PROJECT: ‘A Shaky Truce’: Starkville Civil Rights Struggles, 1960-1980

The Mississippi State University History Department and Libraries have launched a digital history project entitled ‘A Shaky Truce’: Starkville Civil Rights Struggles, 1960-1980. Developed by a cross-disciplinary team of faculty, librarians, graduate and undergraduate students, the project documents two decades of civil rights struggles in Starkville, MS.

The purpose of this project is to tell a story of local activism in Starkville, Mississippi. The fight for African American equal rights was not just relegated to Little Rock, Arkansas, Birmingham, Alabama, or Oxford, Mississippi, but was also fought on the streets and in the schools of every southern town during the Jim Crow era. Local individuals organized and protested against inequality and fought for integration, equal employment, and their right to vote. Their voices deserve to be heard, and their contributions to the larger civil rights narrative demands recognition.

…This website is designed to tell that story and provide information for scholars and tools for teachers interested in exploring these local conversations about race, equality, and human rights.

The content you see in this website is a result of over a year’s worth of research. The oral history interviews are ongoing.  Photos and documents are from Mississippi State University Libraries’ Special Collections, Digital Collections, or Circulating Collections; others come from other online archives; still other items were generously donated or shared by those we interviewed.

Author: Patrick Williams

Patrick Williams is Associate Librarian for Literature, Rhetoric, and Digital Humanities in the Syracuse University Libraries. He received his MSIS and PhD in Information Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. He is the editor of the poetry journal Really System.

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