Civil Rights Advocacy on Behalf of the Poor

Appendix A: Archival Research and Coding

A p p e n d i x A Archival Research and Coding Anyone passing by the files . . . could easily get the impression that this organization runs on paper. It is certainly true that the maintenance of records is vital to the conduct of our business . . . But, there has to be a limit somewhere . . . I urge that before sending anything to the files, you ask yourself whether it is really necessary to do so. . . . When in doubt, throw it out.1 —Dr. John Morsell, Assistant Director, NAACP, to Executive Staff, April 4, 1962 I found the document quoted above as I sat in a dark microfilm room researching the NAACP files. Needless to say, it was disconcerting. When in doubt, throw it out? Realistically, of course, organizations cannot keep all the paper they generate. In the case of the NAACP during the 1960s, I was reassured by the remainder of the memo cited above, which pleaded with employees not to keep copies of memos and documents. Such a document points to the benefits and problems with archival research. Examining organizational files allows a researcher to gain a sense of an organization and its operations. The researcher is not required to base his or her conclusions on surveys of staff, who may or may not have accurate memories of meetings, activities, or the workings of the organization outside of their department. On the other hand, conclusions based on this research rest solely on the researcher’s interpretation of documents and events. In addition to trusting the analysis, the reader must rely on the researcher to accurately report on the state of archives. In this appendix, I first present information on the archives 170 Appendix A of each organization: their location, size, and completeness. Second, I present my research process: my decision about which documents to consult, how I coded them, and how I analyzed them. In addition to archival research, I interviewed former and current leadership and staff. In the final section of this appendix, I provide details about the interview process and questions asked. The Location and State of the Archives The research for this project is based on the organizational archives of the Congress of Racial Equality, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, National Urban League, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee . When I began my research on this topic, I found that many of the organizations’ archives had been microfilmed, and that Northwestern University’s library owned the microfilmed collections. I traveled to the archives of two organizations housed at the Library of Congress. The archives made my task of researching five organizations doable. It also gave me confidence in my future findings. If I was attempting to understand the internal dynamics that led to priority change, I needed to be able to analyze as complete a collection of internal documents as possible. The archives of each organization are composed of their office files. Some include both national and branch offices, and others include only the national office. Generally, I restricted my research to the national office files of each organization. If, however, a branch’s files were relevant to a particular anti-poverty campaign, or to a national decision to reach out to branches, I consulted those files. Not surprisingly, each organization varied in its record-keeping. An organization’s approach to record keeping may reflect its approach to bureaucracy. For example, the NAACP and NUL files are more extensive than those of the SCLC and SNCC. However, both SNCC and the SCLC maintained national office files and records. Although relying on archives for extensive documentation of the fieldwork for either group would be difficult, the national offices did function bureaucratically. In the following sections, I describe the size and state of each organization ’s archives. To give an additional sense of the differences among the amount of materials in each organization’s archives, I provide the length of time I spent examining each group’s documents.2 CORE Archives CORE’s organizational archives have been microfilmed in two sets: The Papers of the Congress of Racial Equality 1941–1967 and an Addendum that Archival Research and Coding 171 includes material between 1944 and 1968. The material in the Addendum was not released to the public until after the publication of the Papers collection. The Papers...