The multimedia exhibit, which will be available here, will cover the period of enslavement to the present, with emphasis on the Civil Rights era, according to a news release from the Archives. As an educational resource for church settings, the exhibit is designed to expand on the strength of reader input and future research, the release said.

A portion of the exhibit is currently installed at the Archives in Austin, Texas.

The web-based exhibit will offer an examination of the compelling story of how African American Episcopalians struggled to claim their rightful place as full and equal members of the church community, according to the release. The exhibit brings together a narrative overview of that development with photographs, documents, videos, and previously unheard taped interviews with prominent American figures on matters of race.

People such as Absalom Jones, George Bragg, Pauli Murray, Jonathan Daniels, and Charles Lawrence are featured along with church organizations such as the American Church Institute, the Conference of Church Workers, and the Episcopal Society for Cultural and Racial Unity. Audio recordings include interviews with figures as diverse as Langston Hughes and Jackie Robinson.

The exhibit arose from a 1993 commitment by the Board of the Archives of the Episcopal Church to focus the Archives' acquisitions and research services program on diversity, with an initial emphasis on the Afro-Anglican experience, according to the release. In addition, the General Convention had called on the church to conduct a wide ranging examination of persistent institutional racism and patterns of forgetting that had overtaken the legacy of the post Civil Rights period in church and society, the release said.

Working with a donor, the Rev. John Morris, who gave financial support to the exhibit, the Archives turned to emerging web technologies as a vehicle for making primary source materials permanently available to everyday Episcopalians and the public. "The exhibit is a product of Morris' desire to preserve a central lesson that the unified Christian community has within its grasp the capacity for extraordinary acts of justice and honor," the release said. "Morris believed that such organized individual acts can renew the community and bring positive change to the larger society."

The Church Awakens exhibit is one component of the Afro-Anglican Archives of the Episcopal Church. These archives include the entire holdings of the Episcopal Freedman's Aid Commission, the Episcopal Society for Racial and Cultural Unity (ESCRU), the American Church Institute, including the Episcopal Black Colleges and Bishop Paine Divinity School, the General Convention Special Program, and numerous collections of personal papers including those of Theodore Holly, David Ferguson, Edward Demby, Tollie Caution, Walter Dennis, Thomas Logan, and Henri Stines.

The Afro-Anglican Archives has been brought together to celebrate both the Episcopal Church's African American heritage, the release said, and to open a research door for the General Convention's request in 2006 (in Resolution A123) that the dioceses study the economic and social benefits that the church derived from slavery and its aftermath.

"The Archives continues to add to this unfolding story and has constructed the online publication to be a growing digital repository of the Episcopal Church's African American narrative," the release said. Viewers can share their comments on the exhibit or leave their personal reflections for permanent posting by using a comment form. Those who would like to add documentary evidence to the exhibit or to the Afro Anglican Archives of the Episcopal Church are encouraged to contact Archives Director Mark J. Duffy at P.O. Box 2247, Austin, Texas 78768.

The Archives of the Episcopal Church is the Church's historical repository and research center with offices in Austin and New York City.