Special Collections include personal papers and primary source materials that focus on Jacksonville and Northeast Florida and document local political development, civil rights, race relations, education, literature, urban planning, visual and performing arts, archaeology, and social welfare.
UNF has over 90 collections that include papers donated by businesspeople, politicians, philanthropists, and civil rights activists. There are also collections donated by institutions such as Barnett Bank and Florida Blue. We have finding aids for many of SCUA's collections in ArchivesSpace, a searchable database. Please see the Finding Materials section for more information about using SCUA finding aids. Below you will find several of the topics in SCUA Collections.
The theme of the social development and the diversity of the Jacksonville community is prevalent in Special Collections, the finest example being the Eartha M. M. White Collection, the cornerstone of the archival collections. Detailing the notable activities of Ms. White, the collection documents a Black community in a southern city from the 1870s to the 1960s. Eartha White was a philanthropist, an entrepreneur, and a humanitarian who was involved in the local and national NAACP, anti-lynching movement, universal suffragism, and community advocacy. The Eartha M. M. White Collection provides a snapshot into an area of Jacksonville that is rapidly gentrifying and disappearing. It includes personal and business correspondence, documents, notes, memorabilia, printed materials, ephemera, and photographs.
Other collections that build on the theme of social development in Northeast Florida include:
Collections relating to a theme of civic development and local politics can be found in some of the Northeast Florida regional primary resources, including:
Special Collections and University Archives has several collections that focus on women’s history and the contributions of women in Northeast Florida. These include:
Several local history collections record experiences of early settlers in the Jacksonville region, including: