The Atlanta University Center (AUC) Robert W. Woodruff Library and Project STAND are pleased to announce the recipients of the Digital Flowers Shout Out (DFSO) Micro-grant Initiative.  The DFSO Micro-grants are intended to recognize student organizers who have held institutions and communities accountable over a long history of racism, inequality and injustices by sharing their stories broadly with the world while “giving them their flowers.”  Micro-grants awarded by the AUC Woodruff Library and Project STAND will support organizations and institutions in making the histories and contributions of Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) student activists and their organizations accessible through digitization projects totaling up to $80,000.  The awardees’ projects range in scope and provide increased awareness of essential accounts of activists – documenting various themes such as protests and demonstrations, cross-cultural collaborations, traditions, inter-generational dialog, and many others.

Through the generosity of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the partners in the “Building Capacity in the Ethical Documentation and Archiving of Student Activism in BIPOC Communities” project are providing micro-grants to aid the recipients in a variety of ways, including supporting vendor costs for digitizing records, hiring project staff, supplying basic preservation needs, securing subscriptions for digital platforms, and acquiring necessary equipment.

AUC Woodruff Library and Project STAND are excited to support these diverse projects which, upon completion, will provide increased accessibility to historical records and awareness of BIPOC student activism on campuses across the nation. Digitized projects will be accessible from each institution in 2023, and elements of each project will be viewable on the Project STAND website.

DIGITAL FLOWERS SHOUT OUT AWARDEES INCLUDE:

CASCADE at Howard University

Project: CASCADE Oral Histories

Organization: Coalition of Activist Students Celebrating the Acceptance of Diversity and Equality (CASCADE)
The CASCADE oral history project will highlight the experiences of former organizational leaders of Howard University’s long-standing LGBT+ student organization. The project will preserve and catalog the work and legacies of student activists spanning from the 1970s to the present.

Lehigh University

Project: Lehigh Student Activism Archive

Organization: Institute on Critical Race and Ethnic Studies
Lehigh University will create a digital collection of photographs, flyers, student newspaper articles, student demands, blogs, and other documents pertaining to student activism at the University. The materials range from the 1960s through contemporary movements, and include the development of the Institute on Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, inspired by student demands.

South Carolina State University

Project: SC State Student Newspaper Collection

South Carolina State (SC State) University’s special collections include holdings related to student protests, as well as the Orangeburg Massacre in 1968, during which 28 African-American students were shot (three killed) on the campus of South Carolina State College (currently South Carolina State University) by the South Carolina National Guard while protesting against racial segregation. The collections to be digitized include the student newspaper, The Collegian, from the 1920s to the 2000s.

Tulane University

Project: Tulane University Archives

Organization: EGDE (Emergent Grounds for Design Education) 
Tulane University will utilize micro-grant funds to support the digitization of a collection of petitions, letters, reports and documents produced following a racial justice uprising in the Summer and Fall of 2020.  The movement included student and alumni activists of United States and Canadian schools of architecture, landscape architecture, planning and other built-environment design disciplines.

University of Colorado

Project: Colorado Daily newspaper collection

The Colorado Daily newspaper contains significant historical accounts of student activism and social justice led by underrepresented campus communities at Colorado University – Boulder, including Latinx, LGBTQ+, Black, and Indigenous student groups, particularly during the 1970s. The Colorado Daily also documents Latinx student participation on campus and nationwide in protests such as the United Farm Workers lettuce boycott, student occupations of buildings to advocate for financial aid and educational equality, and confrontations with campus administration about shared issues involving racism on campus with the Black Student Alliance (BSA).

University of Kentucky

Project: Wildcat Histories: Preserving Activist UK Student Organizations’ Legacies

The University of Kentucky Libraries & Latino Student Union (LSU)-proposed Wildcat Histories project will use LSU digital archival records as a pilot for developing procedures and guidelines for preserving social media of student organizations. Through this project, the University will also execute an outreach initiative to work with 15 additional BIPOC, LGBTQ+, or non-Christian religious student organizations that have been on campus for 10 or more years, in an effort to preserve their histories.

The Atlanta University Center (AUC) Robert W. Woodruff Library partners with the nation’s largest consortium of historically black colleges and universities: Clark Atlanta University, the Interdenominational Theological Center, Morehouse College and Spelman College to provide information management, instruction and access to global information resources in support of teaching and learning, scholarship and cultural preservation of the AUC.  The Library is the winner of the 2016 Excellence in Academic Libraries Award in the university category from the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL). Home to a premier Archives Research Center, the Library provides collaborative leadership in preservation, access and collection development of unique archival resources documenting African American history and culture. To learn more, visit the Library’s website.

Project STAND is a radical, grassroots archival consortia project between colleges and universities across the United States to create a centralized, digital space highlighting analog and digital collections which emphasize student activism in marginalized communities. Project STAND aims to foster ethical documentation of contemporary and past social justice movements in under documented student populations. STAND advocates for collections by collaborating with educators to provide pedagogical support, create digital resources, and host workshops and forums to build communities with student organizers and their allies, leading to sustainable relationships, and inclusive physical and digital spaces of accountability, diversity, and equity. Visit http://standarchives.com for more information.