The Julian Bond Papers Project is an innovative digital project that seeks to
make the life’s work of Civil Rights icon Julian Bond freely available to
scholars, students, community historians and the general public. Bond’s was a
trusted voice in American democracy throughout his life, which spanned
seven decades and such significant historical moments as the U.S. Civil
Rights era, school desegregation, the Vietnam War, South African apartheid,
as well as the movements for LGBTQ Rights and the environment.
Over approximately two decades, the Bond project plans to catalog,
transcribe, annotate, and publish Bond’s collection housed at the University of
Virginia’s Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library and including 11
series, 1641 folders, and 47,000 items, rendering accessible the editorial
process to community historians, crowdsourced transcriptionists and student
apprentices. Implementing a crowdsourced transcription process, the
project has created over 10,000 pages to date, including documents produced
during annual Charlottesville transcription events. The project also establishes
editorial apprenticeships to teach students digital skills and model alternate-
academic career options.
The project begins with the publication of Series 1, Bond’s speeches and
articles, in raw (single-verified, unannotated), freely available digital
transcriptions, and will proceed with subsequent content sets focused on his
audiovisual materials, correspondence, academic and political papers, and
family collections, to the eventual publication of a free and completely
annotated digital edition. Finally, the project will publish a three-volume,
thematically organized print series called “The Essential Julian Bond.”
Project Director: Deborah McDowell
Host Institution: The University of Virginia
