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OU Libraries Joins Project Stand

Bizzell Memorial Library

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OU Libraries Joins

Project STAND

OU Libraries Joins Project STAND, a National Initiative to Document and Showcase Student Activism

The University of Oklahoma Libraries joins Project STAND (Student Activism Now Documented) and celebrates Black History Month with a digital exhibition showcasing African-American student activism. The digital exhibition is on display in the Bizzell Memorial Library and can be viewed online via the OU Libraries website.

 

Established in Fall 2016, Project STAND is a nationwide consortium of more than 40 colleges and universities that is creating an online hub to heighten access to digital and analog archival and historical collections documenting student activism.

 

"In joining Project STAND, the OU Libraries acknowledges and highlights the voices of student activists at the University of Oklahoma, historically and in the present day,” OU Libraries Associate Dean for special collections Bridget Burke said. “Our campus history, as told in the university archives, extends beyond the administrative records of the institution. The archives also document student life. Participating in Project STAND gives us the tools we need to present an inclusive and diverse record of the student experience at OU, while also adding the OU experience to a national narrative."

 

Images for the digital exhibition are drawn from the university archives held in the libraries' Western History Collections and the photographic archive of the OU Daily, the university’s student newspaper. Images included in the exhibition document student activism from the 1940s to the present.

 

“Some of the images featured are photographs documenting Ada Sipuel Fisher's challenge to racial discrimination in law school admissions in 1946, poet and civil rights activist Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) on campus in 1977, and contemporary student activist responses to recent racist videos, including the #BetterTogether march of January 2019,” Todd Fuller, curator of the OU Libraries Western History Collections said.

 

According to Burke, Project STAND will be hosting a series of symposium around the nation over the next year, funded by a federal grant awarded by the Institute for Museum and Library Services.

 

"Student activism has served and continues to serve as a critical component to the development of a truly democratic society,” said Burke. “Activism on all sides, across a spectrum of interests, is part of this national conversation."

 

To learn more visit the exhibit in the Bizzell Memorial Library or go to OU Libraries website.