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Congratulations to Harold K. Brown, the library’s 2012 recipient of the Monty Award! Brown was honored at an April 14 gala dinner and awards presentation at the U.S. Grant Hotel in downtown San Diego.
Brown is a prominent civil rights and community and economic development leader. He is an SDSU alumnus (class of 1959) who later became the first African American administrator at San Diego State University. While at SDSU, he organized the Black Studies courses into the Afro-American Studies Program and, as an associate dean in the College of Business Administration, he established the college’s Center for Community Economic Development.
More recently, Brown was instrumental in establishing the Harold K. Brown Civil Rights and African American Experience Collection, which is housed in the SDSU Library’s Special Collections and University Archives Department. The collection is an exceptional, full account of the struggles and progress of San Diego’s African Americans as told through unique, digitized personal papers, photographs, and oral histories.
Sponsored by the Alumni Association, the Monty Award is a symbol of achievement and success presented to distinguished alumni from each of SDSU’s seven academic colleges, Imperial Valley Campus and Library and Information Access. Distinguished service awards also are given to an exceptional alumni volunteer and an outstanding university employee.
If you would like to learn more about Harold Brown or the Collection, please visit the links below.
Harold K. Brown Oral History
Harold K. Brown Papers
SDSU NewsCenter Article on Harold Brown and the Collection
Creating Community Online Exhibit
Some of you may remember a popular exhibit we had in 2009 titled “Creating Community: African Americans in San Diego.” The exhibit featured materials from various African American archives and collections housed in Special Collections. Since the time of that exhibit, a lot of people have been working hard to build a broader collection, one with a strong emphasis on the Civil Rights Era in San Diego.
That hard work has resulted in The Harold K. Brown Civil Rights and African American Experience Collection, named after Harold K. Brown, a prominent leader of the civil rights movement in San Diego. Brown is an SDSU alumnus (class of 1959) who later became the first African American administrator at SDSU. Mr. Brown is one of those people who worked hard to create this collection, so I’m going to let you listen to what he has to say about it in this video created by the Urban League of San Diego County:
On October 22 at 4pm, we’re celebrating the Harold K. Brown Civil Rights and African American Experience Collection with a reception at the Parma Payne Goodall Alumni Center. If you would like to attend, please RSVP to Lynn Hawkes at lhawkes@mail.sdsu.edu.
More about the collection:
Oral Histories in Special Collections
Creating Community Online Exhibit
We received some excellent news late this Friday afternoon: The City of San Diego’s Historical Resources Board has selected the SDSU Library as a recipient of a 2011 Excellence in Historic Preservation Award for our Chicana & Chicano Archive Project! Is that cool or what? A display recognizing this year’s award recipients will be located in the lobby of the City Administration Building between May 16 through May 27, and the awards ceremony will be held on May 26.
You may remember the exhibit we held last fall titled “Unidos Por La Causa” that celebrated this collection. If you don’t, you can still take a look online.
This is quite an achievement. Kudos to the folks in Special Collections who created this project and to Interim Dean Mark Stover for nominating us. Can we get a round of applause!?!
Scripps Cottage, circa 1931
(Photo courtesy of Special Collections and University Archives)
Scripps Cottage, June 2010
Hardy Memorial Tower, circa 1931
(Photo courtesy of Special Collections and University Archives)
Hardy Memorial Tower, 2010
This is the Circulation Desk of the “Old Library” (now Hardy Tower) in the late 1930s. (Photo courtesy of Special Collections and University Archives)
The front desk of the Circulation and Course Reserves Department, SDSU Library, in 2010.
I hope you’ve had a chance to visit our “SDSU from A to Z” exhibit in the Donor Hall. We’re nearly halfway through SDSU Month, so don’t delay too long or you’ll miss it! If you have taken a look at the exhibit and enjoyed the photographs of SDSU in its infancy…and the funny way everyone dressed back then…well, we have more than 11,000 more photos for you to check out online!
Several years ago, librarian Lisa Lamont and several student assistants spent many, many hours slaving over a hot scanner to digitize University Archives’ collection of SDSU-related photographs (there’s more to come, as the collection contains more than 30,000 images). The end result is a really nice Website where you can search for images and read descriptions of each one (after you double click on a photo, see the menu that pops up on the lower right side). So have fun exploring…the past is only a click away!
SDSU Library 