Measuring Deliberate Speed: Georgians Face School Desegregation

706.542.5788

On September 23, 1957, nine African American students entered Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas - initiating the first important test of the 1954 Supreme Court decision in the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education. In response to riots led by white residents, President Dwight D. Eisenhower mobilized the 101st Airborne Division of the U.S. Army to Little Rock. Americans across the country watched these events unfold on their television screens, and Georgians considered the fate of their own public schools.

How did the Little Rock Crisis shape politics, policy, and public response to federal directives to desegregate? How have public schools changed since Little Rock? The Russell Library, a political archives at the University of Georgia, invites you to consider these questions through two new exhibits now on display: Measuring Deliberate Speed: Georgians Face School Desegregation and With All Deliberate Speed: The AP in Little Rock.

Each Friday afternoon for the next five weeks, a short documentary film exploring school desegregation in the South will be screened, selected from the Peabody Awards Collection at the Walter J. Brown Media Archives. The screenings will take place from 12-1 p.m., beginning next Friday, January 22, 2010 and continuing through February 19, 2010.

Measuring Deliberate Speed: Georgians Face School Desegregation is the culmination of a year of research and planning by staff at the Russell Library. The exhibit was created to showcase materials that illuminate the tactics, rhetoric, and reactions of Georgians to federal school desegregation mandates. Using text panels, artifacts, and selected audio and film clips, the display examines the landmark federal and state legal decisions that led to the desegregation of public schools in Georgia between 1950 and 1961.

With All Deliberate Speed, created by the Associated Press Corporate Archives, serves as a companion exhibit that explores how the news agency prepared for and covered Little Rock and its reverberations throughout the South. The AP had never faced a more difficult test of its mission to serve all members equally with objective, timely reporting than it did covering desegregation in Little Rock. Using news clippings, photographs, and correspondence, this exhibit captures a moment in time and demonstrates the legacy this event created for journalists everywhere.

For directions and parking information, please visit http://www.libs.uga.edu/directions.html or call 706-542-5788.

Both exhibits will remain on display at the Russell Library until February 28, 2010. Russell Gallery hours are Monday-Friday 8:30-4:30 p.m. Admission is free; tours of the gallery are available upon request. In addition to the collections of the Russell Library and the Associated Press Corporate Archives, Measuring Deliberate Speed was supplemented with materials from the archival collections of the Hargrett Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection, and the Foot Soldier Project for Civil Rights Studies.

TIME: Monday-Friday, 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m.
COST: No admission charge