{"value"=>"<p>The Institute of the Black World (IBW) was a think tank based in Atlanta, Georgia, focusing on Black scholarship and politics that operated from 1969 to 1983. In partnership with a variety of Black intellectuals and activists, IBW sponsored research projects; held conferences, symposia, and events; and produced numerous publications analyzing political, social, and cultural issues pertaining to the Black community in the United States and the wider African diaspora.</p> <p>The Institute grew out of a 1968 proposal by a group of faculty at the Atlanta University Center (AUC), a consortium of Atlanta-based historically Black colleges and universities which at the time was comprised of Spelman College, Morehouse College, Clark College, Morris Brown College, Atlanta University, and the Interdenominational Theological Center. The faculty, led by historian and Civil Rights activist Vincent Harding and literary scholar Stephen Henderson, proposed the creation of a Black studies department at AUC to be known as the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Advanced Afro-American Studies. After campus protests led to tensions between faculty and AUC administration, the Institute–renamed the Institute of the Black World–instead opened under the auspices of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Center, a nonprofit founded by Harding, Coretta Scott King, and other members of King's inner circle to carry on his legacy after his assassination in 1968. IBW operated as part of the King Center until 1970, when growing differences between Institute staff and King Center administration drove IBW to become an independent organization.</p> <p>The Institute was located at 87 Chestnut St. in Atlanta, Georgia. Harding served as IBW's first director, with Henderson and William (also called Bill) Strickland comprising other senior leadership. From the outset, the Institute had a number of notable supporters, including actor Ossie Davis, dancer Katherine Dunham, and singer Bernice Reagon, who all served on IBW's advisory board alongside other academics, artists, and activists. In 1974, Howard Dodson took over as director and led a reorganization of the Institute. He was succeeded in 1979 by longtime IBW staffer Patricia Daly, who oversaw the final years of the Institute's operations.</p> <p>IBW was affiliated with a variety of scholars representing a wide range of intellectual interests and political ideologies. These included Margaret Walker Alexander, Toni Cade Bambara, St. Clair Drake, Harry Haywood, C.L.R. James, Walter Rodney, and Sylvia Wynter, among many others who delivered lectures at IBW, authored articles published by IBW press, or participated in programs put on by the Institute. The Institute also had a group of \"senior research fellows\" who were more deeply involved in its work, including Lerone Bennett, Chester Davis, Robert Hill, Joyce Ladner, and Sterling Stuckey. The research fellows taught seminars, conducted research, and, with IBW office staff, planned the conferences, workshops, and events put on by the Institute.</p> <p>One of IBW's main areas of interest was the rapidly developing field of Black studies, and a number of its projects were aimed at supporting nascent Black studies programs on university and college campuses. In its first year of existence, the Institute surveyed colleges and universities across the country about their Black studies offerings and hosted a workshop for Black studies program directors. IBW continued to conduct research and analysis on this topic until its final years, when it held a series of conferences assessing the state of Black studies in the 1980s.</p> <p>Another focus of the IBW was politics: in 1970 it organized a \"Black Agenda Network\" of associates to assess the problems facing the Black community in the US and propose policies; their platform was submitted to the 1972 National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana. The Institute also worked closely with local Black political leaders and groups such as the Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials and Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson.</p> <p>IBW operated a robust publication program. Institute staff put out a twice-monthly syndicated newspaper column commenting on current events that ran from 1971 to 1975, entitled \"Black World View,\" and produced a journal of the same name that ran from 1976 to 1978. A collection of the newspaper columns, entitled <span class=\"title\">Black Analysis for the Seventies</span>, was published in 1973. IBW additionally produced a number of pamphlets featuring both original and reprinted content, including the \"Black Papers\" series published jointly with Third World Press, and a series of audiotapes that drew on previously recorded lectures delivered at the Institute.</p> <p>IBW also authored a monograph published by Harvard Educational Review entitled <span class=\"title\">Education and Black Struggle: Notes from the Colonized World</span> (1974), and a special issue of <span class=\"title\">Black Scholar</span> (1979) assessing the state of Black education twenty-five years after the <span class=\"title\">Brown</span> v. <span class=\"title\">Board of Education</span> decision. In 1976, IBW began running a bookstore out of its offices, selling its own titles as well as other books in subjects such as education, political science, Third World studies, literature, and children's books.</p> <p>The Institute relied heavily on funding from outside foundations, which by the mid-1970s began to cut back on their support to Black organizations, particularly those deemed politically radical. As funding sources dried up, the Institute was forced to curtail much of its former activity, though it continued to hold events and operate the bookstore until it officially dissolved in 1983.</p> <p>Source: White, Derrick E. <span class=\"title\">The Challenge of Blackness: The Institute of the Black World and Political Activism in the 1970s</span>. University Press of Florida, 2011.</p>"}
