We’ve been delving into our archives at the Bodleian Library to uncover Jacari’s history of tackling racial intolerance and inequality.
As a former student society of the University of Oxford, Jacari has been able to store its archives in the John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera, one of the largest and most important collections of printed ephemera in the world, held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.
The Jacari archive consists of three boxes of term cards, posters, flyers, letters, newsletters and promotional materials. The majority of the material comes from the period 1956-1970 when Jacari was a very active society campaigning against discrimination and racial inequality. We have term cards from most years, along with a vast number of posters advertising talks and events held by Jacari. This gives us a huge amount of information about speakers who delivered talks and key figures involved with Jacari, along with some of the activities of the society.
There is very little stored in the archive from the 1970s and 1980s, but we do have some promotional material from the late 1980s and early 1990s. There is also a lot of information from the 2000s in the archive, particularly the period when Jacari became a registered charity in 2005, which is largely thanks to the diligence of the Chair at that time, Jamie Dear, in keeping records and information produced by the committee.
We also have a range of promotional material which shows the different logos and styles used by Jacari over the years. This includes a number of newsletters and handbooks for volunteers and even a Jacari recipe book! One lovely item in the archive is a scrapbook prepared by our first Coordinator, Mona Sakr, which contains lots of information and items to help future Coordinators run the charity.
Over the next month, we will be writing a series of articles highlighting the contents of the Jacari archives and sharing our fascinating history.