The 15th annual World College Radio Day takes place on Friday, October 3, 2025, with stations from around the globe celebrating and bringing attention to student radio as an enduring form of media. The first licensed college radio stations launched in the United States in the 1920s and since that time student radio practitioners have been innovators in technology, music discovery and radio programming.
By nature, radio has traditionally been an ephemeral endeavor, with many shows never recorded and lost to the ages. While some stations meticulously save paper materials like internal newsletters and promotional materials sent by bands and record labels, many others regularly purge these bits and pieces of day-to-day operations. College radio has added challenges due to ever-changing groups of students, tight budgets and space constraints. In light of these factors, many college radio stations aren’t able to save and archive as much as they would like.
Spring 1988 DJ Comment book from Mount Holyoke College’s radio station WMHC. Source: DLARC College Radio (digitized from the Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections Repository)
The Digital Library of Amateur Radio and Communications launched a dedicated college radio collection in February 2024 in an effort to preserve the materials associated with college radio culture. It now contains over 9,000 items from student radio stations and student radio trade organizations from across the United States and Canada. The wide-ranging collection includes radio station flyers, music charts, playlists, zines, program guides, organizational documents, correspondence, meeting notes, recordings of artist interviews, oral histories, scholarly articles, clippings, photos, training manuals, scripts, magazines and more. It is especially exciting to me that these items now exist in a central place online, so that college radio fans, participants, scholars and alumni can search and find materials from a variety of stations.
Cover of May 1946 issue of IBS Bulletin. This was a publication produced by Intercollegiate Broadcasting System. Source: DLARC College Radio/Samuel T. Arnold Papers (OF.1CA.A2), Box 7, Folder 112, Brown University Archives
We have been regularly adding items to DLARC College Radio from Yale University’s archives, including materials from Yale’s independent student radio station WYBC and from The Ivy Network. Formed in 1947, The Ivy Network was initially started by members of college radio stations at Ivy League schools, including those at Dartmouth, Yale, Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, and Princeton. The Ivy Network was “designed to further the aims and purposes of the member stations, to gain the advantages which the free exchange of information, ideas, and advice will bring, and to obtain advertising on a national scale,” according to its policy document.
In honor of College Radio Day, we invite you to explore and contribute to the growing collection of student radio materials in DLARC College Radio on the Internet Archive.
Episodes of WINGS (Women’s International News Gathering Service) newscasts from 1986 to present
Recordings from CFRC Radio’s Oral History Project done in conjunction with the Queen’s University radio station’s 60th anniversary
The Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications is funded by a grant from Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC) to create a free digital library for the radio community, researchers, educators, and students. DLARC invites radio clubs, radio stations, archives and individuals to submit material in any format. To contribute or ask questions about the project, contact: Kay Savetz at kay@archive.org. Questions about the college radio sub-collection can be directed to Jennifer Waits at jenniferwaits@archive.org.
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Public librarians are shaping the future of the historic record. As experts in community knowledge dedicated to serving local information needs, these librarians are uniquely positioned to preserve and provide access to their community’s stories. Since 2017, Internet Archive’s Community Webs program has provided training, support, and services to empower public libraries to preserve local digital heritage.
For rural public libraries, this crucial work may be particularly challenging. While a range of cultural heritage institutions may play a role in local preservation initiatives focused on larger communities, the public library may be the only organization engaging in this work in a rural area. Resource constraints, however, make it difficult for rural libraries to take on new initiatives and they may lack access to tools, training, and technology to support these efforts. Yet documenting how history is happening in these communities is essential for ensuring a more complete historic record. Without participation from rural libraries, these local stories may go untold, unheard, and undocumented.
Librarians from rural and small librarians across the country gathered in Albuquerque for a workshop hosted by Internet Archive’s Community Webs program.
