The Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi: A Bibliometric Study of this Topic in Scholarly Journals. By Leigh Allison Iovino

Transcription

1 The Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi: A Bibliometric Study of this Topic in Scholarly Journals By Leigh Allison Iovino Background The term Civil Rights Movement refers to an extended period of American history in which African-Americans struggled to become free of the tyranny of slavery, and then fought for equal opportunity and protection of the civil rights guaranteed them through the United States Constitution. The movement actually began during the period of the Revolutionary War, but many people acknowledge the era following the United States (and its African-American soldiers ) involvement in World War II as the point when activism became widespread, finally culminating in the accomplishment of many of the goals of the movement in the late 1960s. It was during this era that many laws supporting civil rights were passed by Congress, and there was a definitive shift in the ideology of Americans and racial politics in America, which did not extend to many areas in the South (Boyer, 2001, 126). Mississippi was one of these areas, and consequently, was the focus of much of the activists attention. Many events, such as the murder of Emmett Till, Mississippi s refusal to integrate the public schools, and the assassination of Medgar Evers caused organizations such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to devise a concentrated plan of action to change conditions in the Deep South (Wilson, 2006, 287). The result was the Mississippi Summer Project of 1964, better known as Freedom Summer. The goal of Freedom Summer was to increase voter registration and political participation among African-Americans, who were previously kept from registering to vote by unfair laws and tests, and through the intimidation of groups like the Ku Klux Klan. Tensions ran high, violence occurred, and lives were lost, but Freedom Summer succeeded in that it brought even more national attention to the plight of African- Americans in Mississippi, and was a catalyst for ground-breaking civil rights legislation in the latter part of the decade (Wilson, 338-9). Importance of the Study The Civil Rights Movement was an important period in the history of Mississippi and the United States. Even today, many people (specifically in the Deep South) have very strong feelings and emotions attached to the era, whether they actually experienced it or not. There have been no major bibliometric studies on this topic in scholarly journals that could readily be found, and there are some questions that could be answered by a study on this subject matter. Are there more articles being published from one geographic area, or from one time period? Do most of these articles come from a core group of authors? Do many of the articles about civil rights in Mississippi appear in certain journals? Answering these questions will not only further the bibliometric research on the topic but also reiterate the importance of the topic itself in the history of the United States, as well as in Mississippi. Purpose of the Study The purpose of this study is to research the scholarly publication pattern of articles related to Mississippi and the Civil Rights Movement. Its intent is to determine the growth (or nongrowth) of the literature, core authorship and

2 literature, and origin and geographic distribution within the United States of scholarly articles on the above subject matter. Research Questions R1. What is the number of articles published on this topic from ? R2. Which journals published articles on this topic? R3. What is the geographic distribution of the journals containing articles on this subject? R4. What are the authorship patterns of articles on this topic? R5. Does the University of Southern Mississippi library system have holdings of the journals that published articles on this topic? Scope of the Study In an attempt to answer the above research questions, this study includes all articles that meet certain criteria: articles must be dated between the years of 1980 and 2000, published in a scholarly journal, and contained in full-text in the databases selected for the study. This study includes articles published in English-language journals originating in the United States. No foreign language or international journals are included; no editorials, letters to the editor, or reviews are included in this study. In addition, no sources resulting from conferences or proceedings are used. Definitions The following are terms, places, or people that will most likely appear frequently in articles on the subject of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi, and therefore, should be familiarized for the research involved with this study: 1. civil rights rights concerning equality guaranteed to citizens by amendments to the United States Constitution, specifically the 13 th, 14 th, and 15 th. 2. Civil Rights Movement struggle to end racial discrimination in the U.S., especially in the South. The movement occurred over three centuries but was concentrated into the time period following WWII. 3. Mississippi Summer Project ( Freedom Summer ) project initiated by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which had the goal of increasing the number of African-American registered voters in Mississippi. 4. Medgar Evers an active member of the Mississippi chapter of NAACP, and an influential leader in the Civil Rights Movement, whose 1963 assassination galvanized the activist groups to step up their efforts in Mississippi. 5. Emmett Till a teenaged boy whose murder by two white men went unpunished and shocked the nation. Till s mother allowed publication of a photo of her son s mangled body and he became a symbol of the horrendous conditions for minorities in Mississippi. 6. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) organization founded in 1909 with the intent of gaining more equality for African-American and other minority citizens of the United States. Many of the most important figures in the movement belonged to this organization, and its existence is still strong in America. 7. Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) a group of students who banded together and organized themselves as a driving force against discrimination of African-American citizens. The group was very active and was the

