The team of nine talented archivists, lawyers, librarians and support staff behind the Legal Defense Fund’s Recollection: A Civil Rights Legal Archive, is the 2025 recipient of the Archival Innovator Award given by the Society of American Archivists (SAA). The Archival Innovator Award recognizes an archivist, a group of archivists, a repository, or an organization that demonstrates the greatest overall current impact on the profession or their communities.
Recollection: A Civil Rights Legal Archive exemplifies creativity, innovation, and a forward-thinking approach to archival work that has significantly impacted both the archival field and the broader community. With a focus on public accessibility and education, the team designed an interactive platform enriched with oral histories, legal documents, press releases, and correspondence. By prioritizing oral histories and contextual narratives, the team ensures that the lived experiences of Black communities — often marginalized in traditional archives — are foregrounded and honored. Inclusion of an interactive timeline, essays, and biographies encourages deeper engagement and invites diverse audiences to explore America’s civil rights legacy. Through interdisciplinary collaboration, the team brought together archivists, technologists, historians, and legal experts to create a resource that transcends traditional archival boundaries.
“I am extremely proud of the Legal Defense Fund’s wonderful Archives team for their work on this award-winning source of education and inspiration, which documents and amplifies LDF’s decades-long work to advance racial justice in the United States,” said Karla McKanders, Director of LDF’s Thurgood Marshall Institute, which houses the Archives team. “Ensuring that the valuable information in this repository is available to all and contextualized to facilitate a greater understanding of American history is a crucial step in protecting the future of our multiracial democracy. By shedding light on oft-forgotten or ignored stories from the civil rights movement through Recollection: A Civil Rights Legal Archive, this incredible team is undertaking democratic preservation in real time. I congratulate them on this tremendous honor and extend my gratitude to the Society of American Archivists for recognizing the critical importance of this work.”
One innovative aspect of the Recollection project was its creation of a bespoke software solution to facilitate their archival work. By partnering with Durable Digital and leveraging the open-source Umbraco CMS, the team integrated complex archival systems, including Dynamics 365 and Preservica, to manage and preserve an expansive collection of more than 6,000 cases litigated by the Legal Defense Fund (LDF) since 1940. This sophisticated architecture streamlines workflows, reduces manual labor, and ensures long-term accessibility, while also empowering content editors to easily incorporate multimedia materials.
Additionally, the team created a robust internship program that seeks to diversify the field by creating a pathway for Black archivists and other archivists of color to gain experience in the field. Over the last two years, the team has hosted seven paid internships. The internship program allows students with interests in historic preservation, civil rights, and legal history to gain experience in the field and contribute meaningfully to LDF’s archival work.
The Archives team is comprised of Donna Gloeckner, Director of Archives and Records; Kayla Jenkins, Manager of Archives; Ashton Wingate, Digital Manager of Archives; Ruby Mangum, Archives Assistant; Cassandra Mensah, Archives Counsel; Reed Jaeger, Project Manager; Kimberly Villafuerte Barzola, Assistant Archivist; Shelby Wong, Assistant Digital Archivist; and Andrea Hill, Assistant Archivist and Research Librarian.
This press release was originally published on the Society of American Archivists’ website.
###
Founded in 1940, the Legal Defense Fund (LDF) is the nation’s first civil rights law organization. LDF’s Thurgood Marshall Institute is a multi-disciplinary and collaborative hub within LDF that launches targeted campaigns and undertakes innovative research to shape the civil rights narrative. In media attributions, please refer to us as the Legal Defense Fund or LDF. Please note that LDF has been completely separate from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) since 1957 — although LDF was originally founded by the NAACP and shares its commitment to equal rights.
