Special Collections Processes Emilye Crosby Collection

News item published on: 2024-12-03 11:32:00

Raised in Mississippi, Dr. Emilye Crosby is an accomplished professor, author, and scholar, having written a number of works regarding the civil rights movement. Crosby donated primary and secondary research materials related to civil rights activities in Claiborne County, Mississippi and its county seat, Port Gibson, to The University of Southern Mississippi (USM) University Libraries Special Collections.

Through the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) grant, Jaq Jefcoat, a graduate student in the School of Library and Information Science, worked to preserve this important collection.

Claiborne County was the center of a profound struggle during the Civil Rights movement, resulting in the United States Supreme Court Case, the NAACP vs. Claiborne Hardware Co., 1982, a case that still has repercussions today in discussions on freedom of speech protections. A large portion of the collection reflects the protests and boycotts that prompted the original lawsuit, as well as supporting documentation of similar court cases. Included are court documents, interviews, agency and organizational records, and subject files. The collection also includes publications related to Crosby's scholarly activities and research on the civil rights movement in Mississippi. Clippings, newsletters, journal articles, book drafts, and notes gathered from the Port Gibson Reveille are included.

Crosby has received numerous accolades for her teaching, scholarship, and service including the 2013 Article Award given by the Oral History Association. She edited Civil Rights History from the Ground Up: Local Struggles, a National Movement, and her book, A Little Taste of Freedom: The Black Freedom Struggle in Claiborne County, Mississippi, won the McLemore Prize and received an honorable mention for the Organization of American Historians' Liberty Legacy Prize.

Crosby has been a member of State University of New York Geneseo's History Department since 1995 and was the coordinator of the Black Studies/Africana program from fall 2002 to spring 2018. She teaches a wide range of history, general education, and interdisciplinary courses. Her research interests include the Civil Rights Movement, African American history, and women's history.

Lorraine Stuart, head of Special Collections and curator of its Historical Manuscripts and Archives, is leading the two-year grant project. The purpose of the grant is to increase access to collections and will support processing, digitization, and development of finding aids for existing collections significant to the history and culture of Mississippi. The grant also provides for multiple opportunities for hands-on materials preservation and presentation experiences for the University’s Library and Information Science and Humanities graduate students.

Jefcoat worked to process and organize the collection for researchers, while keeping the original structure of Dr. Crosby’s research. They prepared items for housing and arranged them in an order to assist researchers in learning about the various civil rights topics.

Of their experience working on this collection, Jefcoat said, “I enjoyed gaining more processing experience and working with different types of materials. Handling research materials, especially legal files, proved to be very different compared to personal items and memorabilia. My favorite items from the collection would be the court records and the FBI files. I liked them the most because I had no prior experience handling legal research and it was interesting to process those.