National Museum of African American History and Culture (U.S.)

On May 12, 2009, the U. S. Congress authorized a national initiative by passing The Civil Rights History Project Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-19). The law directed the Library of Congress (LOC) and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) to conduct a survey of existing oral history collections with relevance to the civil rights movement, and to record new interviews with people who participated in the movement. The survey database was completed in 2011 and can be accessed at http://www.loc.gov/folklife/civilrights/survey/index.php . In the fall of 2010, the Smithsonian NMAAHC sponsored six initial interviews, then contracted with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Southern Oral History Program to conduct 50 interviews in 2011. More interviews were conducted in 2013 that will be added to the collection.