Recorded by Moses Moon (known at the time as Alan Ribback) and assisted by Norris McNamara during 1963 and 1964, the collection includes audio recordings of interviews with civil rights leaders and participants as well as free-style recordings of mass meetings, voter registration events, and other gatherings organized by Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). This collection provides a mostly unfiltered documentation of significant moments in the civil rights movement.
Scope and Contents:
This collection consists of 115 reel to reel audio recordings containing interviews, mass meetings, demonstrations, and conversations concerning the civil rights movement, and in particular the voter registration drives organized by SNCC in Alabama and Mississippi in 1963 and 1964. Mass meetings were recorded in Greenwood, Mississippi; Americus, Georgia; Selma, Alabama; Jackson, Mississippi; Danville, Virginia; Washington, D.C.; Hattiesburg, Mississippi; and Indianola, Mississippi. Major demonstrations recorded include the March on Washington in August of 1963, Freedom Day in Selma, Alabama in October of 1963, and Freedom Day in Hattiesburg, Mississippi in January of 1964. Interviews with SNCC workers include Julian Bond, John Lewis, James Forman, Bruce Gordon, Prathia Hall, Ivanhoe Donaldson, Bob Moses, Avery Williams, Willie Peacock, Bruce Boynton and his mother, as well as dozens of others involved in the movement, who are named in the collection inventory. Many of those interviewed were actively involved in strategizing and carrying out SNCC demonstrations and political actions, and many were victims of death threats, beatings, unlawful arrest, police brutality, and torture and abuse in prison. These interviews contain detailed eyewitness accounts and personal testimony regarding these experiences, as well as personal history and thoughts about the movement, the South, and the future.
It is clear from what we know of the dates and locations of these recordings, as well as from documentation of these events in other sources, that many of these recordings are unique documents of important events in American history, which may also contain the commentary of important political and cultural figures who were involved in the movement. For example, an article by Howard Zinn recounts how an unidentified man recorded James Baldwin on October 7, 1963, Freedom Day in Selma, on the steps of the courthouse. Baldwin was furious at the lack of support from nearby federal agents as state troopers advanced on peaceful demonstrators. One of the tapes dated October 7, 1963, originally labeled "courthouse interviews," appears to be this recoding, although Baldwin is not named. The same article (available in The Howard Zinn Reader) recounts the mass meetings which led up to that demonstration, at which actor Dick Gregory gave a rousing sermon as his wife sat in jail for demonstrating in Selma. The Moses Moon Collection may be the only existing audio recording of that sermon as well as many other sermons and speeches.
Moses Moon changed his name after these recordings were made. He is referred to in the finding aid as Alan Ribback because that name is used on the recordings.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged in two series.Series 1 is in chronological order to the degree recording dates can be determined, and is based on the locations and dates provided by Moon in his description or gleaned from the recordings themselves and other secondary sources. Series 1 contains 17 groups of recordings.
Moon's original numbers are recorded in the column next to the descriptions. Following the first four Greenwood tapes, which are numbered sequentially, Moon's numbering system took the first two letters of the town in which the recordings were made, a one (1), a decimal, and then a tape number. Numbers preceding the town code refer to the recording day. "N" numbers were later assigned by Moon to the 7" reels only, after the original recordings were made, possibly during editing or when the tapes were made available to the Program in African American Culture.
Series 1, Original Tapes
1. Greenwood, Mississippi; Spring 1963; 4 7" reels
2. Chicago, Illinois; August 9, 12, 1963; 2 5" reels
16. Monroe County, Mississippi; August 1, 1964; 4 5" reels
17. Milton, Mississippi; August 16, 1964; 3 5" reels
Series 2, Preservation Masters consists of data DVDs for a portion of the collection.
Biographical / Historical:
Moses Moon was born Alan Ribback in 1928. During the 1950s until 1962, Ribback was the proprietor of the Gate of Horn, Chicago's premier folk music club, which featured performers including Bob Gibson, Odetta, Judy Collins, Joan Baez, Jo Mapes, Peter, Paul and Mary, Lenny Bruce, and Shelley Berman. On December 5, 1962, Lenny Bruce was arrested during a performance at the Gate of Horn along with Ribback, George Carlin, and others. As a result of the arrest and Bruce's subsequent conviction for obscenity, the club was closed by the City of Chicago, and Ribback left Chicago with Norris McNamara, an audio technician, to record folk concerts taking place in the South as part of the growing civil rights movement. From the spring of 1963 until the summer of 1964, Ribback and McNamara recorded demonstrations and mass meetings and interviewed civil rights activists, primarily those involved in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Later, Ribback moved to New York and edited his recordings into an album called Movement Soul. Ribback married Delia Moon in 1971, took her last name and changed his first name to Moses. In 1979, Bernice Reagon Johnson, working with the Program on African American Culture at the Smithsonian, contacted Moon and borrowed the recordings of mass meetings for a 1980 program on the voices of the civil rights movement. In the late 1980s, Moon was stricken with a severe case of Guillain-Barre syndrome, which left him paralyzed. Moon donated the entire collection of original recordings shortly before his death in 1993.
