American Literature and the Civil Rights Movement

Contents: About the Collection | About the About Page | Tech

About the Collection

The 1950s and 60s saw the rise of the civil rights movement in the United States aiming to end racial segregation and disenfranchisement. Authors of that time created powerful and lasting works that are still utilized in high school literature classes even decades later. This collection pulls together images, documents, videos, and objects from this critical time frame in American history to provide context for historical and thematic themes of five popular works of literature written during this period.

The Digital Public Library of America - DPLA, hosts primary source collections separately for the four books we focused on. We have selected works that were products of the time frame and culture of the Civil Rights Movement and brought them together in one collection. Criteria for these selections include works written or published during the Civil Rights Era that contain themes relevant to that time including racial discrimination, and segregation. An additional criterion for this collection is that the works chosen to have all previously been, or are currently, banned in school and public library districts.

Objects were selected from DPLA primary source collections for the following literary materials:

• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry
• Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
• The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

Users of this collection could be researchers or people with an interest in the Civil Rights era, literature produced during this era, banned books, educators putting together a collection of books from this era, educators putting together classroom material to provide context to these books as students read them in literature courses. They would be able to search for the objects based on the name or author and they would want to know copyright information for access and use.

About the Metadata Schema

Our metadata schema includes descriptive metadata that will help users locate objects of interest. There is also administrative data that provides information on the copyright of the items, as well as their file sizes. Technical metadata includes file format, which is useful if people want to download any objects. Structural metadata includes relationships between the objects and the book or play. View our complete scheme description at Group 2 Metadata Schema.