observer was a member of the Intercollegiate Press (later the Associated Collegiate Press) and was largely run by the students themselves. The Observer sought to report news of interest to the Morris Brown College community and featured student editorials throughout its pages. Publication of the paper ceased during the 2000-2001 school year.
The Maynard Jackson mayoral administrative records are extensive and consist of materials spanning the years 1968 to 1994. Within this digital collection are photographs, general correspondence, Mayoral campaign materials, and printed and published materials and correspondence related to the Atlanta Child Murders. The Atlanta Child Murders subseries in the Maynard Jackson Mayoral Administrative Records chronicles the time period between 1979-1981 when multiple young black children and adults were murdered in the city of Atlanta. The murders garnered national news coverage and caused panic across the country. The records in this digital collection reflect the response to the tragedy that were both created, collected and sent to the Atlanta Mayor's office during Maynard Jackson's second mayoral term.
The records of the Neighborhood Union Collection include correspondence, speeches, financial reports, minutes, committee reports, news clippings, programs, photographs, scrapbooks and additional memorabilia preserving a rich legacy and history of one of the earliest private social welfare organizations founded by African American women in Atlanta. The Union received its charter in 1911. The Neighborhood Union's plan of organization was based on a division of neighborhoods into districts with members conducting surveys in their districts and reporting conditions which needed aid and improvement. Some aid focused on improving domestic skills, handicrafts and home nursing arts of African American women. They were also taught facts about tuberculosis and other prevalent diseases and provided supervised recreation for children.
The Atlanta Urban League (AUL) was established in 1920 as an affiliate of the National Urban League. The AUL served as an organization dedicated to addressing the social and economic concerns of African Americans in the city of Atlanta. The AUL worked to address housing discrimination, inadequate unemployment, improve health services, and promote voting rights. The digitized collection focuses on the leadership of Grace Towns Hamilton, executive director of AUL from 1943-1961. Under her leadership the AUL waged intensive campaigns for advancement of education, health care, housing, and voting rights for African Americans. The AUL worked with the League of Women Voters, the National Council of Women, the Southern Regional Council, and more to promote the enfranchisement of Black women and voter education.
The Voter Education Project (VEP) began in 1962 as part of the Southern Regional Council. Initially VEP granted funds to civil rights organizations to support voter education, voter registration drives, and voting-related research. In 1964, Vernon Jordan, the second executive director of the VEP, expanded the programs goals to include citizenship training, voter education, and leadership training in the southern United States, while continuing to provide funds to independent voter and civil rights groups, including the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and the League of Women Voters. The VEP’s work with the League of Women Voters is highlighted in the materials below. In 1971, VEP under the leadership of John Lewis, became an independent organization and functioned as a research center and became known as an authoritative source for statistics on southern elections and voter registration in general. Lewis also forged the VEP into an activist organization, launching Voter Mobilization Tours with Georgia state legislator and civil rights advocate Julian Bond.
Founded in 1942 by African American businessman John H. Johnson, the Johnson Publishing Company, Inc. published Ebony and Jet magazines, as well as other publications. This collection contains newspapers clippings, press releases, and more used as research for the various publications. The collection includes newspaper clippings on various prominent African American women, such Daisy Bates, Mary McLeod Bethune, Fannie Lou Hamer, Dorothy Height, Mary Church Terrell, Sojourner Truth, Diane Nash, Rosa Parks, and Pauli Murray. It also contains newspaper clippings and press releases on various African American organizations, such as the League of Women Voters, the National Council of Negro Women, and the National Women’s Committee for Civil Rights.
The Bacote papers document an important period in the history of Atlanta, and of Atlanta University. The activities of one very prominent scholar and community leader help provide an important piece of the history of the university and its community.
The Asa G. Hilliard, III papers span the years between 1933 and 2007. The bulk of the collection dates from 1971 to 2007. The collection includes organizational files from organizations of which Hilliard was a member, subject files on topics of interest, records from his work at both San Francisco State University and Georgia State University, files related to his speaking engagements, photographs and videos, and manuscripts of articles, books, speeches and reports. The collection also contains some materials related to trials in which Hilliard served as an expert witness. Of note are the files related to the Larry P. V. Wilson Riles case from the late 1970s, photographs of the ceremony during which Hilliard became Nana Baffour and the slides from Hilliard's presentation "Free Your Mind! Return to the Source.
Nora Ethel Floyd (1893-1969) was born in Georgia in 1893 and attended Atlanta University in from around 1911-1913. She married John Rosamond Johnson, the brother of James Weldon Johnson (a founder of the NAACP), in 1913. John Rosamond Johnson was a renowned composer, known for writing "Lift Every Voice and Sing" (1900), which became known as the The Negro National Anthem. After marrying, the couple moved to New York City in 1914, where John was the director of the Music Settlement School for Colored People. The photographs in this collection feature groups of students and adults from the Atlanta University and Morris Brown College participating in the football game festivities. Other images include unidentified individuals, female students from Atlanta University, Eugene Dibble, and the marching band.
This collection consists of records generated by Eliza Paschall and the Atlanta Community Relations Commission (ACRC) during her year as Executive Director of the ACRC. The bulk of the collection is research materials gathered by Paschall and the ACRC to support their work in the community. The files contain reports and statistics that document such things as employment discrimination, police action in the Dixie Hills Riots, and desegregation efforts in the public schools. Of special interest are the studies which survey the conditions of Atlanta's disadvantaged neighborhoods.
George Alexander Towns was an educator, author, and community activist. For most of his life, Towns was affiliated with Atlanta University (AU), first as a student, then professor and finally as an active alumnus. He was active in the community as a member of the Atlanta branch of the NAACP, the Citizen's League, the Boule of Atlanta (Sigma Pi Phi), and the Community Chest. A member of the Harvard University Class of 1900, he was also active in the Harvard University Alumni Association and in the 1920's used his class connections to raise funds for Atlanta University. This collection consists of the papers of Towns from 1851 to 1963. It includes correspondence, literary works, diaries, photographs, and publications.
