This maxim reflects the bond between writer Tom Dent and his library at Amistad.
Authentic Connections in the Clarie Collins Harvey Papers
Lisa Moore
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The owner of the Collins Funeral Home in Jackson, Mississippi was an activist in the civil rights movement, the women’s movement and the international peace movement during the 1960s and 1970s. When Freedom Riders arrived in Jackson to challenge segregated interstate bus transportation, Clarie Collins Harvey co-founded Womanpower Unlimited to provide the civil rights activists with food, shelter and money. Harvey networked with other organizations—local, national and international—to achieve those goals. You can read more about her life in Tiyi M. Morris’ book, Womanpower Unlimited and the Black Freedom Struggle in Mississippi (University of Georgia Press, 2015).
While scanning selected documents from the Clarie Collins Harvey papers for the Digital Public Library of America’s (DPLA) Black Women’s Suffrage Project, I encountered several instances of concrete evidence of the intersections between Harvey’s civil rights work of the 1960s in Mississippi and the international women’s peace movement. In one letter, Virginia Naeve, a Vermont-based activist with Women Strike for Peace (WSP), asks Harvey to choose a young woman from Jackson to participate in an upcoming women’s peace movement conference at The Hague in May 1964.
Virginia Naeve and Clarie Collins Harvey met in 1962 during a WSP trip to a nuclear disarmament conference in Geneva, Switzerland, which Harvey attended (as did Coretta Scott King). The next year, when Naeve organized a trip to the Vatican for WSP, Harvey was one of two black women who traveled to Italy for that pilgrimage; women from 18 countries went to appeal to Pope John XXIII to ask world leaders to stop increasing nuclear weapons. Naeve is noted as an organizer of that event here; Harvey is not mentioned by name, but by her Jackson civil rights activity.
For the 1964 women’s peace movement conference at The Hague, Harvey chose Dora Wilson, a sophomore music major at Tougaloo College in Jackson. Here you can see a dressed-for-travel Dora Wilson on the left, boarding the plane. Harvey was unable to attend the conference, but accompanied Wilson to the airport.
There is also a heartfelt letter in the Clarie Collins Harvey papers from Dora Wilson to Clarie Collins Harvey thanking her for the experience, and promising a formal report to Womanpower Unlimited about the trip. Dora Wilson eventually became a dean at the College of Fine Arts at Ohio University.
The black women’s suffrage project is supported by the Digital Public Library of America. The Digital Public Library of America brings together the riches of America’s libraries, archives and museums, and makes them freely available to the world.
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Kathe Hambrick is the Founder and former Executive Director of the River Road African American Museum (RRAAM), established in 1994 as Louisiana’s first African American Museum. She is a past President of the national Association of African American Museums (AAAM). She served as the Chief Curator and Director of Interpretation for the West Baton Rouge Museum for four years. Hambrick was born in New Orleans and spent half her life in California where she received an undergraduate degree in English and a minor in African American Studies from California State University Long Beach.
Hambrick is a Public Historian with a passion for collecting, preserving and interpreting history for diverse audiences. Her thirty-one-year career as a museum professional includes expertise in program development, interpretative planning, curation, grant writing, fundraising, and board governance. She led the effort to preserve three slave cemeteries and six historic buildings in Ascension Parish.
She is considered an expert on the history and culture of African Americans in communities along the Mississippi River. Kathe Hambrick’s interviews include local, national, and international media, the BBC Learning Channel, CBS Morning News, National Public Radio, and the New York Times. The consulting firm, 2PRESERVE was established by Hambrick in 2021 to provide cultural resources and guidance to corporations, museums, cultural centers, government agencies, and faith-based organizations.
Throughout her 31-year career, Kathe has curated over one hundred exhibits, including The Rural Roots of Jazz, African Influences on Louisiana Cuisine, Creole Du Monde, and The Square Collection which featured original art by Elizabeth Catlett, Jacob Lawrence, Richmond Barthé, and Tina Allen. Her most recent exhibit is the GU272 of Ascension: The Jesuit and Episcopal Connection to Slavery.
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Kathe Hambrick is the Founder and former Executive Director of the River Road African American Museum (RRAAM), established in 1994 as Louisiana’s first African American Museum. She is a past President of the national Association of African American Museums (AAAM). She served as the Chief Curator and Director of Interpretation for the West Baton Rouge Museum for four years. Hambrick was born in New Orleans and spent half her life in California where she received an undergraduate degree in English and a minor in African American Studies from California State University Long Beach.
Hambrick is a Public Historian with a passion for collecting, preserving and interpreting history for diverse audiences. Her thirty-one-year career as a museum professional includes expertise in program development, interpretative planning, curation, grant writing, fundraising, and board governance. She led the effort to preserve three slave cemeteries and six historic buildings in Ascension Parish.
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