3 organization behind the Mississippi Summer Project of Civil Rights Murders of 1964 (James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner) three activists who were members of civil rights organizations who were murdered in Mississippi during Freedom Summer. With tensions already occurring and increased national attention to the state, this event was another example of the need for change. 9. voter registration is the act of registering eligible citizens to become voters in their state. It was the goal of the Mississippi Summer Project of 1964 and was largely denied to minorities by use of intimidation and other unfair tactics. 10. Voting Rights Act of 1965 law signed under President Lyndon B. Johnson that outlawed discriminatory practices in the political process. As a result of this law, voter registration of African-Americans in Mississippi increased almost 1000% (Lowery, 1992, 559). Assumptions In performing this study, some basic assumptions were made about the databases that were used and the articles that were found. It is assumed that the databases provided complete and accurate information pertinent to the study. It is also assumed that the articles within the databases are properly indexed, allowing all relevant articles to be retrieved. This assumption also relied on the keywords used in the search, and their inclusion in articles on the topic of civil rights in Mississippi. Finally, this study assumed that the combination of databases and keywords used provided complete and accurate results that were representative of the body of work on the subject. Literature Review While there is an abundance of literature related to the topic of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi, there does not appear to be any bibliometric studies readily available on this particular subject. However, the methodology used in this study has been employed in the past, by authors researching various other topics. The following articles were chosen as examples because they contain at least two aspects of the methodology of this research and provide a reference to performing such studies using electronic resources. In a 2002 study, Wiberly, Hurd, and Weller researched the publication patterns of academic librarians during a four-year time period. The authors chose databases that would contain information pertinent to their topic and limited their searches to retrieve articles published between 1998 and Also, the researchers were careful to exclude material presented at conferences and proceedings and focused their efforts on articles appearing in scholarly journals. The purpose of this bibliometric article was to determine authorship patterns of academic librarians. The research indicated that soleauthorship constituted the majority of scholarly articles written by academic librarians from 1998 to Of those that were co-authored, a vast majority were written by no more than two academic librarians (p ). To determine the growth of literature, which is one of the research objectives of this study, it is necessary to include sources from a broader period to track the progression of research articles over time. A 2006 study on bibliometric literature used the time frame of 1969 to 2005 to accomplish this goal. The authors chose to search LISA, and 1969 to 2005 is the full range of coverage for this database. Specific keyword searches were used, and the researchers then noted information that could help indicate the