In response to these challenges and opportunities, Internet Archive has recently focused on recruiting rural libraries into the Community Webs program, providing them with access to web archiving and digital preservation services as well as training and support at no cost. On September 20th, a group of these program members from across the country came together to learn about practical methods and accessible resources that can be used to document, preserve, and share local history in rural communities. Hosted in conjunction with the Association for Rural and Small Libraries Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the event was an opportunity for participants to work with Internet Archive staff and their peers from similar institutions to develop plans for implementing community-focused preservation initiatives.
A screenshot from a website captured by workshop participant Belen Public Library. Belen, New Mexico is south of Albuquerque with a population under 8,000.
Over the course of the workshop, participants learned strategies for developing community partnerships, providing access to digital collections, and ensuring long term preservation of digital assets. Participatory preservation initiatives such as community scanning days and oral history programs were also covered. Particular attention was paid to the preservation of web-based local content. From the websites of community organizations to local news sites to neighborhood blogs, web archiving is critical for libraries working to preserve their community’s story as it unfolds. Attendees learned how to use Archive-It to both preserve and provide access to web archive collections. They then brainstormed about what local online information possessed enduring value for their current and future community members. Many attendees cited local newspapers that had moved to online-only distribution, town or county government webpages, and online information about community resources and services as content they would include in their web archives.
Internet Archive will continue to offer support through the Community Webs program for these libraries as they take what they learned in this workshop and begin to apply it locally. Thank you to the Mellon Foundation whose support allows our team to host events like this and continue to expand the Community Webs program. We also wish to thank all of the libraries that participated in our recent workshop:
Asotin Public Library (Washington), Belen Public Library (New Mexico), Cairo Public Library (New York), Charlotte Public Library (Vermont), Dodge Center Public Library (Minnesota), Hillsboro Community Library (New Mexico), Holbrook Public Library (Massachusetts), Jemez Springs Public Library (New Mexico), Kendall Young Library (Iowa), Middlebury Public Library (Indiana), Milltown Public Library (New Jersey), Mount Pleasant Public Library (Texas), Randolph County Public Libraries (North Carolina), Salem-South Lyon District Library (Michigan), Scott County Library System (Iowa), Smithville Public Library (Texas), Sweet Home Public Library (Oregon), Van Horn Public Library (Minnesota), Westford Public Library (Vermont), and Yavapai County Free Library District (Arizona)
Celebrating 1 trillion web pages archived, the Internet Archive is proud to honor the visionary who made it all possible. As announced in The New Yorker, this year’s Internet Archive Hero Award will be presented to Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, whose groundbreaking work opened the door to a connected world and laid the foundation for our shared digital history.
The Internet Archive Hero Award is an annual award that recognizes those who have exhibited leadership in making information available for digital learners all over the world. Previous recipients have included the island nation of Aruba, public information advocate Carl Malamud, copyright expert Michelle Wu, and the Grateful Dead.
Sir Tim’s invention transformed how humanity shares knowledge, and his ongoing advocacy for an open and accessible web that empowers individuals continues to inspire us. We’re thrilled to recognize his enduring contributions as we mark this historic achievement for the web.
Sir Tim will receive the Hero Award at an event in San Francisco on October 9, and will be celebrated from afar during the Internet Archive’s annual celebration on October 22, “The Web We’ve Built.”
The following guest post from Joanna Kolosov, Librarian and Archivist at the Sonoma County Library in California, is part of a series written by members of Internet Archive’s Community Webs program. Community Webs advances the capacity of community-focused memory organizations to build web and digital archives documenting local histories.
Sonoma County Library joined Community Webs back in 2017, the same year the North San Francisco Bay was hit by devastating wildfires. Realizing that much of the stories, video and information about the emergency response, aftermath and recovery efforts was being shared online and constantly changing, we sensed the urgency to capture stories as the crisis unfolded and the community navigated new territory. We received our new Archive-It account and started learning by doing, creating the “North Bay Fires, 2017” collection.
One of the first websites we archived was cartoonist Brian Fies’ blog, The Fies Files, where he posted a webcomic that he penned in the days following the fire that consumed his house and much of the neighborhood of Coffey Park. He later published it as a graphic memoir called A Fire Story. Preserving the first draft from his blog, we have also saved the numerous comments elicited by his powerful and intimate account.