{"value"=>"<p>The Institute of the Black World records, dating from 1960 to 1991, consist of meeting minutes, office memos, correspondence, writings, financial records, subject files, and printed matter documenting the full range of IBW's activities from its founding to its closure.</p>"}
{"value"=>"<p class='list-head'>The Institute of the Black World records are arranged in nine series:</p>\n<ul class='arrangement series-descriptions'>\n<li><div class='series-title'><a href='/scm/21046#c1763241'>Series I. Martin Luther King Memorial Center Records</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1968-1971</div>\n<div class='series-extent'>1.25 linear feet (3 boxes)</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>The Martin Luther King Memorial Center records chronicle the founding and early years of the Institute of the Black World, up to and including its separation from the Martin Luther King Center. This series includes the 1968 proposal for the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Advanced Afro-American Studies at Atlanta University Center, as well as proposals, budgets, and other planning documents for the Institute as it developed as part of the King Center, including files from the Institute's earliest advisory and governing councils. Also present are invitations, programs, and press releases from the official opening of the Institute on January 17, 1970, an event entitled \"A Celebration of Blackness,\" which featured performances by the Harambee Singers and Katherine Dunham's dance company. Internal memos, reports, and meeting notes document the rising tensions between IBW and the King Center over the summer of 1970, as well as the subsequent official split in September.</p> <p>Additionally, there are meeting minutes, employment applications, financial documents, press releases, and clippings pertaining to the establishment and early years of the King Center itself, in which Vincent Harding was deeply involved. Multiple files concern the Library Documentation Project, another aspect of the Center, also led by Harding, which sought to collect and preserve the papers of King and other civil rights activists as well as amass a library on the Black experience more generally. Lastly, there is correpondence documenting Harding and other King Center staff's effort to establish a new intellectual journal dedicated to Black affairs.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/scm/21046#c1763258'>Series II. Administrative Files</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1969-1982</div>\n<div class='series-extent'>9.58 linear feet (24 boxes)</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>The Administrative Files document the management and day-to-day operations of the Institute via meeting minutes, reports, personnel files, notes, and internal memos created by and for IBW staff. They are arranged into six groupings: founding documents, committees and governing bodies, staff, reorganization, interoffice memos, and property.</p> <p>Committee and governing bodies files consist largely of agendas, meeting minutes, and reports generated by the board of directors, advisory council, and various committees—executive, education and publishing, and policy and planning—that oversaw different activities of the Institute. Note that files from the earliest iteration of the advisory council, as well as the Institute's first governing council, are located in the Series I: Martin Luther King Memorial Center.</p> <p>Staff files include biographical material of IBW personnel; job applications and resumes submitted by prospective employees; and information on IBW's intern and volunteer programs. There are also agendas and minutes from regular staff meetings addressing the Institute's daily work and ongoing activities, as well as readings, notes, and transcripts from staff education meetings, which were gatherings for IBW staff to discuss readings, politics, and current events.</p> <p>Reorganization materials focus on the times IBW underwent major restructurings: once in 1970-1971, after the Institute's split from the King Center, and again in 1975, upon Howard Dodson's appointment as director. The memos and reports in these files include ideas and critiques from staff at all levels of the organization on the Institute's leadership, management, and overarching priorities and goals.</p> <p>Property files concern the physical building where the Institute was located, office supplies and equipment, and a series of burglaries and break-ins of the Institute that occurred in 1975.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/scm/21046#c1763400'>Series III. Leadership</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1960-1979</div>\n<div class='series-extent'>10.42 linear feet (27 boxes)</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>The Leadership series is comprised of the personal and professional files of Vincent Harding, William Strickland, and Howard Dodson. For all three, the files include correspondence, writings, and materials relating to their non-IBW professional activities (Strickland and Dodson's files both additionally contain some IBW materials).