Lift Every Voice will bring together experts and stakeholder communities to address the challenges of collecting, archiving, presenting, and teaching the history of the civil rights movement. The national forum, with support from The Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) will take place on May 14-18, 2013, in Columbia, South Carolina, and will result in a collaborative model and action agenda for libraries, museums, archives, and stakeholder communities which will be disseminated nationally.
There is a pressing need to collect and preserve South Carolina’s untold civil rights stories before a generation passes into history. South Carolina played a significant but largely unknown role in the civil rights movement. Time is of the essence in documenting the stories of elderly participants. Moreover, it is critical to help the next generation appreciate the struggles and the triumphs of this extraordinary period in our nation’s history.
The four-day national forum will bring together librarians, archivists, digital media specialists, members of the civil rights community, scholars, and educators to:
a. Develop a collaborative model for collecting, preserving, presenting, and teaching oral histories and artifacts related to the civil rights movement.
b. Develop a plan for utilizing the collaborative model to collect, preserve, present, and teach civil rights oral histories and artifacts in South Carolina.
c. Further develop the network of civil rights librarians, archivists, historians and other scholars, and educators in South Carolina to facilitate collection, preservation, presentation, and teaching of oral histories and artifacts.
At the end of the forum we will disseminate the collaborative model and information about the South Carolina plan to the civil rights and scholarly communities, including a national media release, a panel at a major national conference, and announcements through national e-networks for scholars, educators, and civil rights organizations.
The Lift Every Voice project will place learners at the center and support engaging experiences in libraries and museums that prepare people to be full participants in their local communities and our global society.

For more information, visit Lift Every Voice’s website.

Filed under: Civil Rights Movement, Desegregation, Jubilee Project, Upcoming Events