Mayor Announces Donation Of Wyatt Papers To CPL

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Documents representing the legacy of service and activism exemplified by the lives of Reverend Addie and the late Rev. Claude Wyatt are now available to the public for reference and research.

Mayor Richard M. Daley and Chicago Public Library (CPL) Commissioner Mary A. Dempsey recently announced the citys acquisition of the documents, which span 65 years of service toward civil and labor rights, African American and womens rights, at the Harold Washington Library.

I am proud to be here today to honor the lives and accomplishments of two esteemed Chicagoans, the Reverend Addie Wyatt and her late husband the Reverend Claude Wyatt of the Vernon Park Church of God. Both Claude and Addie Wyatt were devoted to increasing the quality of life of all Chicagoans specifically members of the African American community, Mayor Daley said in a press release.

The collection, in addition to chronicling important facets of Black life in Chicago and throughout the world, also follows significant movements of the mid-20th centurymovements dedicated to gender, racial, economic and political equality.

Addie Wyatt was born in Brookhaven, Mississippi in 1924. She moved to Chicago as a child with her parents and seven siblings. She married Claude Wyatt, Jr. and soon after, started working in the citys meat packing industry. The first female local union president for the United Packinghouse Food and Allied Workers and the first female international vice president of Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America, Rev. Addie Wyatt is known as one of the nations foremost labor leaders, according to The HistoryMakers website.

Claude Wyatt, founding pastor of Vernon Park Church of God, was ordained in 1955, eleven years after he and his wife started the Wyatt Choral Ensemble, according to The HistoryMakers. After that, he and his wife worked with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., helped to found Operation Breadbasket and served on the board of Operation PUSH.

Their commitment has established a positive legacy for civil rights, workers rights

and womens rights that has transcended race, gender, income and educational levels and has made our city, our country and our world a better place to live, Mayor Daley continued.

Rev. Addie Wyatt donated the papers to the Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection of African American History and Literature located at the Carter G. Woodson Regional Library (9525 S. Halsted). She wrote to Mayor Daley for assistance with the collections processing and placement, according to a press release from the Mayors Office.

CPL in conjunction with Mapping the Stacks, a program of the University of Chicagos English and History Department and the universitys library went through the vast collection and categorized the documents.

The collection is comprised of 345 containers filled with documents, audiovisuals and manuscripts, including records and texts from the multitude of organizations the Wyatts were a part of from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Operation Breadbasket and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change to the National Organization for Women (NOW), the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists and the Coalition of Labor Union Women.

I would like to thank the staff and students from the Mapping the Stacks program at the University of Chicago along with the supporting members of Harsh Collection staff for their diligence and hard work in putting this collection together. The Reverend Addie Wyatt and Reverend Claude Wyatt Papers are now the largest single archival collection at Vivian G. Harsh collection of African American History, Dempsey said in a released statement.

The Harsh Collection houses 70,000 books (many rare), 75 microfilm collections, and 500 periodical titles, but according to CPLs website, its most significant and sought after materials are manuscripts. Among them, original manuscripts by writers Arna Bontemps, Richard Wright, and Langston Hughes, and archives from the Heritage Press.

The acquisition of the Wyatt Papers will add to the city and states rich and widely prolific African American history.

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