Screenshots from an archived blogpost by Brian Fies—“A Fire Story, COMPLETE,” The Fies Files, 15 October 2017.
Also included in the North Bay Fires collection is a video by Sutter Health recounting how staff at the Santa Rosa Regional Hospital came together to evacuate the hospital in the early hours of October 9th. Combining firsthand accounts and security camera footage, Firestorm: The First Hours shows healthcare workers rising to the challenge of an unprecedented emergency.
Sutter Health’s Heroes Among Us interview project.
The collection also features websites of volunteer-run groups that sprung up to meet the needs of their communities, providing essential information about cleanup and rebuilding, disaster preparedness, and disaster relief. Some examples include Coffey Strong, a site that provided resources to the community on comparing builders, debris removal, and landscaping. Fire Safe Occidental included evacuation and cell coverage maps as well as a wildfire action plan. UndocuFund.org was the online presence of a mutual aid project set up to help the county’s most vulnerable residents.
Some of the archived content in the collection reflects on past wildfire disasters, such as “The Forgotten Fires of Fountaingrove and Coffey Park,” a blog post by the late Jeff Elliott, author of SantaRosaHistory.com, who places the fire phenomenon in its broader historical context. Reporters Eric Sagara and Patrick Michaels traced the development of unchecked growth in the wildfire path in the March 14, 2018 episode of Reveal’s podcast “Built to Burn.” Stepping back even further allows us to consider the history of the landscape. In a video posted by staff of the Bouverie Preserve, fire ecologist Sasha Berleman compares past policies of fire suppression with a deeper understanding, grounded in Indigenous knowledge and stewardship and the impact of fire on ecosystems. The archive also documented the aftermath in the years following the fires, showing evidence of how the community continued to regroup, remember, and recover.
An archived tweet from the Santa Rosa Fire Department at the one-year anniversary
Following the Los Angeles fires of January 2025, this collection has taken on new meaning as an archive of resilience and hope, offering testimonies of recovery and regrowth for LA fire survivors.
The experience of documenting the 2017 wildfires prepared us for preserving Sonoma County’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic beginning in 2020. The Sonoma Responds project was an online archive that invited our community to collectively build the historical record of living through COVID-19, the Black Lives Matter movement and the impacts of these events on daily life locally. Members of the public could upload a photo, audio/video file, or PDF that embodied their experiences and impressions of life in lockdown. We also encouraged people to nominate a website, webpage, blog post, news article, or online video for inclusion in the web archives. While we expected to receive links to news articles and the like, most submissions were from content creators, nominating their music videos, journals and blogs. These included singer/songwriter Chris Herrod’s album, I Don’t Play Xmas Songs, I Play Coronavirus Songs (watch all 10 tracks by clicking the “play” button in the Wayback banner at the top of the page). Michael Mann created a series of live journal entries on his blog “riding the viral apocalypse” that documented the mundane to the surreal happenings of pandemic life. “Book of Days: A Covid Kitchen Chronicle” was created by Liat Goldman Douglas, who described herself as “a mom and elementary school teacher presently working with a neighborhood Pandemic Pod of Tk-2nd graders; baking my way through and sharing my story as I go.”
An image from the archived page “Book of Days: A Covid Kitchen Chronicle” by List Goldman Douglas
Another notable submission encapsulating that time was a crowdsourced list of Black-owned restaurants and businesses in Sonoma County, an effort that has since been expanded to include Native, POC-immigrant, and people of color-owned businesses.
Screenshot of collectively created directory, archived 23 October 2020
Now more than ever, we recognize and appreciate the value of preserving the web to ensure that reliable sources of information, vital pieces of the historical record, endure. To that end, the library is embarking on a new collection—Community Roots/RaícesComunitarias—a shift from event collecting to preserving the websites of local organizations who work to support the needs and aspirations of marginalized groups.
