This web site is a cumulation of a summer research project done by Peter Bratt and Garth Pauley. Professor Pauley wanted to created a web archive of unknown speeches from the Civil Rights movement, and thanks to funding from the McGregor Research Grant, this became reality. After being selected by the McGregor Board, Peter Bratt began research in May of 2001.

The work for the project was divided into three stages. First, a master list of 400 speeches from a variety of civil rights figures was assembled. Prof. Pauley narrowed the speech list by selecting speeches given after the Plesey v. Fergeson (1896) decision. We next looked at speeches that were unpublished or not included in any published anthology. From this original list of 400 speeches, we narrowed or focus to twenty and thus the second part of this project began.

Phase two consisted of typing and transcribing the selected speeches. Many times the speeches just needed to be typed into Word format, but a couple of speeches were taken form the original sound recording. This work took a long time, since the institutions that held the speeches needed to be contacted in order to gain access to the works.

The final phase consisted of design the web site. We have chosen a site outside of Calvin's system in hopes of attracting a greater audience and providing an easier URL. It was beneficial for me to learn how to use Dreamweaver; hopefully you can visit my personal web site, which I hope to have up and running in the near future.

All in all, this was a very good project to work on. Many thanks to Calvin College, the McGregor family and Professor Pauley for his assistance through this summer. Pictures for this page will be posted as soon as they are developed.

Peter Bratt-August 7. 2001