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Temple's New Website Tells The Story Of Civil Rights In Philadelphia

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Temple University just launched a new website that helps tell the story of the Civil Rights Movement in Philadelphia.

The new site showcases Temple's archives and includes photographs and video of prominent leaders like Raymond Pace Alexander and Cecil B. Moore. There's even rare footage of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. when he visited Philadelphia in 1965 to support local efforts to desegregate Girard College.

"Before you can solve a problem, you have to get your mind right," Dr. King said before a crowd of thousands at a rally on Lancaster Avenue. "There are some Negroes that have lived with segregation so long, they have become conditioned to it."

Civil Rights MLK
(Credit: Temple University)

Margery Sly is Director of Special Collections for Temple University's libraries. She says the website allows the world access to digitized versions of more than 1500 items from the library's collection.

"We'd had students from Masterman High School using [the archives], but we knew a lot more use could occur if we could get them up on the web."

Sly says Temple received a $24,000 grant from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania libraries, which paid for the site. For more info, go to www.northerncity.library.temple.edu.

Reported by Cherri Gregg, KYW Newsradio

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