UGA Libraries Peabody Awards Collection African-American NEH TV project

African-American Television Project

Over 1,100 television programs dating from 1949 to the present that document African-American history and culture have been fully cataloged, preserved, and made accessible to faculty, students, researchers and members of the public at the University of Georgia Libraries Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection.

The programs, all part of the Peabody Awards Collection, come from national networks and local stations from across the country. To be included in this project, a non-fiction program had to focus on a topic relevant to African-Americans or feature an African-American reporter or host; entertainment and children’s programs required at least one African-American character, performer, or guest. Included in this project were such varied programs as:

a 1949 local special on Baltimore’s slums
national and local news programs from the civil rights era
a 1954 “This is Your Life” episode honoring African-American educator Dr. Laurence C. Jones
a 1968 program from a Chicago public television station featuring interviews with James Baldwin, then-Representative Harold Washington, and a performance by singer Johnny Hartman
recent Peabody Award-winning documentaries on Malcolm X and Henry Aaron

There were three components for this project:

Preservation of the physical artifacts and preservation of the programs’ contents
Bibliographic and physical access to the programs
Repatriation of the programs to their originating stations

Preservation

Many of the titles are the only known surviving copies of these programs and, prior to the Archives' preservation actions, they existed only in the format in which they were originally submitted to the Peabody Awards decades ago. Most 2” videotapes associated with this project have been transferred to BetaSP preservation copies. Unique 16mm kinescopes have had new negatives and prints made from the Archives’ kinescopes, with BetaSP copies transferred from the new prints. All other 16mm prints have been transferred to BetaSP. 3/4” U-matic videocassettes dating from 1973 to 1981 have been transferred to BetaSP. VHS viewing copies were made for all transferred programs.

List of titles preserved under this project

Access

As the second component of the project, cataloging records for the over 1,100 titles were created on OCLC (a national bibliographic utility) and have been loaded onto GIL, the University of Georgia Libraries’ online catalog. In addition to the cataloging records for the individual programs, over 3,400 name authority records for persons and companies involved in creating the programs were contributed to the national name authority database. These records will assist catalogers at other libraries and archives in cataloging their own related materials.

The cataloging records include full credit and preservation information, along with detailed summaries and subject access. Through the information included in the cataloging records, researchers will be able to:

find which local television stations produced biographies featuring African-Americans
learn which companies sponsored programs featuring African-Americans
compare local and national programming during the civil rights era and the 1970s
explore innumerable other topics

VHS copies for most titles are available for viewing in the Media Department.

The complete list of African-American History and Culture Television Programs

Tips on searching the full cataloging records in GIL

Repatriation

The final component of the project has been to return copies of the unique programs to their originating stations as part of a “repatriation” effort. If your station would like to learn more about repatriation, please contact the Media Archives.

List of repatriated titles

Funding

This project was funded in part by a $96,590 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities Division of Preservation and Access (grant PA-23195-98).

Contact

For more information about this project or other aspects of Media Archives, please contact:
Ruta Abolins, Director, Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collection
abolins@uga.edu (706) 542-4757

For information about specific programs cataloged in this project, or for assistance in using GIL, please contact:
Mary Miller, Peabody Awards Collection Cataloger
mlmiller@uga.edu (706) 583-0212

For questions or comments regarding this website, please contact:
Laura Shedenhelm, Media Archives Cataloger
shedenhe@uga.edu (706) 583-0212

For Peabody Collection research assistance, please contact:
Linda Elkins, Peabody Awards Archive Librarian
lelkins@uga.edu (706) 542-7360

Links to:

Other resources on African-Americans and broadcasting.

Return to African-American History and Culture Television Collection.

Return to Peabody Awards Collection.

Go to Peabody Awards.

Go to Media Archives.

Return to UGA Libraries.

Last update: December 20th, 2004
Comments to: Paul Nunn pnunn@uga.edu
Copyright © University of Georgia. All rights reserved.
URL=http://www.libs.uga.edu/media/collections/peabody/africanamerican/aatvneh.html