Princeton U Library Exhibition Displays Civil Rights Movement Objects

PRINCETON, NJ — A new exhibition at Princeton University will showcase objects depicting the watershed events from the 1960s U.S. Civil Rights Movement.

The exhibition opens Monday, April 24 at Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library. Titled “Nobody Turn Us Around: The Freedom Rides and Selma to Montgomery Marches: Selections from the John Doar Papers” showcases over 30 photographs and documents from two events during the civil rights movement - the Freedom Rides of 1961 and the Selma-to-Montgomery marches of 1965.

The exhibition is curated by Princeton University Library’s William Clements, Public Policy Papers Archivist, and Phoebe Nobles, Processing Archivist. It includes materials selected from the papers of John Doar, who prosecuted discrimination and segregation cases for the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department in the 1960s. The papers are housed at Mudd Manuscript Library.

The objects on display hint at how the Justice Department—as well as the executive branch and the F.B.I.—were watching and reacting to the direct actions of riders and marchers like John Lewis, James Farmer, Diane Nash, Hosea Williams, Ralph Abernathy and Martin Luther King, Jr.

While both the Freedom Rides and the Selma-to-Montgomery marches were thwarted by white mobs and state and local officials and police, the images and accounts of the violent receptions to peaceful protesters swayed public sentiment and created pressure to pass an order in September 1961 by the Interstate Commerce Commission to desegregate travel facilities, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Barbara Valenza, Director of Library Communications, has provided the graphic design for the exhibition and exhibition project management is by Stephanie Wiener, Exhibitions Registrar and Gallery Operations Manager.

The exhibition, which runs from April 24, through March 31, 2024, is open to the public during the library’s regular opening hours.

For more information, visit: https://library.princeton.edu/nobodyturnusaround

Digital companion exhibition: https://dpul.princeton.edu/nobodyturnusaround