The Newberry has launched a new digital collection featuring photographs, brochures, correspondence, and more documenting the Chicago chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The E. Winston and Ina D. Williams NAACP papers—made up of over 1,000 individual items—are the latest of the Newberry’s holdings to be made freely available online for study and re-use by researchers worldwide.
The Newberry purchased the E. Winston and Ina D. Williams archive in 2018 through an antiquarian book dealer. Project archivists at the Newberry processed the collection and created a finding aid to organize the materials, which included three scrapbooks made by the Williamses. The collection was then made available for viewing in our reading rooms.
Just over a year later, Alison Hinderliter, Curator of Modern Manuscripts and Archives, received an unexpected email from a retired historian named Bert Hansen. While sorting through his materials, Bert came across an NAACP scrapbook compiled by the Williamses that he had purchased in 2003.
Raised in Chicago, Bert taught history at the university level for over forty years. He regularly purchased primary source materials on eBay that he thought would be good teaching tools for his students. Upon rediscovering the scrapbook, Bert searched the name “E. Winston Williams” online and found the Williams archive at the Newberry. He emailed Alison, offering to donate the additional scrapbook to be stored alongside its related materials. Alison eagerly accepted.
“The addition of the scrapbook reunited a historic thread that had otherwise been broken,” Alison said. “It's my understanding that the Williamses did not have anyone to hand down their scrapbooks to, so the collection was broken apart and sold separately. I'm glad we were able to knit some of it back together!”
Although the E. Winston and Ina D. Williams NAACP papers have been available for viewing in the Newberry’s reading rooms since 2019, the recent digitization of the collection will increase its accessibility, making it possible for anyone around the world to view the archival documents. These materials will be particularly valuable to public historians, political and legal scholars, and scholars interested in genealogy, civil rights, social justice, and community organizing.
When Bert mailed the additional scrapbook to the Newberry, he wrote, "It makes me happy to know that the album will be of good use in teaching as well as in preserving the NAACP history."
The digitization of the collection reflects the Newberry’s latest effort in achieving these goals.
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Lili Pangborn is Communications Coordinator at the Newberry.