"We were selected based on the interest level among our faculty and our commitment to providing access to the collection's unique and historic contents," Baker said.

Henry Hampton (1940-1998) was a St. Louis native who, after graduating from the University in 1961, went on to become one of the world's most respected documentary filmmakers.

Hampton founded and ran Blackside Productions, the United States' largest African-American owned documentary film production company. His work focused on the lives of the poor and disenfranchised and chronicled the 20th century's great political and social movements.

Best known of Hampton's 60-plus major film and media projects is the 14-part series Eyes on the Prize, which documented the Civil Rights Movement. The series ran in prime time on PBS stations in the 1980s, reaching an audience of more than 20 million viewers on each airing.

Eyes on the Prize II won many awards. It was hailed by Time magazine as "Best Documentary of the Decade" and by The Boston Globe as "one of the most distinguished documentary series in the history of broadcasting."

Hampton co-authored a companion volume, Voices of Freedom: An Oral History of America's Civil Rights Movement. His other documentaries include The Great Depression; America's War on Poverty; I'll Make Me a World; Malcolm X: Make It Plain; and Breakthrough: The Changing Face of Science in America.

All the materials used in creating these and other Blackside films are being moved to a new, 3,000-square-foot film archive housed in the University's West Campus Library. One trailer load of materials arrived in April, and two more will arrive before summer.

The archive includes nearly 3,000 boxes of film, still photographs, scripts, storyboards, producer's notes, interviews, music, narration, posters, books and other materials -- even equipment -- from Blackside's internal reference library.

University Libraries are breaking new ground with this, its first-ever film archive, to be part of the Department of Special Collections. The facility is staffed by film archivist David Rowntree, whose past experience includes working as an independent filmmaker, plus a full-time assistant and student workers.

"The collection has been in storage for at least a decade and really hasn't been accessible to anyone," Rowntree said. "All that will change. We'll preserve the collection and have copies made if needed. We plan to integrate these materials and make them available for use by scholars, educators, and filmmakers at Washington University and elsewhere.

"Bringing these materials out for use is critical and essential. Already, filmmakers are asking for footage and oral historians are interested in the interviews."

The attraction is understandable, based on the collection's contents.

B.J. Johnston, associate dean for collections and departmental libraries, said "Much of the material only exists in this collection. Hampton scoured television stations, picking film clips that probably otherwise would have been trashed. Blackside also conducted many interviews, and the archives may hold the only copy."

The film archives staff will spend the summer unpacking boxes and doing preliminary work. Johnston expects the actual cataloging, processing and preser-vation process to take several years. However, parts of the collection will be available for scholarly and educational use this fall.

To celebrate the acquisition, the libraries will host a talk by Julian Bond Sept. 20. A longtime leader in the Civil Rights Movement, Bond narrated Eyes on the Prize and is chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

The process of acquiring this collection involved library staff and faculty members.

"We received a request for a proposal in August of 2000, with a due date just three weeks later," said Anne Posega, head of special collections. "We tapped staff members from various library units and charged them with gathering all the information and writing the proposal. Faculty members from African and Afro-American Studies, American Culture Studies, history, Film and Media Studies, English and education (all in Arts & Sciences) helped by telling us how they would use the collection, and we included some of their comments in our proposal."

The Library of Congress, WGBH (Boston's PBS station), the University of Georgia and Indiana University -- all of which have well-established film archives -- also were in the running.

After the proposal was submitted, Baker, Posega and head of reference Rudolph Clay traveled to Boston to present the case. In early 2001, word came that the top choice was Washington University Libraries.

Johnston described the competition in sporting terms: "We were the underdogs. We were the Montreal Expos winning the World Series."

Posega said, "The decision-makers were impressed with our faculty members' commitment to using the collection in the classroom. They wanted to know that whoever got it didn't just put it on a shelf but would also do outreach, not only on campus but locally, nationally and internationally."