This change in focus warrants a new approach to collecting, as we seek permission from organizations to archive their web content. This requires us to be intentional and transparent about our collecting. This accountability acknowledges the asymmetrical relationship between archival institutions and communities of color that has led to mistrust, silencing, and harm; it is vital in maintaining equitable partnerships. It is also an opportunity to let local organizations know who we are and the preservation work we have been doing.
We hope this opens a dialogue and leads to future collaboration. At the very least, it is a chance for the library to say, “What you are doing in our community matters, and the library is here to support, celebrate and further your work.” So far, we’ve received an enthusiastic response from organizations such as Positive Images, an LGBTQIA+ Community Center, and the North Bay Organizing Project, a social justice coalition.
This October, the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine will reach an extraordinary milestone: 1 trillion webpages preserved.
Since 1996, the Wayback Machine has been capturing the web—saving the voices, creativity, and communities that make up our shared digital history. Nearly one trillion pages later, we’re still archiving, so that future generations can look back and understand the world as we lived it online.
Now we want to invite you to share your story with us!
Record a video answering the question: “Why is the Wayback Machine important to you?”
Guidelines:
Keep it to about 1 minute, record in vertical/portrait format, and leave a second of silence at the start and end so nothing gets cut off.
Use any device you like: your phone, webcam, etc.
Share your video so we can find it:
Post it on your preferred social media platform with the hashtag #Wayback1T
As noted in the recent court filings in UMG Recordings, Inc. v. Internet Archive, both parties have advised the Court that the matter has been settled. The parties have reached a confidential resolution of all claims and will have no further public comment on this matter.
Art historians, critics, curators, and humanities scholars rely on the records of artists, galleries, museums, and arts organizations to understand and contextualize contemporary artistic practice. Yet, much of the art-related materials that were once published in print form are now available primarily or solely on the web and are ephemeral by nature. In response to this challenge, more than 40 art libraries, museums, and organizations from across the United States and Canada have partnered with Internet Archive to establish a collective approach to the preservation of web-based art content at scale: The Collaborative ART Archive (CARTA).
Since 2018, members of CARTA have worked together to identify, preserve, and provide access to at-risk online content related to the arts. The program relies on the expertise of those working in art libraries and museums by asking them to nominate sites for inclusion in the archive. Internet Archive web archivists then work to capture the sites and make the preserved content available in the CARTA collections portal.
Sumitra Duncan, Head of the Web Archiving Program at the New York Art Resources Consortium/The Frick Collection, was one of the founding program members and currently serves as the CARTA Advisory Board Chair. In speaking about the program, she reflected “It’s been tremendous to see what we’ve all been able to achieve together with CARTA in just a few years of working collaboratively, with over 40 member organizations having contributed. This work isn’t as easily accomplished alone (especially for those who are part of a small museum staff, face shrinking budgets for subscriptions, or are the solo archivist/librarian at their organization), so CARTA has allowed many art library colleagues to join the effort and share their expertise for collection development to ensure that these ephemeral materials are being preserved before disappearing from the live web.”
While CARTA is a member-supported program, mission-aligned organizations experiencing financial constraints may apply to join through the Sponsored Membership Program. One of CARTA’s sponsored members is the American Craft Council, a nonprofit organization that celebrates the history, practice, and unique storytelling of American craftwork. “I was very happy to be invited back to join CARTA as a sponsored member,” said Beth Goodrich, Archivist at the American Craft Council. “It was very important to me to see that the field of craft is recognized and reflected in the archival record of art in America and around the world.”
Each CARTA member brings their own unique expertise to the program, often contributing nominations connected to the regions, styles, and media represented in their institution’s collections. Marie Chant, Digital Archivist at the Museum of Glass, explained “Museum of Glass has been digitally documenting vibrant and innovative glass artists in our state-of-the-art Hot Shop for over twenty years. Joining CARTA was a natural next step for our work and will help further support our collection of born-digital glass art documentation. We are excited to work with the Internet Archive and other CARTA institutions committed to preserving significant web-based contemporary art resources for generations to come.”
