Primary Sources: Civil Rights in America: Organizations

Digitized materials from Michigan State University Libraries' Radicalism Collection focusing on America.

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Position Paper, 1966

Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) newsletter
March 1964, September 1964, and March 1965

"The Black Panther Party (BPP) is a black extremist organization founded in Oakland, California in 1966. It advocated the use of violence and guerilla tactics to overthrow the U.S. government. In 1969, the FBI’s Charlotte Field Office opened an investigative file on the BPP to track its militant activities, income, and expenses. This release consists of Charlotte's file on BPP activities from 1969 to 1976. "

FBI files on the NAACP

"The NAACP: A Century in the Fight for Freedom exhibition presents a retrospective of the major personalities, events, and achievements that shaped the NAACP’s history during its first 100 years."

Selected items available online.
"The Records of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Region I document the daily work of the NAACP in the Western United States from 1942-1986 (bulk 1945-1977). Regular additions to the collection are expected. Although the Region initially consisted of four states and grew to include nine, the bulk of the collection documents the work of the Region I Office in California, particularly in regard to statewide legislation. One of the most comprehensive record series is that of Branch Files, which contains documentation of the work of local (usually citywide) branches throughout the Region. The work of Regional Directors, Noah W. Griffin, Franklin Williams, Tarea Hall Pittman, Leonard H. Carter, and Virna M. Canson, is especially well represented within the collection."

Correspondence and other papers from the National Negro Business League in the Library of Congress American Memory Collection Prosperity and Thrift: The Coolidge Era and the Consumer Economy, 1921-1929

"...radio broadcast by Muhammad was aired in the NYC area on radio station WNTA on November 23, 1960. It was part of a series of radio broadcasts by the NOI that -- in part -- sought to explain the group's separatist and nationalist racial philosophy to the public. "
University of Albany Talking History website.

"Ella Baker was an instrumental figure in the formation of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) during the late 1950s and in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) during the early 1960s."

"The Pacifica Radio Archives is proud to present a sample of the many recordings held in our vaults of key activists and organizers of the Black Panther Party. Founded in Oakland, CA in 1966 as the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, the organization fought back against racial profiling and police harassment and abuse in Black communities and stressed self-determination, self-empowerment and Black autonomy through its Ten-Point Program. This collection of audio recordings documents speeches, interviews, news coverage and documentaries by or about the Black Panther Party as broadcast on Pacifica Radio stations between 1966 and 1989 and includes the voices of many notable members of the Panthers, including Huey P. Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Seale, H. Rap Brown (Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin), Kathleen Cleaver and Elaine Brown. The Pacifica Radio Archives worked in conjunction with the University of California, Berkeley's Moffitt Library to preserve the recordings offered here."

Written: October 15, 1966
Source: War Against the Panthers, by Huey P. Newton, 1980
Transcription/Markup & corrections: MIM/Brian Baggins
Online Version: Marxist History Archive (marxists.org) 2001

"The platform adopted by a group of roughly 60 individuals that led to the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)."

"Read an address by Mary Church Terrell, president of the National Association of Colored Women, on the progress made by African-American women since Emancipation."

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Newsletters: February 25, 1964
March 3, 1964
June 9, 1964
July 15, 1964
July 22, 1964
July 29, 1964
August 19, 1964
August 30, 1965