Donate Materials

array of donated documents

Our collections are built on the generosity of thousands of individuals, families, and organizations. We continue to accept donated materials that record the history of the South and Southerners. If you have materials that may be of interest, please do not hesitate to contact us.

For a broad overview of the donation process, we recommend reading the Society of American Archivists’ page on the basics of donating to an archive.

What We Collect

We collect unique, original materials about the American South in most written, audio, visual, and electronic formats.

Our traditional areas of strength include:

  • Family Life: letters, photographs, diaries, scrapbooks, wills, deeds, school records
  • Change: religious, social, political, demographic, legal, technological, economic
  • Creativity: literature, poetry, unfinished manuscripts, sketches
  • Business: company records, plantation records, ledger books, strike coverage, journalism
  • Additions: materials that add to collections we already hold

We strive to be a more inclusive archive that reflects the richly diverse history of the South through to present day. We take an expansive view of the region premised in the realities of historic migration and change. Some of our current areas of expansion include:

  • Southern ethnic experience
  • Latina/o life and culture
  • Food, foodways, food movements, and farming practices
  • Native American life and culture in the region
  • The Global South and Caribbean/Black Atlantic
  • Protest and social change from the 1970s forward
  • LGBTQIA life and culture
  • Latina/o life and culture
  • The political Right, Far Right, and Conservative movements
  • Southern religious life, including Jewish and Muslim life and culture and religions other than Christianity
  • Veterans and Armed Forces-related collections
  • Minor League sports teams
  • The environment and natural history
  • Migration in the South, Caribbean, and Atlantic