</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/scm/21046#c1763634'>Series IV. Correspondence</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1968-1982</div>\n<div class='series-extent'>8.75 linear feet (22 boxes)</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>This series contains incoming and outgoing correspondence with associates and supporters of the Institute, academics, publishers, and other parties. The bulk of the correspondence is grouped either alphabetically or chronologically, in accordance with the original arrangement of the materials. The alphabetic correspondence includes a number of notable individuals, including scholars and writers who were associated with IBW such as Toni Cade Bambara, C.L.R. James, Walter Rodney, and Sylvia Wynter. The chronological correspondence tends to consist of letters expressing an interest in the work of IBW, requests for further information on the Institute, and responses to IBW publications such as <span class=\"title\">Black World View</span> and <span class=\"title\">Monthly Report</span>–although there is also a fair amount of overlap between the alphabetic and chronological correspondence, and letters to or from the same individuals may be represented in both places.</p> <p>The rest is grouped by type of correspondent: administrators and faculty representing colleges and universities, publishers and publication staff, and prisoners. The prisoner correspondence includes letters to and from incarcerated individuals across the country, including significant correspondence with Calvin Johnson at Green Haven Correctional Facility and Jesse Lang, who wrote about his imprisonment at the Missouri State Penitentiary for <span class=\"title\">Black World View</span>. Note that these categories too may overlap with the alphabetic and chronological correspondence.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/scm/21046#c1763886'>Series V. Programs and Projects</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1968-1991</div>\n<div class='series-extent'>40.17 linear feet (84 boxes)</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>The Programs and Projects series documents the various conferences, lectures, symposia, workshops, and events put on by IBW; as well as research projects carried out by the Institute. Generally, these files include planning and administrative documents, correspondence with participants, and any reports or papers generated during the programs. Sometimes events were recorded and files include transcripts.</p> <p>IBW's 1969 survey of Black studies programs at colleges and universities is represented here, as are the multiple workshops and conferences it held to assess the state of Black studies from the late 1960s to early 1980s. Of note is the Black Studies Curriculum Development Project files, which, in addition to administrative material and conference papers, contain a significant number of course syllabi from Black studies classes gathered from academic institutions across the country.</p> <p>There is a substantial amount of material from the Summer Research Symposium (SRS), a recurring program which brought in prominent Black scholars including Edward Kamau Brathwaite, C.L.R. James, and Walter Rodney to deliver lectures on certain themes. SRS files include transcripts of these lectures, as well as original research carried out by symposium participants.</p> <p>Also found in this series are Black Agenda Network files, which document IBW's involvement in the 1972 National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana. There are also materials demonstrating the Institute's engagement with local Georgia politicians, as well as two studies it conducted for the city of Atlanta on youth employment and Atlanta's needs.</p> <p>Other events documented here include conferences on childhood education and the role of Black women; cultural programs such as a film festival and tour of Jamaican folk musicians; a memorial event for Walter Rodney; and an anniversary event marking ten years of IBW.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/scm/21046#c1764719'>Series VI. Publications</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1969-1982</div>\n<div class='series-extent'>10.42 linear feet (26 boxes)</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>The Publications series consists of drafts, editorial correspondence, art and layout mockups, press releases, and sale invoices and subscription lists documenting the range of IBW's publishing projects, including works published by IBW as well as in partnership with other publishers. These are arranged into the following categories: books and journal special issues; papers and reprints; newspaper column and periodicals; reports, brochures, and ephemera; and unpublished projects.</p> <p>Book and journal titles represented include <span class=\"title\">Black Analysis for the Seventies</span> (IBW Press, 1973), <span class=\"title\">Education and Black Struggle</span> (Harvard Educational Review, 1974), the <span class=\"title\">Black Scholar</span> special issue authored by the Institute (1979), and Vincent Harding's <span class=\"title\">The Other American Revolution</span> (published jointly by IBW and the University of California, Los Angeles Center for Afro-American Studies, 1980).</p> <p>Papers and reprints cover two pamphlet series produced by IBW, Black Papers and Occasional Papers, as well as a series of article reprints published by the Institute.