The Sounds of Justice Project

Over the past year, the Library has been engaged in the Sounds of Justice project, an audio digitization project funded by the Community Technology Foundation of California. The "Sounds of Justice" project provided both technology training and the opportunity to become content creators to six Library interns. These interns employed numerous information and communications technologies to preserve and disseminate the Library’s powerful audio content through the digitization of the original tapes and the creation of personal digital stories that incorporated clips from our newly digitized audio collection and visual images from our archival collections.

The goal of "Sounds of Justice" was to provide an opportunity for those participating to move from being passive technology consumers to active content creators and producers using digital media technologies. This transition from consumer to creator served to connect the participants to their own agency in their lives. Over the course of the project, over 60 audiotapes containing invaluable social justice content were digitized and preserved for future use and two digital stories were created by "Sounds of Justice" interns Pamela Cruz and Miguel Felix.

Listen to audio clips digitized as part of the project:

audio collection reel 10: Civil rights leader Rev Martin Luther King, Jr. address at the CDC Convention, Anaheim, C., March 16, 1968.

audio collection reel 11: Reporting from Phnom Pehn, journalist Wilfred Burchett speaks on the War in Vietnam.

audio collection reel 23: Malcolm X delivers his “Ballots or Bullets” speech.

audio collection reel 26: Political activist and former M.P. Bernadette Devlin discusses the civil rights crisis in Ireland, August 31, 1969.

audio collection reel 28: Civil Rights leader Rev Martin Luther King, Jr. speaks on non-violence and social change, 1968 Massey Lecture.

audio collection reel 31: William Matthew Byrne, Jr., the federal judge who presided over the 1970s Pentagon Papers trial and head of President Nixon's Commission on Campus Unrest, speaks about campus unrest, police tactics and the war in Vietnam, October 1970.

audio collection reel 33: Interview with Father James Groppi, who discusses fair housing laws and the role of the Catholic Church in the civil rights movement, September 18, 1967.

audio collection reel 39: A discussion of the Cuban community in Miami, “Little Havana” and Cuban immigration to the U.S., April 24, 1982.

audio collection reel 44: Profile of Madalyn Murray O’Hair, founder of American Atheists, whose lawsuit against the Baltimore Maryland School District led to the Supreme Court decision to ban compulsory prayer in public schools, May 15, 1971.

Watch digital stories created as part of the project:

Take Action produced by Pamela Cruz

Our Dual Worlds produced by Miguel Felix

The Library conducted a digital storytelling workshop in September 2006 to help community organizations and individuals learn about this powerful tool for creating social change.