THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES: ARCHIVAL APPROACHES TO CIVIL RIGHTS IN NORTHERN IRELAND AND THE AMERICAN SOUTH by James King B.A., Samford University, 2006 M.L.I.S., University of Alabama, 2007 M.A., Boston College, 2009 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of School of Computing and Information in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2018 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH SCHOOL OF COMPUTING AND INFORMATION This dissertation was presented by James King It was defended on November 16, 2017 and approved by Dr. Sheila Corrall, Professor, Library and Information Science Dr. Andrew Flinn, Reader in Archival Studies and Oral History, Information Studies, University College London Dr. Alison Langmead, Associate Professor, Library and Information Science Dissertation Advisor: Dr. Richard J. Cox, Professor, Library and Information Science ii Copyright © by James King 2018 iii THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES: ARCHIVAL APPROACHES TO CIVIL RIGHTS IN NORTHERN IRELAND AND THE AMERICAN SOUTH James King, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2018 When police and counter-protesters broke up the first march of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) in August 1968, activists sang the African American spiritual, “We Shall Overcome” before disbanding. The spiritual, so closely associated with the earlier civil rights struggle in the United States, was indicative of the historical and material links shared by the movements in Northern Ireland and the American South. While these bonds have been well documented within history and media studies, the relationship between these regions’ archived materials and contemporary struggles remains largely unexplored. While some artifacts from the movements—along with the oral histories and other materials that came later—remained firmly ensconced within the archive, others have been digitally reformatted or otherwise repurposed for a range of educational, judicial, and social projects. By charting the archival afterlives of civil rights movements, my dissertation explores how approaches to archiving civil rights materials in Northern Ireland and the American South have intersected and diverged. In so doing, it reveals how civil rights archives intervene in contemporary social justice issues. My research is structured as a qualitative comparative case study, involving semi-structured interviews, field observations, and the collection of textual data at four research sites in the American South and Northern Ireland. The study examines how civil rights record keepers in these iv two regions interpret and act on a variety of imperatives for both archiving civil rights materials and potentially repurposing them for contemporary social justice. While missions, mandates, and organizational structures vary among research sites, I argue that every archive studied facilitates social justice in some fashion. In fact, my study finds that civil rights archives in Northern Ireland and the American South draw on a range of overlapping approaches to intervene in contemporary social justice issues. The varying types of social justice responses revealed in the study indicates a continuum of archival social interventions, with each civil rights archive working at points between the poles of activism and neutrality. The sites are thematically interconnected by education, digital spaces, and reconciliation, which show how archives turn their activist or neutral philosophies into real-world actions. v TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE……………………………………………………………………………..…X I. THE RESEARCH PROBLEM ................................................................................... 1 I.A. SIGNIFICANCE OF STUDY ............................................................................................ 4 I.B. RESEARCH QUESTIONS .............................................................................................. 8 I.C. CORE CONCEPTS TO STUDY ........................................................................................ 9 I.D. SITES OF STUDY ....................................................................................................... 15 II. LITERATURE REVIEW ......................................................................................... 22 II.A. CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE AMERICAN SOUTH ................................................................ 22 II.B. CIVIL RIGHTS IN NORTHERN IRELAND .................................................................... 28 II.C. ATLANTIC CROSSINGS ............................................................................................ 35 II.D. DISSEMINATING CIVIL RIGHTS ............................................................................... 