Homer C. McEwen papers

The Homer Clyde McEwen papers encompass 15 linear feet of material extensively covering the subject areas of civil rights in the South and ministerial work particularly in relation to school segregation; the discrepancies of funding allocation for African American education; voting rights in Georgia; local organizational history; and the history of First Congregational United Church of Christ in Atlanta, Georgia. The collection is arranged into seven groups of materials that are extensively interrelated due to the nature of McEwen's work and the overlap of functions of the United Church of Christ. The bulk of the papers are professional in nature with little personal or familial information. The main strength of the collection is civil rights and race relations in Atlanta, Georgia during the 1950s to the 1970s.

The papers cover the era of the Congregational Christian Churches (1931-1957), which became the United Church of Christ in 1957 and the department of the Board of Home Missions of the Congregational Christian Churches (1937-1961), which later became the United Church Board for Homeland Ministries (1961-2000). The collection is arranged into seven series of materials that include Correspondence and other materials; Atlanta Organizational files; Congregational Church ephemera; Dillard University Board of Trustee files; First Congregational Church (Atlanta, Georgia) files; United Church of Christ files; and publications, newspaper clippings, and oversize materials. Of note within the series for the United Church of Christ are materials covering a number of national councils and committees in which McEwen served, including the Commission for Racial Justice, the Committee on Urban Church Work, and the Executive Committee of the U.C.C. The the Convention of the South and the Southeast Conference of the U.C.C. were functioning divisions of the United Church of Christ, files for these entities have been kept as individual sub-series within the arrangement of the materials. Also of interest are McEwen's files on the Dorchester Cooperative Center in McIntosh, Georgia.

Main correspondents include early correspondence from Norman A. Holmes, Pastor of Central Congregational U.C.C. (New Orleans, Louisiana); J. Charles Mickle Jr., Minister of Mt. Zion Congregational Church (Cleveland, Ohio); letters from 1960s onward from J. Taylor Stanley, Superintendent of the Convention of the South; William Gordon, Chief Information Officer of the Foreign Service of the United States of American (Nigeria, West Africa); W. Judson King, President-Treasurer of Franklinton College; Percel O. Alston, Director of Christian Education of the Convention of the South; and Raymond J. Jackson (Reidsville, Georgia).