The Papers of Clarence Mitchell, Jr. Project, in conjunction with Stanford University, has won a Digital Publication Grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, for the “Project Modern African American Freedom Struggle Digital Publishing Cooperative.” Led by SUNY Old Westbury Professor Denton Watson, the Papers of Clarence Mitchell, Jr. Project is part of the team working with Stanford to build a sustainable system for digital publication and discovery of historical records.
“This grant will help support my long term effort to make the Papers of Clarence Mitchell, Jr., and the NAACP Washington Bureau readily accessible to students, scholars, and people nationwide,” said American Studies Professor Watson. “I look forward to collaborating on this project with my peers from Stanford and Boston Universities.”
The Cooperative, which was granted $100,000, brings together three long-standing documentary editing projects: The Martin Luther King, Jr., Papers Project, the Papers of Clarence Mitchell, Jr. and of the NAACP Washington Bureau, and the Howard Thurman Papers Project, with the help of Stanford University Libraries, to plan a digital publication platform centered around collaborative thematic digital archives in modern African American history.
The Papers of Clarence Mitchell, Jr., and the NAACP Washington Bureau is a documentary editing project that is sponsored by Old Westbury and funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, and, until 2017, The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. The Project edits the reports that Mitchell prepared during his 32-year tenure with the NAACP to publish in a nine-volume series. This collection of papers that Mitchell prepared at the NAACP along with the bureau’s counsel Francis J. Pohlhaus is the most comprehensive documentation available on the struggle for passage of the civil rights laws and establishment of constructive national policies for protection of civil rights.