44 II.E. ARCHIVING CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE AMERICAN SOUTH .............................................. 51 II.F. ARCHIVING CIVIL RIGHTS IN NORTHERN IRELAND ................................................. 58 II.G. INFORMATION POWER & COUNTERPOWER ............................................................. 63 II.H. ARCHIVES AND SOCIAL JUSTICE………………………………………………….. 77 III. METHODOLOGY ................................................................................................... 88 III.A. QUALITATIVE RESEARCH ...................................................................................... 88 III.B. DATA COLLECTION & ANALYSIS ........................................................................... 89 III.C. DATA SOURCES ..................................................................................................... 91 IV. “WITHOUT FEAR OR FAVOR:” NEUTRALITY & THE LINEN HALL LIBRARY……...101 IV.A. “ENGAGED NEUTRALITY……………………………………………...…………102 IV.B. ROOTS IN THE REBELLION……………………………………………………….106 IV.C. “CARRYING ON” DURING THE TROUBLES………………………………………..111 IV.D. PIERRE NORA AND LIEUX DE MÉMOIRE……………………….…………………..115 IV.E. LINEN HALL LIBRARY: A LIEUX DE MÉMOIRE…………………………………………118 IV.F. “TROUBLED IMAGES”……………………………..……………………………..126 vi IV.G. SUMMARY……………………………………………………………………….131 V. “A LIVING THING:” ACTIVISM AND THE MUSEUM OF FREE DERRY………...……..134 V.A. THE BOGSIDE………………………………………………………………...…..136 V.B. THE BATTLE OF THE BOGSIDE AND THE CREATION OF FREE DERRY……………..140 V.C. BLOODY SUNDAY AND ITS AFTERMATH...………………………………………..144 V.D. THE FIGHT FOR JUSTICE…………………………………………………………..147 V.E. THE BOGSIDE’S MUSEUM…………………..…………………………………………150 V.F. “AN ALMOST AUTOMATIC EMPATHY” AND THE ONGOING STRUGGLE….………..157 V.G. SUMMARY………………………………………………………………….…….164 VI. “MAKING CONNECTIONS:” EDUCATION, ADVOCACY, AND THE BIRMINGHAM CIVIL RIGHTS INSTITUTE……………………………………………………………………166 VI.A. “THE MAGIC CITY” AND “BOMBINGHAM”…………….………………………...167 VI.B. A CITY REMEMBERS…………………………………………………………….174 VI.C. THE NETWORKED ARCHIVE……………………………………………………..182 VI.D. ADVOCACY THROUGH EDUCATION….…………………………………………..190 VI.E. EDUCATIONAL ADVOCACY THROUGH TECHNOLOGY…………………..……………195 VI.F. SUMMARY………………………………………………………………………..202 VII. “HISTORY IS LUNCH:” NEUTRALITY AND THE MISSISSIPPI DEPARTMENT OF ARCHIVES AND HISTORY……………………………………...………………………206 VII.A. AN OLD SOUTH ARCHIVE…………………..…………………………………..208 VII.B. MISSISSIPPI STATE SOVEREIGNTY COMMISSION……………….……………….214 VII.C. ACCESS, PRIVACY, AND THE SOVEREIGNTY COMMISSION ONLINE……………..220 VII.D. “EXCEEDINGLY NEUTRAL” AND ACTIVE MEMORY……………………………..226 VII.E. FURTHERING RACIAL RECONCILIATION…………………..…………………….……232 VII.F. SUMMARY……………………..………………………………………………..237 VIII. CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………242 VIII.A. REFLECTION ON CIVIL RIGHTS ARCHIVES AND SOCIAL JUSTICE..……………..243 VIII.B. INTERCONNECTIONS…………………………………………………...………251 VIII.C. METHODOLOGICAL MODELS…………………………………………………..261 VIII.D. FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTIONS…….…..…………………………………….264 APPENDICES ............................................................................................................... 267 APPENDIX A: INSTITUTIONAL REVIEW BOARD DETERMINATION………………...……268 APPENDIX B: CONSENT TO IDENTIFY PARTICIPANT ................................................. …269 APPENDIX D: SAMPLE INTERVIEW QUESTIONS……………………………………….. 270 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................... ………..273 vii LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Sources of Textual Data……………………………………………………..…95 Table 2. Archival Social Justice Interventions…………………………………………249 viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Museum of Free Derry………………………………………………………243 Figure 2. Continuum of Archival Approaches to Social Justice……………………….247 ix PREFACE Thank you to my committee members who were a source of help and encouragement throughout the dissertation process. To my chair, Dr. Richard J. Cox, thank you for taking me on as your final graduate student and for being an extraordinary friend and mentor over these last five years. I am indebted to you for teaching me how to be an archival scholar and educator. I also appreciate the regular Bucs baseball updates since I moved to Ireland, which have kept me connected to the Steel City and been a regular bright spot in my email box. Thank you also to Dr. Andrew Flinn who first introduced me to oral history and all of its fascinating archival and ethical complexities. Your warmth, enthusiasm, and unflagging support have been a great help and comfort over these last few years. I would also like to thank Dr. Alison Langmead for all of your help shaping this project by reading countless drafts and giving me feedback over long Skype sessions. Your guidance has been critical to the project’s success. And finally, thank you to Dr. Sheila Corral for your friendship and help with the