Announcement of Addition of Ameritech Grant Winning Collections to American Memory

[danna c. bell-russel]

With a gift from Ameritech in 1996, the Library of Congress sponsored a
three-year competition ending in 1999 to enable public, research, and
academic libraries, museums, historical societies, and archival
institutions (except federal institutions) to create digital collections
of primary resources.  These digital collections will complement and
enhance the collections of the National Digital Library Program at the
Library of Congress. Three new collections have been added to the
Ameritech collections currently available online. They are “Chicago
Anarchists on Trial: Evidence from the Haymarket Affair, 1886-1887",
“The Church in the Southern Black Community, 1780-1925” and “Sunday
School Books: Shaping the Values of Youth in the Nineteenth Century”

Chicago Anarchists on Trial: Evidence from the Haymarket Affair,
1886-1887 showcases more than 3,800 images of original manuscripts,
broadsides, photographs, prints and artifacts relating to the Haymarket
Affair owned by the Chicago Historical Society (CHS). Specifically, the
digital collection includes primary source materials pertaining to the
May 4, 1886, meeting and bombing; to the trial, conviction, and
subsequent appeals of those accused of inciting the bombing; to the
execution of four of the convicted, and to the later pardon of the
remaining defendants. Of special interest and significance are the two
dozen images of three-dimensional artifacts in the collection including
contemporary Chicago Police Department paraphernalia, labor banners, and
an unexploded bomb casing given to juror J.H. Brayton by State's
Attorney Julius Grinnell. The cornerstone of the collection is the
presentation of the transcript of the proceedings from the murder trial
of State of Illinois v. August Spies, et. al. The collection webpage can
be viewed at
<http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award98/ichihtml/hayhome.html>.

The Church in the Southern Black Community, 1780-1925 contains 137
texts, 100 of which were supported by the LC/Ameritech award. These
printed texts, selected specifically from the libraries at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, are primarily books with a
few pamphlets and journal articles. To these have been added a number of
slave narratives. The collection traces how Southern African Americans
experienced disenfranchisement, segregation, and bigotry. Also included
are early twentieth?century assessments of black scholars on the
Church's role in American history and society. This collection is a
continuation of the work started with their previous Ameritech award
winning collection “First-Person Narratives of the American South,
1860-1920”.  The collection home page for the Church in the Southern
Black Community can be found at
<http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award99/ncuhtml/csbchome.html>.

Sunday School Books: Shaping the Values of Youth in the Nineteenth
Century presents 163 Sunday school books published in America between
1815 and 1865, drawn from the collections of Michigan State University
Libraries and the Clarke Historical Library at Central Michigan
University Libraries. They document the culture of religious instruction
of youth in America during the Antebellum era. They also illustrate a
number of thematic divisions that preoccupied nineteenth-century
America, including sacred and secular, natural and divine, civilized and
savage, rural and industrial, adult and child. Among the topics featured
are history, holidays, slavery, African Americans, Native Americans,
travel and missionary accounts, death and dying, poverty, temperance,
immigrants, and advice. This collection webpage can be found at
<http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award99/miemhtml/svyhome.html>.

Those interested in learning about the Ameritech competition, the awards
made in each of the three years that the competition ran, and the
guidelines that were given to applicants can locate the information at
the following url: <http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award/index.html>.

Please direct any questions to ndlpcoll at loc.gov.