Oberlin and Civil Rights Collection

The Oberlin and Civil Rights Collection is an artificial one consisting of material donated by or relating to Oberlin students who participated in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. The collection began as a collaboration between the Oberlin College Archives, Oberlin alumni from the classes of the 1950s and 60s, and the staff of the Oberlin Alumni Magazine. Oberlin has a long tradition of student activism, and during the Civil Rights Movement many Oberlin students continued that tradition by traveling throughout the South to protest, conduct voter registration, rebuild burned churches, and work on Civil Rights-era newspapers. The collection includes material created or collected by students during the 1960s, including correspondence, writings, Federal Bureau of Investigation reports, photographs, and two scrapbooks, as well as recollections of events recorded years later. It is arranged into five series: Series I. Alumni and Civil Rights; Series II. Correspondence; Series III. Photographs; Series IV. Publications; and Series V. Scrapbooks.