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Creator
Robinson, Betty Garman
Call number
Sc MIRS Garman 2008-41
Physical description
8 audio_recordings
Language
English
Preferred Citation
Betty Garman Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee audio collection, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Moving Image and Recorded Sound Division, The New York Public Library
Sponsor
An anonymous donor funded preliminary processing for this collection. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation supported a research library-wide grant for the digitization, and funded the Schomburg for the description and production of the finding aid as part of The Next Century of Black Studies Project.
Repository
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Moving Image and Recorded Sound Division
Access to materials
Appointment preferred: Request an in-person research appointment.

Elizabeth "Betty" Garman Robinson (January 8, 1939 - October 11, 2020), was a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee organizer and a lifelong civil rights activist. The collection consists of eight audio recordings about the civil rights movement, dating from 1963 to 1997.

Biographical/historical information

Elizabeth "Betty" Garman Robinson (January 8, 1939 - October 11, 2020) was a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) organizer and a lifelong civil rights activist. SNCC was founded in the spring of 1960 by civil rights activist Ella Baker, to coordinate and assist students participating in direct action protests against segregation in Greensboro, North Carolina. The organization had significant support in voter registration efforts from civil rights activists such as Robert "Bob" Moses and Amzie Moore, and organizations such as the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). Amid the evolving US political landscape, the organization dissolved in 1968.

In 1964, Betty Garman moved from New York, where she was a student activist at Skidmore College, to Atlanta, Georgia, to work for SNCC. She participated in organizing northern students for the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project in 1964; supported the MFDP challenge to be seated at the 1964 Democratic National Convention; and organized Friends of SNCC groups on college campuses. In 1966, Garman co-authored "SNCC: A Special Report on Southern School Desegregation," with activist and future politician Marion Barry.

During and after a career in public health, Garman continued to organize for racial justice, labor, and housing issues in Baltimore, Maryland, working with the Citizens Planning and Housing Association (CPHA), the Baltimore chapter of Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), and the Baltimore City Civilian Review Board. Garman donated the materials she collected in the course of her life in the civil rights movement to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in 2008. Garman passed away in 2020 at the age of eighty-one.

Scope and arrangement

The collection consists of eight audio recordings about the civil rights movement, dating from 1963 to 1997. They are organized chronologically. The original format of the majority of the audio recordings was cassette, with many items containing two parts, some of which have been described separately.

In addition to two oral history interviews with SNCC organizers Bob Moses and Amzie Moore, as well as a radio broadcast, the bulk of the collection comprises recordings of a 1989 conference about the civil rights movement, which featured discussions about the 1988 film Mississippi Burning. The conference is unidentified, but it is likely the fifth annual Civil Rights Research and Documentation Conference, held April 21-23, 1989, at Jackson State University, Jackson, Mississippi. Garman does not appear on any of the recordings.

Administrative information

Source of acquisition

Betty Garman Robinson, 2008.

Revision History

Item AMI identifiers, titles, scope and content notes, and extent notes updated to facilitate public access by Lyric Benjamin-Hunter. (2026-05-08)

Processing information

Collection inventoried by Virginia Mullaney. Collection processed and described by Lyric Benjamin-Hunter, archivist. Finding aid published in 2025.

Separated material

See the Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books Division for the Betty Garman Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee files, Sc MG 807.

Using the collection

Location

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Moving Image and Recorded Sound Division
515 Malcolm X Boulevard, New York, NY 10037-1801
Third Floor

Access to materials

Appointment preferred: Request an in-person research appointment.