Civil Rights Movement will be focus of new Mississippi Archives and History research fellows

By Simeon Gates | Originally published by Mississippi Today

The Mississippi Department of Archives and History recently announced its two newest research fellows whose primary work will center on the Civil Rights Movement.

Christina J. Thomas is the inaugural Robert “Bob” Moses Civil Rights Research Fellow. Named after the late Civil Rights activist, the fellowship is intended to support early-career scholars and foster public and academic appreciation for Civil Rights history and the human rights struggle.

“I am honored to receive this fellowship and to continue sharing Moses’ legacy and that of those who carried the Mississippi movement forward,” Thomas said.

She will be finalizing the database for her project, “Digitizing Freedom Summer,” which uses an interactive map to locate and document the stories of volunteers of 1964’s Freedom Summer project, who came from across the country to register Black voters and put Mississippi’s Civil Rights Movement in the national spotlight. It will include biographical information and – when available – primary sources and links to digital collections about the volunteers and archival material about the local people who aided them. 

Thomas is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Civil Rights History and Research at the University of South Carolina. She is also a community archivist for Freedom Information Service Library, which includes documents from the Civil Rights Movement and other organizing efforts. She teaches Civil Rights history at the Youthful Offender Unit School at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility.

She previously worked as the Andrew W. Mellon visiting scholar at the Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University and on various other Mississippi history projects.

Thomas has a bachelor’s in history from Messiah University, a master’s in history from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, a master’s and a doctorate in history from Johns Hopkins University.

This year’s Religion in Mississippi History Research Fellow, Zachary Clary, will investigate how religion and morality shaped how African Americans viewed the violence and subjugation of the Civil Rights era.

“The archival materials in Jackson will be a tremendous help to the development of my dissertation project on martyrdom and sacrifice in the American Civil Rights Movement,” he said in the press release.

Clary is a history doctoral candidate at Vanderbilt University. He earned his bachelor’s in history from the College of William & Mary and a master’s in history from the University of South Carolina.

This fellowship is funded entirely by a $2.5 million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. through its Religion and Cultural Institutions Initiative.

Both winners will conduct their research over the summer using materials from MDAH’s archives.

Both fellowships require them to be “in residence” for at least two weeks and provide fellows with $5,000 stipend for travel, accommodations and other expenses. 

At the end of their stay, they each must submit a summary report and give a short presentation to an audience of scholars, professors, historians and supporters on their findings.

This article was originally published by Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Source: Original Article