ProQuest Completes Digitization of NAACP Papers

ProQuest has completed the digitization of the archives of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), making one of the most famous chronicles of the civil rights movement accessible to millions of researchers and students.

Nearly 2 million pages of internal memos, legal briefings and direct action summaries from the association’s national, legal and branch offices throughout the United States are now fully searchable and accessible through academic, research and public library websites as part of ProQuest History Vault, an initiative to digitize historically rich primary sources, opening their discovery to broader audiences. History Vault debuted in 2011 and is continuously growing to include numerous archival collections documenting the most important and widely studied topics in eighteenth- through twentieth-century American history.

History Vault offers 6 modules focused on the civil rights movement alone, the two new modules in the series cover the following:

-- NAACP PAPERS: SPECIAL SUBJECTS -- The files cover subjects and episodes that are crucial to the NAACP’s early history. In them, researchers will discover important material on civil rights complaints and legislation, segregation and discrimination, the Klan, Birth of a Nation, Blacks and American politics, the Walter White-W.E.B. Du Bois controversy of 1933-1934, and records of important conferences where strategies for Black advancement were debated.

-- NAACP PAPERS: BRANCH DEPARTMENT, BRANCH FILES AND YOUTH DEPARTMENT FILES -- The files in this module chronicle the local heroes of the civil rights revolution via NAACP branches throughout the United States, from 1913-1972. The contributions of scores of local leaders—attorneys, community organizers, financial benefactors, students, mothers, school teachers, and other participants—are revealed in these records.