In addition to nonprofit organizations and museums, CARTA’s membership also includes university art libraries. One of these contributors is Kristy Waller, Archivist at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. “Emily Carr University (ECU) was pleased to be selected to participate in CARTA as a sponsored member and we are excited to contribute Canadian art and design content. ECU supports both emerging and established artists by documenting arts education and practice through its websites and resources. We tried to crawl these sites manually using open-source tools, but arts content is often complicated and media heavy, making this work unsustainable on our budget. Through our involvement in CARTA, we are able to preserve content for the ECU community and beyond; as well as collaborate with local arts organizations to nominate artist-run centres and artists’ web sites – always with the goal of increasing meaningful access to arts content for future researchers.”
As the CARTA collections and membership continue to grow, collaborators are pursuing more opportunities to preserve and provide access to art resources from communities and organizations across the world. “I’m very grateful to CARTA members and the Internet Archive staff for their dedication and shared vision for the success and continued growth of this program via coordinated collaboration,” said Duncan. “I’m excited to see how we can further get the word out about the wonderful resources we have within the CARTA collections and to recruit additional members to the CARTA cohort who can bring unique perspectives to subject areas not yet represented by the sites we’ve archived thus far.”
“CARTA is transformative in the realm of preserving web-based art history,” said Heather Slania, who began her involvement with the program while working at the Maryland Institute College of Art and now serves as the Chief Librarian of the National Gallery of Art. “Its collaborative nature is vital for managing the vast and interconnected art world. I strongly encourage large and small institutions to join this essential endeavor. By contributing to CARTA, you are preserving art information and ensuring that future generations have a rich and diverse understanding of today’s art landscape.”
We’re thrilled to see how much our hope for DWeb to decentralize globally has been fulfilled this year. In our blog announcing the Core team’s decision to take a hiatus from holding DWeb Camp in California, our Senior Organizer Wendy Hanamura wrote:
[It] is time to put our energy into truly decentralizing DWeb. We want to nurture this movement in a way that empowers nodes around the world, especially those outside of the United States. We want to focus our energies in 2025 on helping local networks build capacity and grow.
In 2025, we held gatherings in Taipei and Berlin before a summer jam-packed with DWeb happenings: DWeb was at What Hackers Yearn in the Netherlands, HOPE_16 in New York, along with the intensive, hands-on week of p2p and local-first protocol learning at the DWeb Seminar SF & Weekend (stay tuned for more writing to come from that).
And of course, DWeb Camp Cascadia, organized by the stellar folks of the DWeb YVR Node. By the spring, we had been hearing murmurs of their planning the event. It all came together when they decided to hold it early August on beautiful Salt Spring Island, a 45-minute drive and 90-minute ferry ride from Vancouver. This was only the second camp outside of California since DWeb+Coolab Camp Brazil in 2023.
View from inside a tent at DWeb Camp Cascadia
For anyone who was there in 2019 at DWeb Camp at the Mushroom Farm — it felt so much like our first DWeb. It was held at the Farmers’ Institute, which is regularly used for an annual farmer’s fair for the whole island. About 60 participants in total attended throughout the weekend. An informal polling (raised hands during the opening) showed that about 40% of attendees traveled from the US, with the remaining 60% from Canada — several of whom live on Salt Spring Island itself. It spoke volumes that the local attendees really enjoyed the event while having various interests: from regenerative agriculture and responsible land stewardship to music and web development.
The event kicked off on Friday evening with remarks from Member of Parliament, Elizabeth May, whose federal electoral district spans across seven islands, including Salt Spring Island. As leader of Canada’s Green Party, May’s team is working to shape Canada’s upcoming AI legislation. She first gave an acknowledgement of the ancient indigenous history of where we were and its colonization. Then she called attention to Big Tech’s ongoing global dominance, and the recent occurrence of the democratically decided Digital Services Tax having been scrapped by the Canadian Prime Minister over tariff negotiations with the U.S. Following her speech, I (mai), gave a history of the DWeb events and shared the DWeb Principles, with campers getting up to read each of the five principles. Campers then got into small groups to discuss them, with a few of them coming up to share their own reflections.
