New Digital Archive: University of Nebraska-led Project Digitizes 1960s Activism Artifacts

From the University of Nebraska-Lincoln:

Mention the 1960s, and a few things are top of mind — activism, war, counterculture, protests — and Roz Payne, a filmmaker, photographer and activist herself, was often in the center of it all.

A member of the Newsreel Films collective, Payne chronicled the decade, following movements spanning the progressive spectrum, including Black Power, anti-war, gay rights, women’s liberation and Cuban Revolution among many others.

Now, much of her work from the 1960s is available online, through the Roz Payne Sixties Archive, a project spearheaded by University of Nebraska–Lincoln historian Patrick Jones. The archive, which is hosted by the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, is completely searchable and annotated.

The digitized collection is artifacts of the activism that defined the decade, including an anti-war march on the Pentagon in 1967; a showdown with the National Guard in Chicago, during the 1968 Democratic National Convention; Janis Joplin in concert; and the underground press.

There are also auspices of events to come, like posters and buttons from when Payne and her friends encouraged a political unknown to run for mayor of their small city in 1980: Bernie Sanders.

“The collection is vast, but it echoes much of what is happening now,” Jones said. “It’s been really interesting to see how the issues are similar, and that there’s a longer history – like these issues haven’t come out of nowhere. It’s part of an ongoing struggle, with reverberations. We haven’t progressed fully on some of these issues, but there has been change.”

Direct to Roz Payne Sixties Archive

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