Collins weaves formats into story of new home for South Carolina’s first civil rights museum

By Jeffrey Collins

To tell the story of one man’s vision for South Carolina’s first civil rights museum, South Carolina reporter Jeffrey Collins wove together text, photos and video that he gathered himself. He handled all formats to tell the story of efforts to move South Carolina’s first civil rights museum from a photographer’s home into a larger space.

Collins had known about civil rights photographer Cecil Williams and his work for years, thanks to his occasional freelance work for the AP. Williams had turned his house into a repository for his decades of photographs and other artifacts, drawing thousands of visitors to the space despite little in the way of marketing.

Collins would hear periodically about Williams making progress on gathering grants to move to a more permanent space. He waited for the right opportunity to tell the story about the preservation efforts, which also included digitizing millions of frames that Williams took over the years.