Campers watching Member of Parliament, Elizabeth May, speak at the Opening Session
Saturday and Sunday were packed with talks, discussions, and workshops. Unlike the main DWeb Camp where we have many concurrent tracks, mornings were a single track of programming followed by afternoons with three parallel unconference sessions. DWeb Camp Cascadia’s cornerstone themes were decentralization, democracy, open social networks, regenerative agriculture, and included community talks by local technologists living in and around Salt Spring Island.
Brooklyn Zelenka of Ink & Switch and spec editor for the UCAN distributed RPC and auth system, gave an excellent talk Saturday morning introducing local-first technologies and the affordances of networks that prioritize local, people-centric connectivity. Brooklyn described how big data “cloud” services centralize infrastructure in a way that always requires connectivity (such as when you can no longer edit a Google document when you lose internet access). Offering a powerful metaphor, Brooklyn suggested most services today rely on networks that act more like a military aircraft carrier, when many personal or local services could act more like a bike — nimble, resilient, and scaled down to meet the unique needs of individuals. You can check out the recording of the August DWeb Virtual meetup where she gave the same presentation.
Brooklyn Zelenka giving a talk on local-first networks
There was a cornerstone session for the Open Social Web, led by Nigini Oliviera (DWeb Seattle Node lead) and featured Ian Davis, Matthew Lorentz and Mike Waggooner, each discussing their work with ATProtocol, ActivityPub, and Nostr. They discussed the differences between social media protocols and how each of them hold potential for new apps to be built on them.
Jacob Sayles of Cascadia Collaborative Design gave a workshop on Meshtastic radios. All over the world there has been a growing popularity of LoRa (Long-Range) devices, particularly with the release of Meshtastic software that is increasingly making it easier for anyone to send short, SMS/text-length messages to those nearby. It’s completely decentralized in that it requires no dedicated router and enables messages to hop from device-to-device to go to its intended recipient(s). In practical terms, it’s currently most useful for emergency situations and other situations as an alternative to mobile and internet connectivity. While messages are encrypted, there are still privacy issues with the software/hardware that make it less useful for privacy-sensitive uses.
Poster with unconference sessions scheduled on Sunday, the last day of Camp
Some of the unconference sessions included:
What would a decentralized iNaturalist look like?
Bioregional learning and digital tech
Robotics without data centers
AI safety and how to dwebbify AI
Conscious use of AI by appreciating artisanship
Clean tech + climate tech
“Privacy party” — sponsoring network effects
Fractal cells + self-organizing
How to contain sociopaths
Practical local-first
Pretzel and quark cheese making
Gymnastics + parkour
In addition to these sessions, what made the gathering feel like a DWeb Camp were the other activities throughout the weekend: yoga in the mornings, visits to local regenerative farms, and a hike through redwoods to swim in the ocean.
Photos of a hike through redwoods in Burgoyne Bay
On the first night there was an impromptu karaoke session backed by acoustic guitar played by Paul d’Aoust and cajon played by Nigini Oliviera. On Saturday night we had a dance party and on Sunday night — as may now be tradition — an open mic that featured nine campers showing off their music and comedy.
Campers singing karaoke along on the first night
What I often hear from campers year-to-year is that DWeb is exactly the kind of community they were looking for. People who are deeply engaged with what it means to design and build values-based technologies, who are also themselves people who clearly understand what it means to listen and take care of each other. Along with our curiosity and passion for how we can build better networks, campers are able to integrate that focus with how we are as people — how we want to be better in our communities and the lands we live on. At a time when mainstream technologies seem intent on stripping away our humanity with their use, cultivating these spaces not only feels critical, it’s exhilarating.