4 growth (or non-growth) of literature, as well as the core journals, authorship patterns, and language distribution. The results of this study point to a steady growth of literature in recent years, attributed by the author to an increase of interest and participation in the field of bibliometrics (Patra, Bhattacharya & Verma, p ). Another goal of this research is to determine the geographic distribution of articles related to the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi, and whether this has changed over time. The publication location of the journals, and whenever possible, the location of the authors, will serve to indicate if there is a region of the country that shows more interest in researching the topic than others. A similar methodology was employed by Mitha and Leach in their study to determine the geographic distribution of literature related to HIV/AIDS in South Africa. The authors were interested in where much of the research originated from. Mitha and Leach chose two pertinent databases and limited their searches to a specific time period. The data retrieved showed evidence that most of the literature on HIV/AIDS in South African originated from within the country itself (2006, ). A 2006 bibliometric study on literature with the date palm as its topic researched the core authorship and literature patterns, in addition to their geographic origins. By identifying several large libraries that contained extensive collections of electronic resources with articles on the subject, the authors hoped to access a complete and accurate picture of the literature. By including only full-text articles and excluding duplicates and records with incomplete information, the authors were also able to better determine core authorship and literature. The author s data supported a rise in publication which peaked in 1989, and in later years leveled off. In addition, single authorship of articles on this subject was rare, indicating that there was an increase in interest of a larger group of people during the time period this study was concerned with (Anwar, 41-60). Methodology Data Collection For the purposes of this study, taking into account the historic nature of the topic being researched, certain databases have been selected that will most likely contain the largest number of scholarly articles. Academic Search Premier was searched, as well as the more subject-specific America: History and Life (simultaneously searches Historical Abstracts) and JSTOR. In order to retrieve the best results, whenever possible it was necessary to limit the search to full-text and scholarly (or peer-reviewed) journals, as well as the time frame designated for this study ( ). In JSTOR, there is also an option to choose what subject areas you wish to search, and African-American Studies and History were selected for the searches performed in that database. The following keyword searches were performed in each database and the results noted: 1. civil rights and Mississippi 2. Civil Rights Movement and Mississippi 3. African-Americans and Mississippi Data Compilation and Analysis In order to create an accurate compilation of articles, it was vital to the study to exclude all duplicates appearing in more than one of the databases searched, or more likely, in more than one of the keyword combinations. The specific number of unduplicated and applicable articles was noted, as well as the year published, author s name, and the name of the journal in which the article appeared. Further research was required to determine the geographic location of the authors and the publication locations of the

5 journals. Some articles contained biographical sketches of their authors, but others had to be further researched. Location of the journals was determined by visiting the website of the journal itself, or if necessary, referring to Ulrich s Periodicals database. Once gathered, pertinent data were entered into separate spreadsheets created for each aspect of the study. These spreadsheets were then examined in an attempt to establish publication patterns and/or determine the core authorship and the journals that published the most articles related to civil rights in Mississippi. Finally, Periodical Title searches were performed in Anna, the University of Southern Mississippi s catalog to see if the library had holdings of the journals pertinent to this study. The results of the research were placed into charts to be more easily viewed and interpreted. Results The methodology of this study was devised to gather data that pointed to conclusions on specific questions. It is the goal of the study to determine publication patterns of articles on the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi. These publication patterns include the number of articles published in the specified time frame, the journals in which these articles appeared, and the geographic origin of the journals. Authorship patterns were also researched, in an effort to determine whether the applicable articles were single authorship articles or coauthored and whether a core authorship group could be determined from the articles included. Finally, the collection of the University of Southern Mississippi was analyzed to establish whether it contained physical holdings of the journals in which the articles included in this study appeared. The results of each individual research question are detailed below. Research Question #1: What is the number of articles published on this topic from ? The searches performed in the selected databases yielded 209 unduplicated articles that met the criteria for inclusion in this study. The time period of 1980 to 2000 was further divided into smaller periods of five to six years to analyze the growth (or non-growth) of the literature over time. The data showed that there were 112 articles published between the years of 1996 and 2006, 41 from , 32 between 1986 and 1990, and 24 from Figure 1 shows the progression of the literature from 1980 to 2000, and indicates a continued growth of articles on the subject matter, with a large increase of literature beginning in Figure 1. Growth of Literature from Number of Articles Growth of Literature from Research Question #2: Which journals published articles on this subject? The 209 articles that were analyzed for this study appeared in 59 scholarly journals that met the criteria outlined earlier. The data suggest a core literature group, as seven of the journals, contained 118 of the articles (56.5%), and the top journal contained 31 of the articles (14.8%). Each journal studied is listed in the Appendix, as well as the number of articles they contained. 41 Time Periods 112 Articles on Civil Rights Movement in MS