Related Materials:
Materials at Other Organizations
The papers of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee are held by the King Library and Archives in Atlanta, Georgia; archives@thekingcenter.org.
Provenance:
Donated by Moses and Delia Moon in 1995.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research. Reference copies must be used. Tapes noted in the container list have digital reference copies in the Smithsonian Institution Digital Asset Management System (DAMS).
Rights:
Collection items available for reproduction, but copyright status unknown. Contact Archives Center staff for additional information. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.
Topic:
African American civil rights workers. Search this
Moses Moon Civil Rights Movement Audio Collection, 1963-1964, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Partial funding for preservation and duplication of the original audio tapes provided by a National Museum of American History Collections Committee Jackson Fund Preservation Grant.
Correspondence; business records; photographs; and gallery files.
REELS 1437-1442: Correspondence and business records include priced lists for works of art, and tax records, 1972-1979. Correspondents include: Ken Greenleaf, Walter Darby, Robert Goodnough, Anthony Caro, and Forrest Moses.
REELS 1484-1488: Artists' files, 1972-1979, containing biographical information; business correspondence; priced lists of works of art; and printed matter.
Artists include Jane Allensworth, John Altoon, Walter Bannard, Nell Blaine, David Bolduc, Frank Bowling, Ken Bowman, Stanley Boxer, Lawrence Brown, Anthony Caro, Dan Christensen, Robert Cole, Stephanie K. Cole, Pat Colville, Rochella Cooper, E. E. Cummings,Bruce Cunningham, Gene Davis, Thomas Downing, Friedel Dzubas, Frank Faulkner, Chuck Forsman, Paul Fournier, Sherron L. Francis, Jane Freilicher, Erik Gamble, Maurice Golubov, Robert Goodnough, K. M. Graham, Ken Greenleaf, Red Grooms, David Hare, Tom Holland, Sandria Hu, Andrew Hudson, Darryl Hughto, Richard Johnson, Otis Jones, Wayne Kimball, Joyce Kozloff, Leonard Lehrer, Robert Levers, Mary McLeary, Vincent Mariani, Forrest Moses, Robert Motherwell, Stephen Mueller, Lowell Nesbitt, Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Basilios Poulos, Janis Provisor, Archie Rand, Harold Reddicliffe, Peter Reginato, Dan Rizzie, Tony Robbin, Reginald Rowe, Laura Russell, Tom Sayre, Sam Scott, Paul Sloggett, Daniel Solomon, Michael Steiner, Robert Tiemann, Sidney Tillum, Horatio Torres, Robert Utterback, Neil Welliver, Mark Williams, Dadi Wirz, and Ben Woitena. Also included are ex-artists Wayne Amedee,David Budd, Rosemarie Castoro, Robert Dash, Carl Gliko, Jacqueline Gourevitch, Gilah Hirsch, Ian Hornak, Rafael Mahdavi, and Larry Poons.
REEL 1489: Photographs of artists and art work from the artists' files, 1972-1979.
REELS 3366-3367: Gallery files on artist Earl Staley containing correspondence, 1980-1984, of Marvin Watson and Clint Willour of Watson/de Nagy & Company with Staley, the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, Western States Arts Foundation, Santa Fe, and others; illustrated postcards, 1981-1983, from Staley to Watson; a checklist of Staley's exhibition FIVE TEXANS IN VENICE, 1984; lists of Staley's paintings; clippings and magazine articles; exhibition announcements and photocopies of catalogs; and newsletters and press releases. [Microfilm label: Earl Staley papers.]
Biographical / Historical:
Art gallery; Houston, Tex. Prior to ca. 1976, Watson/de Nagy & Company was known as Tibor de Nagy Gallery Texas, Inc. - a branch of Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York. After 1985 it was known as the Watson Gallery.
Provenance:
Lent for microfilming 1979 & 1984 by Marvin Watson, owner of the gallery. Microfilmed as part of Archives of American Art's Texas project.
Restrictions:
The Archives of American art does not own the original papers. Use is limited to the microfilm copy.
Freedmen's Bureau Digital Collection, 1865–1872, is a product of and owned by the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Smithsonian Institution. Copyright for digital images is retained by the donor, FamilySearch International; permission for commercial use of the digital images may be requested from FamilySearch International, Intellectual Property Office, at: cor-intellectualproperty@ldschurch.org.
Collection Citation:
Courtesy of the U. S. National Archives and Records Administration, FamilySearch International, and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Correspondence, photographs, sketchbooks, catalogues and gallery announcements regarding Don Resnick. Included are letters from Ernst Benkert to Resnick, discussing his work, fellow artists, and the art scene. Other correspondents include Richard Klett, and Dutch artists Kees Bantzinger, Rudi Bierman, and Paula Nieuwenhuis-Thies. Nineteen sketchbooks (1956-1996) depict landscape and figure studies in pastel, pen and ink, pencil, and charcoal; also found are several portrait studies of Robert Moses by the artist.
Biographical / Historical:
Artist; Rockville Centre, New York.