</p> <p>Newspaper column and periodical files include drafts and clippings of the \"Black World View\" syndicated newspaper column, which ran from 1971 to 1974; production files for issues 1-8 of the <span class=\"title\">Black World View journal</span>, which ran from 1976 to 1978; and materials documenting the full run of IBW's newsletter <span class=\"title\">Monthly Report</span>, which ran from 1971 to 1975 with a brief reemergence in 1979. Additional files cover a few other one-off or short-lived IBW newsletters.</p> <p>The unpublished projects consist of outlines, drafts, and correspondence relating to a number of unpublished works in varying states of completion. There are working files for two books to be written by IBW staff with working titles \"Black History as Black Struggle\" and \"Black Studies and the Struggle for Black Education.\" There are also multiple drafts of Sylvia Wynter's \"Black Metamorphosis: New Natives in a New World,\" originally conceived as a Black Paper, with related correspondence. Other projects documented here are \"Towards African Liberation: The Fifth Pan-African Congress 1945\" and \"Walter Rodney Speaks,\" which was later published in 1990 by Africa World Press. (Note that in general, manuscripts submitted for publication by IBW are located under Collected Writings in Series VII.)</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/scm/21046#c1764862'>Series VII. Financial</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1968-1982</div>\n<div class='series-extent'>13.58 linear feet (19 boxes)</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>The Financial series consists of bank statements, bills, budgets, check stubs, and receipt books that provide a detailed account of the day-to-day operating expenses of the Institute, as well as contribution records, grant applications, fundraising files, and sales reports that document the various sources of income upon which the Institute relied.</p> <p>The foundation files in particular give insight into the various nonprofit organizations that were funding Black institutions in the 1970s and include a number of funding proposals for various IBW programs and projects. Similarly the mailing lists, which collate information on subscribers, supporters, and potential donors to the Institute, show the interconnected networks of Black intellectual, political, and professional organizations of the era.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/scm/21046#c1765090'>Series VIII. Collected Writings, Organizations, and Subject Files</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1960-1985</div>\n<div class='series-extent'>19.54 linear feet (46 boxes)</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>This series consists of various material collected by IBW, arranged into Collected Writings, Organization and Conference Files, and Subject Files.</p> <p>Collected writings include manuscripts submitted for publication by IBW, transcripts of lectures and speeches delivered at IBW, and other writings by IBW friends and associates or on topics of interest. Included here are Toni Cade Bambara's lecture on Vietnam (a version of which was published in <span class=\"title\">Black World View</span>), drafts of Harry Haywood's autobiography <span class=\"title\">Black Bolshevik</span> (Liberator Press, 1978), Robert Hill's unpublished three-volume history of the Pan-African movement, and various writings by Grace Lee and James Boggs, St. Clair Drake, Locksley Edmonson, C.L.R. James, Manning Marable, and Walter Rodney, among others.</p> <p>Organization and conference files include correspondence, conference material, and printed matter. A range of Black political, academic, professional and community groups are represented, including the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History, the Black Panther Party, and the Southern Christian Leadership Council. While some files consist of only a few pieces of correspondence, others are quite substantial, especially for the organizations or conferences that featured participation from IBW staff. For example, there are significant materials from the 1970 Black studies seminar held in Aspen, Colorado, which Vincent Harding attended; the National Black Sisters Conference, in which both Harding and William Strickland participated; and the Fanon Research and Development Center, whose 1977 conference featured Howard Dodson as a keynote speaker.</p> <p>The subject files consist of a mix of material, including news clippings, pamphlets, reports, and correspondence, organized by topic (original folder titles were retained when present). Of particular note are the files on the Attica prison uprising of 1971, which include extensive press clippings documenting the day-to-day media coverage of the event; and Chester Davis's files on pre-college education, which collect Davis's wide-ranging research into educational curricula for Black youth across the country.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/scm/21046#c1765597'>Series IX. Printed Matter</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1969-1982</div>\n<div class='series-extent'>0.83 linear feet (2 boxes)</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>This series contains published material, including journals, newsletters, and ephemera, both produced by IBW and by other organizations. Included are issues 1-7 of <span class=\"title\">Black World View</span> journal; brochures, programs, and flyers advertising IBW events; and press clippings of articles about the Institute. Non-IBW materials include flyers, brochures, and ephemera collected by IBW, as well as newsletters produced by Black community groups, political organizations, and student associations. There is also a large amount of publications, leaflets, and ephemera produced by AFRAM Associates.</p></div></li></ul>\n", "type"=>"arrangement"}