6 In addition, the journals were examined to determine if particular disciplines published more articles than others. Of the 59 journals in this study, 22 of them fell under the History category, amounting to 37.3 percent (Table 1). Table 1. Discipline and Number of Article on Civil Rights and Mississippi History 22 African American Studies 14 Sociology 9 Education 7 Social Studies 7 Law 4 Mass Communication and Journalism 4 Politics 4 Economics 2 Agriculture 1 Archaeology 1 Geography 1 Psychology 1 (Note: Journals may appear in more than one discipline) Research Question #3: What is the geographic distribution of the journals containing articles on this subject? Another objective of this study was to determine if a pattern existed regarding the geographic origin of the journals that published articles on the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi. Interestingly, only one journal, Mississippi Quarterly, was published in Mississippi. After the place of publication was noted, each journal was grouped by its designated region of the United States. Journals originating in the Northeast published the most articles with 26, followed by the Southeast with 15, the Midwest with 10, and the Southwest with 7. Only one journal from the Northwest published an article on civil rights in Mississippi in the time frame of Figure 2 illustrates the percentage of journals from each region. Figure 2. Geographic Distribution of Journals 16.95% 1.69% 11.86% 25.42% Geographic Distribution of Journals 44.07% Northeast Southeast Midwest Northwest Southwest Research Question #4: What are the authorship patterns of articles on this topic? Authorship patterns were also studied in the course of this research. The data retrieved showed that the 209 articles in this study were authored by 140 different authors, and only 19 articles were co-authored. Of those 19 articles, 13 were written by two authors, five were written by three authors, and just one was written by four authors. This is indicative of a lack of group research and publishing on this topic, which could be the result of a variety of factors. A core group of authors was difficult to determine with this particular set of documents, but there were several repeat authors in the data gathered for this study. Repeat authors constituted 12.9 percent of the authors represented in this study, and they wrote 39 of the 209 total articles, amounting to 18.7 percent. These 18 repeat authors and the number of times they published are listed in Table 2.

7 Table 3. Authors of More than One Article on Civil Rights and Mississippi Aiken, Charles 3 Morrison, Minion 3 O'Reilly, Kenneth 3 Orey, Byron D'Andra 2 Rachal, John R. 2 Johnson, Karen R. 2 Boyd, Robert L. 2 Davis, Jack E. 2 Bolton, Charles 2 Chalmers, David 2 Tomberlin, Joseph 2 McAdam, Doug 2 Eynon, Bret 2 Sinsheimer, Joseph 2 Cresswell, Stephen 2 Long, Worth 2 Nordhaus, R. Edward 2 Kirby, Jack Temple 2 Research Question #5: Does the University of Southern Mississippi library system have holdings of the journals that published articles on this topic? All of the journals contained in this study were accessed through database subscriptions of the University of Southern Mississippi. However, it was one goal of the study to perform a collection analysis of USM s holdings. These physical copies may be hard copies or in microform format, so long as they were housed in the library. A Periodical Title search in USM s catalog, Anna, revealed that the University of Southern Mississippi had physical copies of 54 of the 59 journals relevant to this research, which translates to 91.5 percent. Many of the journal titles were available in both print and microform editions, although the years available might differ. USM did not have holdings of Reviews in American History, Western Journal of Black Studies, African American Studies, Journal of Early Republic, and Peace and Change. Discussion According to the data retrieved by the methodology of research, there has been a steady increase in the number of articles published between the years of 1980 and 1995, followed by a sharp increase of 273 percent from 1996 to This could be the result of more interest in researching the topic, but it could also be a result of the specifics of the University of Southern Mississippi s database subscriptions. Only full-text articles were examined in this study, and the further back in time the searches go, the less likely they are to be available in fulltext. Some university libraries have made the switch from print holdings of journals to online subscriptions, and in the interest of saving money, have only purchased subscriptions from the point at which their print holdings end. As stated earlier, a core group of journals publishing articles on this topic was obvious when looking at the data, as seven of the 59 journals in this study published 56.5 percent of the articles. The top seven journals were the Journal of Southern History, Journal of Negro History, Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, Journal of American History, Agricultural History, Mississippi Quarterly, and Journal of Black Studies. When looking at the titles of these journals, it is not a surprising list. Three of the journals are geared toward African-American studies, four fall under the category of history, and two have Southern themes. In addition, when looking at all the journals in this study, the research suggested that the majority of the articles were published in journals with historical themes, followed by the African- American studies category. Interestingly, the category of sociology contained the third most

