Press/Journalists

Indian Census Records and James Meredith Correspondence Among Records Recently Added to NARA's Website
Press Release · Thursday, May 27, 1999

Washington, DC

"To: The Justice Department. . . I have applied for admission to the University of Mississippi. I have not been accepted and I have not been rejected. Delaying tactics are presently being used by the state. . . " signed by James Meredith, February 7, 1961.

. . . "People didn't believe Nazism would be as bad as it actually turned out to be. . . This was also true of Hitler's anti-Semitism. People thought it would go not further than the removal of Jews from public office.. . ." Personal interview conducted on July 27, 1945, by Sam Beer with Dr. Kuper to gather data on attitudes of Germans immediately following World War II.

College Park, MD. . . These excerpts are from the 7,500 recently digitized items that were added to the National Archives and Records Administration's (NARA) web site as part of its Electronic Access Project. This new material is the final installment of the project's digitalized items, bringing the total number of digitized copies of photographs, maps, and textual documents available through the NARA Archival Information Locator (NAIL) to 124,000.

The variety of materials in this recent addition reflects the breadth of NARA holdings: an 1867 census of freedmen and their descendants of the Cherokee Nation; documents relating to the only known Federal fugitive slave case tried in California, a "free state"; an 1890 schedule of names of Cherokee freedmen in Indian Territory; photograph albums from the Engineering and Research Center of the Bureau of Reclamation, 1903-1972; papers from the Kennedy White House Central Files, January 20, 1961-November 22, 1963; records of the Joint Chiefs of Staff relating to Cuba, 1961-1964; and selected personal papers of Burke Marshall relating to James Meredith's admission into the University of Mississippi.

Seventeen documents from Burke Marshall's personal papers, 1961-63, contain a chronology of civil rights events and issues in the state of Mississippi, letters and memoranda on James Meredith's attempts to enroll at the University of Mississippi, and a copy of the motion filed on behalf of Mr. Meredith. These records are in the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, MA.

One thousand forty-two photographs from the Engineering and research Center of the Bureau of Reclamation document the construction of dams and related work throughout the western United States and provide a photographic history of project construction. These records are in the Rocky Mountain Region.

A schedule of names of Cherokee freedmen created by Special Agent John W. Wallace. Individuals on the schedule were entitled to share with the Shawneee and Delaware in the per capita distribution of $75,000 appropriated by Congress in October 1888 and issued under the supervision of this office. These records are in the National Archives Building, Washington, DC.

NAIL (NARA ARCHIVAL INFORMATION LOCATOR) now consists of 400,000 descriptions of records and 124,000 digitized items. The web site address is http://www.archives.gov/research_room/arc/. The Electronic Access Project enables anyone, anywhere, with a computer connected to the Internet to search descriptions of NARA's nationwide holdings and view digital copies of many important documents. The project is funded by the U.S. Congress with the support of Senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska.

Visit the "Recently Added Data" page for additional information on new information posted on this site.

For additional PRESS information, please contact the National Archives Public Affairs staff at (301) 837-1700 or by e-mail.

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This page was last reviewed on October 29, 2021.
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