Press contact: Trish Taylor Shuman (202) 707-1940

July 12, 2006

NAACP Display Opens July 14

"The NAACP: The Fight for Black Voting Rights," will open on Friday, July 14, in the foyer on the first floor of the Library of Congress, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, D.C. Sponsored by the Library’s Manuscript Division, the special short-term display features selected manuscripts and visual materials from the Library’s collections depicting seminal events in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s (NAACP) campaign to secure voting rights for African-Americans. The display will remain on view from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Saturday through July 25.

The display coincides with the 97th annual NAACP convention entitled “Voting Our Values, Valuing Our Votes,” which convenes in Washington D.C. Since its inception in 1909, the NAACP has championed justice and the rights of African-Americans. Items from the NAACP’s pioneers—Thurgood Marshall, Walter White and Roy Wilkins—that chronicle its efforts will be on display.

The Library of Congress has served as the official repository for the NAACP Records since 1964. The collection now consists of approximately 5 million items dating from 1909 to 2001. Included are manuscripts, prints, photographs, pamphlets, broadsides, audio tapes, phonograph records, films and video recordings. The NAACP Records are the largest single collection ever acquired by the Library and the most heavily used. The NAACP Records are the cornerstone of the Library’s unparalleled resources for the study of the Civil Rights Movement.

The Library houses the most comprehensive civil rights collection the country: the original papers of the organizations that led the fight for civil liberties, such as the NAACP; the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; the National Urban League; the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights; the microfilmed records of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, led by Martin Luther King Jr.; the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE); the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC); and the personal papers of Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass, Roy Wilkins, A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, Arthur Spingarn, Moorfield Storey, Patricia Roberts Harris, Edward W. Brooke, Thurgood Marshall, Robert L. Carter and Joseph Rauh.

The Library's Manuscript Division, established in 1897, houses more than 59 million items including the papers of 23 of the nation’s presidents from George Washington to Calvin Coolidge. For more information, visit the Manuscript Division online at www.loc.gov/rr/mss.

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PR 06-134
07/12/06
ISSN 0731-3527

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