On the ferry ride back from Salt Spring Island, members of the DWeb YVR Node were already starting to discuss plans to organize it again for next year with more campers. As someone who’s been involved in DWeb Camp from the beginning, I will say that seeing this event grow feels incredibly affirming: that there’s a need and desire to bring together in-person those ready and able to build better digital networks during these turbulent times.
Sunset over the Farmers Institute, the venue for DWeb Camp Cascadia on Salt Spring Island, Canada
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This blog post has been written by mai ishikawa sutton, Senior Organizer of DWeb and member of the DWeb Core Team.Learn more about DWeb at: https://getdweb.net/
The following guest post from Ash Parker, Collections & Digital Services Librarian at the Hancock County Library System in Mississippi, is part of a series written by members of Internet Archive’s Community Webs program. Community Webs advances the capacity of community-focused memory organizations to build web and digital archives documenting local histories.
Hancock County Library System is located on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi and serves a population of around 47,000. Our community and stakeholders are dedicated to preserving the history of Hancock County and the coast—and they told us that this was a priority during strategic planning. This community feedback led the library to join the Community Webs program in the spring of 2023. With support from the program, we began preserving websites related to the area’s culture, civic associations, local government, and more.
In late 2024, staff arrived to discover a devastating leak in our main branch and system headquarters. Our Mississippi/Louisiana Special Collection was particularly affected, and we rushed to fan and dry hundreds of books. As we assessed the damage, it was clear that the pamphlets, books, and newsletters in the collection contained stories vital to this community’s history. We saw the importance of starting a digitization initiative aimed at increasing access to these unique local history resources. We began utilizing the Vault digital preservation service and providing access to our digitized collections through Internet Archive.
OPPORTUNITY TO DIGITIZE THE MISSISSIPPI STAR
When the opportunity arose to participate in the Increasing Access to Diverse Public Library Local History Collections project, a Community Webs digitization initiative supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the timing could not have been better. HCLS had the motivation to begin digitizing our collections and the existing relationship with Community Webs and the Internet Archive was ideal.
But what items to select for digitization? Enter the Mississippi Star.
The recent damage assessment of our Mississippi collection led me to remember a small, booklet-style magazine featuring local people, events, and topics of interest—created for and by the Mississippi Coast African American community. Recognizing the editor, Maurice Singleton, Jr., as a regular library patron, I was able to get enthusiastic permission for the Internet Archive to digitize and share 40 issues of the Mississippi Star.
This publication ran from August 1996 to the end of 2000. The five principles guiding the Star—”family, health, education, business, and culture”—provided the Black community with not just visibility, but the positive representation sorely missing in other local publications. In the first issue published in 1996, editor Maurice Singleton wrote, “Media is often referred to as a ‘mirror’ of our society. If this is the case, very little of what I read in the newspapers or watch on the evening news represents me, my friends, the people with whom I worship or the people with whom I exchange waves over the course of a day.” During its four-year run, the Mississippi Star gave readers a platform to see themselves and their community excelling and achieving together.
Maurice Singleton, Jr., publisher of the Mississippi Star, in 1996 and 2025
The Mississippi Star was digitized at the Internet Archive’s scanning center in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Once the digitization process was complete, Hancock County residents gained easy, online access to a collection that likely few realized was available at their library. Outside Hancock County and Mississippi, researchers and the public interested in a variety of topics—Mississippi history, the Civil Rights Movement and its impact, community-centered media, and more—have access via the World Wide Web to quality scans and full-text search. HCLS hopes to track down the missing issues to be able to provide the full run of this publication in the future.
