Resource Spotlight: Ralph J. Bunche Oral Histories Collection on the Civil Rights Movement
For legal history researchers, the D'Angelo Law Library provides access to the Ralph J. Bunche Oral Histories Collection on the Civil Rights Movement (formerly known as the Civil Rights Documentation Project). The Collection is on the Gale Primary Resources Archives Unbound platform. The Collection, provided by the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University, Washington, D. C., was originally the vision of Ralph J. Bunche.
Ralph Bunche was the first African-American to win the Nobel Peace Prize (in 1950, for his work as a peace negotiator in the Middle East). Bunche served on the U.S. State Department as an adviser on Africa and colonial areas during World War II. He also served on the United Nations in various capacities including as head of the Department of Trusteeship , and as UN undersecretary-general. He also was active in the civil rights movement, including helping lead Martin Luther King's march in Montgomery, Alabama in 1965 and supporting the NAACP and Urban League.
Researchers can use this oral histories collection to find out more about Ralph Bunche and other civil rights leaders. The Collection includes transcripts of over 500 interviews from 1967-1973 of "those who made history in the struggles [from the 1950s-1970s] for voting rights, against discrimination in housing, for the desegregation of the schools, to expose racism in hiring, in defiance of police brutality, and to address poverty in the African American communities". Interviewees include civil rights pioneers, founders of Black Power organizations, African American studies scholars, educators, lawyers, church leaders, and grassroots organizers.
The Collection has basic and advanced search options, with the ability to filter results by Collection, Source Library, Document Type, Publication Date, Languages, and Search Within.
A search for "University of Chicago" in the Ralph J. Bunche Oral Histories Collection on the Civil Rights Movement resulted in interesting documents such as an interview with Earl B. Dickerson (the first Black J.D. University of Chicago Law School graduate in 1920 and civil rights attorney), mentions of John Hope Franklin (UChicago historian extraordinaire), and a mention in the interview with James Farmer, former National Director of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), that the first chapter of CORE was called the Chicago Committee of Racial Equality, and that most members of early CORE chapters were University of Chicago students - black and white (see p. 11).
