The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project has donated its collection of extremist literature – pamphlets and flyers issued by the KKK, neo-nazis, racist skinheads, border vigilantes, and neo-Confederates – to Duke’s David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. The nearly 90-box collection will be housed there to allow scholarly research on the histories of extremist groups in the U.S.
The collection of documents includes periodicals, flyers, and pamphlets created in the past 30 years originally intended to be distributed to hate group members. It will be added to the Library’s Human Rights Archive, its vast collection on social movements in the U.S., and its already extensive group of materials pertaining to Ku Klux Klan activities since the 1860’s.
"We are very excited that Duke University's David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library has decided to house the extremist materials we've been collecting for decades," says Heidi Beirich, director of the SPLC's Intelligence Project, in a statement from Duke. "We are especially pleased that these relatively rare materials will finally be made available to scholars who research America's radical right. We look forward to learning from their scholarship."
The collection will become available to researchers as soon as it is prepped by the library staff.
The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project monitors hate groups in the U.S. and alerts law enforcement agencies to their activities. According to their most recent report, there are 1,007 known hate groups, including 28 in North Carolina.