SPIN-OFF PROJECTS: ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW AND PUBLIC PROGRAM
HCLS partnered with Maurice Singleton on related projects, including an oral history interview in April. Once complete, the audio recording and transcript will join this digital collection and provide additional context and nuance. We also held a public program in May to spotlight and celebrate the collection. Maurice spoke to the community about his memories of publishing the Mississippi Star—the inspiration, influences, and community impact—highlighting some of the more memorable articles. Attendees had a chance to see the physical issues held by the library and browse the digital collection on a touchscreen kiosk. The storytelling and remembrances during the program demonstrated the impact of community-centered archiving. Thirty years later, photographs of fellow community members captured interest and attention as people laughed and connected. Maurice came alive as he told his story and engaged with questions from the audience. As the program closed, the community came together to reflect on the importance of preserving community history. Maurice recalled a gentleman who had gently urged him to “bring back the Star” over the years since he’d stopped publication. This project had brought the Mississippi Star back for Maurice, for the community, and beyond.
Ash Parker and Maurice Singleton, Jr. discussed the library’s digital collections and celebrated the addition of the Mississippi Starat an event at the Bay St. Louis Library on May 30, 2025.
SPOTLIGHT ON THE MISSISSIPPI STAR: MEMORABLE ISSUES
The Mississippi Star magazine provided a monthly glimpse into the Black community of the Mississippi Coast and the State in the late 1990s. The publication included local news, features, interviews, book reviews, advertising from local businesses, and letters from readers—all presenting a positive view of the Black community and holding to the values of family, health, education, business, and culture. Maurice shared that readers sometimes referred to the magazine as the Mississippi Jet, referencing one of the few publications with positive Black representation at the time (the other memorable example being Ebony).
Interview with the Family of Slain Civil Rights Leader Vernon Dahmer, Sr.
During its run, Maurice highlighted interviews in 1998 with the family of civil rights leader Vernon Dahmer, Sr. as most memorable and important. Dahmer was murdered in 1966 on orders of the Ku Klux Klan after gaining attention for helping Black Mississippians vote. At the time of the first interview in February 1998, stalled justice was being re-energized. Billy Roy Pitts, who was convicted but had not served a life sentence, turned himself in to state officials and later was a key witness for the prosecution of the KKK leader who ordered the murder.
In a follow-up interview in September 1998, Maurice spoke with the family after the August conviction and sentencing of the man responsible for the murder of Vernon Dahmer, Sr. thirty-two years after the event. Reflecting on the recent trial and what was different from 1966, Mrs. Ellie Dahmer, Vernon Dahmer, Sr.’s widow said, “The climate in Mississippi has changed. People would tolerate what Sam Bowers did in the 1960s. I don’t think he had as many people to sympathize with him as he did then.”
The timely importance of this moment in South Mississippi history was reinforced by the community response. In the March 1998 issue, a reader wrote, “A few words about this heart wrenching story about the plight of Mr. Dahmer and his family. In my opinion this man was truly committed, with great courage and no compromise. I will always remember the Dahmer family when I think of the Kings, Evers and Rosa Parks.”
Interview with and Tribute to Dr. Gilbert Mason
Maurice also interviewed civil rights leader Dr. Gilbert Mason of Biloxi. Widely known for leading the ‘Wade In’ protests in response to segregated beaches on the Mississippi Coast in the 1950s and 1960s, Dr. Mason was a driving force for the Black community on the Coast and a long-serving president of Biloxi’s NAACP. Remembering the protests, Dr. Mason said, “A small group of us had gone to the beach in 1959 and had been threatened that if we didn’t leave the beach they would remove us. That happened before the sit ins in Greensboro. That was one of the first protest acts we knew of. The youth branch of the NAACP had done sit ins, but this was one of the first in the Deep South.”
Cover and excerpt of the Mississippi Star September 1999 issue which included a tribute to Dr. Gilbert Mason ahead of the publication of a memoir slated for August 2000.
The Mississippi Star was published decades after the Civil Rights Movement and the key figures and actions from that point in history continued to impact the Black community in South Mississippi in the late 1990s. Feature articles and photographs from community events documented the importance of those historical leaders even as new leaders in the community emerged. Now, nearly thirty years later, this publication speaks to the progress and stories of Mississippi. Evidence of local happenings, successes, remembrances, public announcements, and day-to-day life are now available for locals and researchers from around the globe to access thanks to support from Community Webs and Internet Archive.