8 articles, and finally education and social studies. The data indicate that authors are not simply writing about the facts tied to Mississippi s history, but trying to analyze and learn from what happened. The majority of journals in this study (44.07%) were published in the Northeast. The Southeast was second with percent. This could point to a continued reluctance of Southern journals to deal with the subject matter. However, two of the seven core journals were published in the South, one of them in Mississippi. Another possibility is that there are simply more journals published in the Northeast than in any other region, making the region dominant in every field, which could be skewing the results. The data used to examine authorship tendencies did not show a clear pattern. Of the 140 authors that published the articles studied, only 18 were repeat authors, and only three of these published more than twice on the topic. Also, the vast majority of the articles were written by single authors. It is possible that some articles written by some of these authors were discarded, either because they were not available full-text, or because they were published in a journal or database that was not included in the study. During the basic collection analysis of the holdings of the University of Southern Mississippi library system, a search in the catalog revealed that USM owned 54 of the 59 journals in this study, amounting to an overwhelming 91.5 percent. This is not surprising that a Mississippi university would have a strong collection of materials on the Civil Rights Movement, particularly when much of the activity occurred within the borders of the state. This information points to a concentrated effort on the part of the university to include as many sources as possible on the subject. Suggestions for Further Research While this study gathered data that indicated many conclusions about the publication and authorship patterns of articles dealing with the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi, there were also many unanswered questions that left room for further research. The sharp increase in publication of articles from could be the result of several factors, and more research into how far back each electronic journal is available might give a tentative answer. A researcher might also want to extend the time period back another ten or twenty years, to get a longer view of the publication pattern. The information regarding the geographic distribution of the journals could also be further researched to determine the ratio of scholarly journals pertinent to the academic categories included in this study for all of the regions. In terms of authorship patterns, it might be prudent to search for each author and create a bibliography of their work to determine if there were any articles published on this topic that were missed by this research, or to calculate the percentage of articles on civil rights when compared to other articles they published. Finally, a more complex collection analysis of the University of Southern Mississippi s holdings of these journals could reveal a pattern on what format they are available in, or how their collection of civil rights materials compares to their other collections or those of comparable universities. References Almeida-Filho, N., Kawachi, I., Filho, A.P., & Dachs, J.N.W. (2003). Research on health inequalities in Latin America and the Caribbean: Bibliometric analysis ( ) and descriptive content analysis ( ). American Journal of Public Health, 93(12),

