Special Collections faculty member Ervin Jordan has curated an exhibition entitled, “Embracing Equality: Before and Beyond Brown v. Board of Education, 1950-1969: An American Civil Rights Exhibition.”  The exhibit highlights local, state and national Civil Rights events through selected legislation, letters, reports, speeches, and photographs including:

• the 1950 lawsuit of Gregory Swanson, the University of Virginia’s first African-American student;
• a printed copy of the United States Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education;
• the 1961 letter of a African-American schoolgirl who complains about desegregation
• a program and route map for the 1963 March on Washington;
• a 1964 Martin Luther King letter discussing the Civil Rights Movement’s “non-violent army”
• UVA administrator William Elwood’s advisory document prepared for a public meeting at a black Charlottesville church on impact of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 upon public schools

“Embracing Equality” will be on display at the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, First Floor Lobby, until March 1, 2013.

March on Washington program and route map, August 28, 1963. (MSS 8003-A, Photo by Molly Schwartzburg)