Events
| Exhibits
| Press Releases |
News
Archives | Newsletters
| Index
January 4, 2008
University Park, PA— “Profiles in Civil Rights Activism” is on display January 14 to March 3, in the Diversity Studies Room, 109 Pattee Library. The exhibit features the Jack Rabin Collection on Alabama Civil Rights and Southern Activists that documents the historic 1965 March from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.
Jack Rabin collected the materials from 1948–2005. While teaching public administrati
on in Montgomery, Alabama, he assembled most of the collection through contacts with public administration students who were then working for the Alabama Department of Public Safety. He also actively pursued primary-source materials from white activists and African-American civil rights leaders, several of whom he photographed. Rabin toured the area, taking color slides of historically significant African-American churches and of the Selma-to-Montgomery march route, and he acquired three documentary films on civil rights topics. The resulting collection formed the core of his Center for the Study of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. When he took a faculty position in New Jersey in 1980, Rabin brought the collection north and later to Penn State in 1988, when he accepted a faculty position at Penn State Harrisburg.
Rabin donated most of the collection to Penn State’s Special Collections Library at University Park on October 10, 2002, including several items acquired after 1975. A comprehensive finding aid is located at http://www.libraries.psu.edu/speccolls/FindingAids/rabin.frame.html
The exhibit also features the Robert Joyce Collection, which includes documentary photographs on acts of civil disobedience and the historic 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, that culminated with Dr. King’s “I have a dream” speech.
Archival images and records from the Penn State University Archives, including Dr. King’s speech at Penn State in 1968, and selected books from the Rare Books and Manuscript’s African-American History book collection further add to a visual essay of the period. The exhibit area is open to the public during library operating hours, unless noted. Call 814-865-3063 for a listing of general hours.
On January 21, 10 a.m. and again at 2:30 p.m., Barry Kernfeld will present “Lifting the Veil: The Jack Rabin Collection on Alabama Civil Rights and Southern Activist,” in Foster Auditorium, 101 Pattee Library. Kernfeld’s presentations will highlight rare security surveillance photographs from the files of the Alabama Department of Public Safety, original audio clips of previously unreleased speeches by major civil rights leaders Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rev. Ralph Abernathy, and archived film footage, featuring civil rights activist Stokely Carmichael and the 1964 Voting Rights movement.
The presentation is free and open to the public and will be followed by a Q and A session. Kernfield, a staff archivist in Historical Collections and Labor Archives, The Eberly Family Special Collections Library, University Libraries, processed the Rabin collection and created the collection’s finding guide.
For more information about the exhibit and the collection, contact James Quigel, head, Historical Collections and Labor Archives, at 814-863-3181.