9 Angadi, M., Kademani, B.S. & Koganuramath, M.M. (2004). Physics Nobel Laureate Wolfgang Ketterle: A scientometric portrait. Malaysian Journal of Library & Information Science, 9(2), Anwar, M.A. (2006). Phoenix Dactylifera L: A bibliometric study of the literature of date palm. Malaysian Journal of Library & Information Science, 11(2), Åström, F. & Pettersson, L. (2006). Mapping activities of artists in the past: A bibliometric study of the library of the Scandinavian Association in Rome until Libraries & Culture, 41(2), Biawas, B.C. (2007). Economic botany: A bibliometric study. Malaysian Journal of Library & Information Science, 12(1), Boyer, P.S. (2001). The Oxford companion to United States history. New York: Oxford University Press. Chung, H.K. (2007). Evaluating academic journals using impact factor and local citation score. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 33(3), Cook, D. & Hulett, L. (2004). A multiyear citation analysis of three rehabilitation journals. Rehabilitation Counseling Bulletin, 48(1), Cook, M. & Paulson, J. (2005). Enabling access to classic titles in agriculture with the core historical literature of agriculture. Quarterly Bulletin of the International Association of Agricultural Information Specialists, 50(3/4), Cullers, J. & Georgas, H. (2005). A citation study of the characteristics of the linguistics literature. College & Research Libraries, 66(6), Heinzkill, R. (2007). References in scholarly English and American literary journals thirty years later: A citation study. College & Research Libraries, 68(2), Kelsey, P. &Diamond, T. (2003). Establishing a core list of journals for forestry: A citation analysis from faculty at Southern universities. College & Research Libraries, 64(5), Lowery, C.D. & Marszalek, J.F. (1992). Encyclopedia of African-American civil rights: from emancipation to the present. New York: Greenwood Press. Mitha, S.B. & Leach, A. (2006). AIDS in South Africa: A bibliometric study on HIV/AIDS literature in South Africa from Mousaion, 24(2), Moed, H.F. (2006). New developments in citation analysis and research evaluation. Information Service & Use, 26(20), Patra, S.K., Bhattacharya, P. & Verma, N. (2006). Bibliometric study of literature on bibliometrics. DESIDOC Bulletin of Information Technology, 26(1), Smith, L.C. (1981). Citation analysis. Library Trends, Summer 1981, Thompson, P. (2000). Dictionary of American history: from 1763 to the present. New York: Facts on File. Tsay, M.Y. and Ku, Y.S. (2005). Photocatalysis literature analysis: A bibliometric approach. Journal of Educational Media & Library Sciences, 43(2), Walker, T.D. (1997). Journal of Documentary Reproduction, : Domain as reflected in characteristics of authorship and citation. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 48(4), Wiberley, Jr., S.E., Hurd, J.M., & Weller, A.C. (2002). Publication patterns of U.S. academic librarians from 1998 to College & Research Libraries, 67(3), Wormell, I. (1998). Informetrics: Exploring databases as analytical tools. Database, 21(5), Wilson, C.R. (2006). The new encyclopedia of Southern culture (Vol. 3: History). Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

10 Zhang, L. (2007). Discovering information use in agricultural economics: A citation study. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 33(3), Appendix Journals and Number of Articles on Civil Rights and Mississippi Journal of Southern History 31 Journal of Negro History 17 Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 16 Journal of American History 15 Agricultural History 14 Mississippi Quarterly 13 Journal of Black Studies 12 African American Review 4 Callaloo 4 Oral History Review 4 Phylon 4 Annals of the Association of American Geographers 3 Comparative Studies in Society and History 3 History of Education Quarterly 3 Journal of Economic History 3 Journal of Social History 3 Public Historian 3 Reviews in American History 3 The Historical Journal 3 ABA Journal 2 American Journal of Sociology 2 American Quarterly 2 Contemporary Sociology 2 History Teacher 2 Journal of Negro Education 2 Review of Black Political Economy 2 Social Forces 2 Southern Changes 2 Virginia Quarterly Review 2 Western Journal of Black Studies 2 Adult Education Quarterly 1 African American Studies 1 American Historical Review 1 American Sociological Review 1 Black Scholar 1 Bulletin of the Academy of Arts and Sciences 1 Church History 1 Harvard Law Review 1 Howard Journal of Communications 1 Journal of Early Republic 1 Journal of Interdisciplinary History 1 Journal of Social Psychology 1 Journalism History 1 Journalism Quarterly 1 Law and History Review 1 Law and Society Review 1 Peace and Change 1 Publius 1 Policy Studies Journal 1 Rural Sociology 1 Social Science History 1 Social Science Quarterly 1 Sociological Forum 1 Sociological Inquiry 1 Sociological Spectrum 1 Southeastern Archaeology 1 Southern Studies 1 Transition 1 Western Historical Quarterly 1