Provenance:
Donated 1999 by Don Resnick.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C., Research Center. Contact Reference Services for more information.
These records consist of a copy of a legal agreement to convey real property between the Company and the City of New York; diagrams showing designation of buildings; illustrations; Business Plan and Loan Request, 1979-1980, 1980-1981; photographs; book of Plans for Plant Revision, which contains: monthly and yearly production charts, real estate map, machinery layout of present plant, present route charts, machinery layout of revised plant, revised route charts (...in the 1930's a highway was about to be run between buildings and the river, and space had to be made. Robert Moses was building East River Drive there; in return for the land he rebuilt Washburn's plant, and these are the drawings showing the machinery layouts and material routings, before and after); President's comment and report; and sales literature.
Biographical / Historical:
The Washburn Wire Company was originally founded in 1870 for the purpose of manufacturing insulated cable for the then fledgling telephone industry. In 1882, it was incorporated under the name "American Electrical Works, Inc." and subsequently moved to Rhode Island. In 1900 it was merged with the Washburn Wire Company of Maine. The Washburn Wire Company of New York was formed in 1916 and a year later, the Washburn Wire Company was incorporated in Delaware marking the beginning of the consolidation of the two separate operating divisions - one in New York City, and the other in Rhode Island.
The Washburn Wire Products, Inc. is a wire drawing fabricator. The plant converted rolled steel into many sizes of round, flat and shaped high carbon and alloy, cold rolled and cold-drawn, tempered and untempered wire. Major market concentrations were the automotive industry (regulator, chrome silicon, chrome vanadium) and the appliance industry (music wire and hose clay wire).
Washburn Wire Products, Inc. was the most recent acquisition of the Commonwealth Holding Company, the for-profit arm of the parent organization, the Harlem Commonwealth Council, Inc. (HCC). The HCC is a tax exempt, non-profit community development corporation, established in 1967 under the Title 1-D of the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964. Its purpose was to provide leadership in its participation with the community in its overall physical and economic development.
In 1967 the company suffered a major blow in the loss of automotive valve spring to foreign competition.
Over the last few years, Washburn showed serious signs of decline. This occurred as a result of severe pension problems, strikes and critical decisions not to reinvest in capital modernization and improvement programs. Its Manhattan Plant was closed in 1981 in a bankruptcy sale.
Provenance:
Collection donated by State University of New York, through Thomas Flagg, Department of Vision Science, November 22, 1982.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research.
Rights:
Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning copyright restrictions. Other intellectual property rights may apply. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.
Story of Greenwood--Story pt. 1--Get on board children--Keep your eyes on the prize--This little light of mine--Bob Moses--Greenwood story--Fannie Lou Hamer--Greenwood story
Local Numbers:
FW-ASCH-7RR-4302
Date/Time and Place of an Event Note:
Recorded in: Mississippi, United States, 1963.
General:
Folkways 5593
CDR copy
Restrictions:
Restrictions on access. No duplication allowed listening and viewing for research purposes only.
Collection Rights:
Permission to publish materials from the collection must be requested from the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections. Please visit our website to learn more about submitting a request. The Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections make no guarantees concerning copyright or other intellectual property restrictions. Other usage conditions may apply; please see the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for more information.
This little light of mine--Story of Greenwood--Get on board, children--Greenwood story--Fannie Lou Hamer--Greenwood story
Track Information:
101 This Little Light of Mine.
102 The Story of Greenwood, Mississippi / Robert Parris Moses.
103 Freedom Songs-- Get on Board, Children.
104 Greenwood Story / Robert Parris Moses.
105 Fannie Lou Hamer / Fannie Lou Hamer.
106 Greenwood Story / Robert Parris Moses.
Local Numbers:
FW-ASCH-7RR-4303
Date/Time and Place of an Event Note:
Recorded in: Mississippi, United States.
General:
Folkways 5593
Documentary; recorded and produced by Guy Carawan for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.
Restrictions:
Restrictions on access. No duplication allowed listening and viewing for research purposes only.
Collection Rights:
Permission to publish materials from the collection must be requested from the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections. Please visit our website to learn more about submitting a request. The Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections make no guarantees concerning copyright or other intellectual property restrictions. Other usage conditions may apply; please see the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for more information.
This collection is open for research. Access to original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C. Research Center.
Collection Rights:
The Archives of American Art makes its archival collections available for non-commercial, educational and personal use unless restricted by copyright and/or donor restrictions, including but not limited to access and publication restrictions. AAA makes no representations concerning such rights and restrictions and it is the user's responsibility to determine whether rights or restrictions exist and to obtain any necessary permission to access, use, reproduce and publish the collections. Please refer to the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for additional information.
The donor has retained all intellectual property rights, including copyright, that they may own in the following material: all writings by Avis Berman.
Collection Citation:
Avis Berman research material on Juliana Force, 1857-circa 2010. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in partnership with the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; acquired in memory of Agnes and Eugene Meyer through the generosity of Katharine Graham and the New York Community Trust, The Island Fund
