Billy Graham Evangelistic Association Clippings File - Collection 360

[Note: What follows is a description of the documents in this collection which are available for use at BGC Archives in Wheaton, Illinois, USA. The actual documents are not, in most cases, available online, only this description of them. Nor are they available for sale or rent. Some or all of this collection can be borrowed through interlibrary loan. ]

Table of Contents

Brief Description of This Collection

Title Page and Restrictions

General Historical Background of Billy Graham and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association

An Essay on the Contents of the Collection (Scope and Content)

Part I: Newspapers - Individual Crusades
Part II: Newspapers - General
Part III: Newspaper - Films and Miscellaneous
Part IV: Magazine Clippings
Part V: Loose Newspaper and Magazine Clippings

Chronology of Evangelistic Campaigns and Other Major Events in the History of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association

Microfilm List

Part I: Newspapers - Individual Crusades
Part II: Newspapers - General
Part III: Newspaper - Films and Miscellaneous
Part IV: Magazine Clippings

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Part of this collection is available for inter-library loan. Click for more information.

Restrictions

The microfilm copy of sections I through IV of this collection must be used instead of the originals.

Scope and Content Description

This collection consists of newspaper and magazine reports about the activities of Billy Graham and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, along with indexes to the magazine reports. The collection falls into five parts: I. Scrapbooks of newspaper clippings in chronological order about particular crusades; II. Scrapbooks of newspaper clippings about Graham or the BGEA in a particular country. The scrapbooks for each country are in chronological order. Those for the United States come first, followed by those of other countries in alphabetical order by the name of the country; III. Scrapbooks of newspaper clippings in chronological order on miscellaneous subjects; IV. Scrapbooks of magazine clippings and articles in chronological order. This section also contains indexes to the magazine articles by subject, magazine title, and quotation topic; V. Loose newspaper and magazine clippings and press releases in chronological order. The scrapbooks in parts I-IV were created by BGEA staff, as were the indexes in part IV. Parts I through IV are reproduced on microfilm and this microfilm must be used instead of the originals.

Please note that there are numerous people, places and events cross referenced to this collection in the microfiche index to the archival collections. All of these subjects are listed at the back of this guide in the cross references, but many are mentioned nowhere else in the guide. That is because it would be impossible to mention specifically all the topics for which there is information in this collection, consisting as it does of more than forty years of clippings. If a researcher is looking for articles about John Doe and knows that John Doe met with Graham in 1962 or John Doe lived in Chicago and there was a Chicago crusade in 1962 or John Doe had some other interaction with the BGEA in 1962, then obviously 1962 is the year to check for clippings. Therefore the researcher would need to look at the year 1962 in all five sections. Except for section IV, the collection is not indexed, so this kind of intensive searching is necessary to locate material. The BGEA chronology, including crusades, available in the Archival Reading Room, gives the dates of many events.

Part I: The scrapbooks in this section each deal with a particular crusade in a particular city or location. They sometimes contain only newspaper clippings but may include posters or correspondence or other items relating to the crusade. The reports in the scrapbook not only cover the crusade itself but usually also the preparation beforehand and the continuation work afterwards. Examples: Scrapbook 1 contains information about the Youth for Christ meetings led by T.W. Wilson, who later became an associate evangelist of the BGEA. Scrapbooks 2 through 20 document Billy Graham evangelistic crusades held before the formal incorporation of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, but the people and methods involved were the same as those for the early BGEA crusades. In order that all the BGEA scrapbooks would be together in one collection, some scrapbooks were transferred to collection 360 from collection 1. The container list of this guide identifies these.

Part II. The scrapbooks in this section deal not with a particular crusade, but with a large representative sampling of the newspaper stores about Graham's and/or the BGEA's work in the newspapers of a particular country over a particular time period. Thus the scrapbooks for Australia contain not just stories about the crusades in 1959 and 1968 but any other story that mentioned Graham or the BGEA. The newspaper stories from a particular country are, of course, in the language of that country except for an occasional article from a United States paper. Examples: Scrapbook 173 contains clippings from United States papers about the 1954 London Crusade. Scrapbooks 333-338 each contain clippings from more than one country. In some cases, a country is represented in one of these miscellaneous scrapbooks for one set of years and has its own scrapbook for another set. For example, clippings from South Africa up until 1956 are in scrapbook 333 along with those from several other countries, but South African stories from 1956 to 1986 are in scrapbooks 351 and 352, which deal exclusively with that country.

Part III. This section contains scrapbooks about specific, non-crusade events, such as the premieres of movies produced by the BGEA's subsidiary, World Wide Pictures or the convocation of the BGEA-sponsored International Congress on World Evangelism in 1974.

Part IV. This section consists of magazine articles about Graham or the BGEA, along with indexes to their contents. These indexes were prepared by the BGEA staff and, while not exhaustive, are very detailed. As mentioned above, there is a index to subjects(which includes, proper names of people, places and organizations as well as generic topics), another to magazine titles, and a third to the subjects of direct quotations by Graham. Each scrapbook contains the articles from a specific time period, usually a single month. The articles within the scrapbook are arranged alphabetically by the title of the magazine. If there is more than one article from the same magazine, they are arranged chronologically. The BGEA also sent to the archives several boxes of loose clippings which were apparently to have been included in the scrapbooks, but for some reason never were. These are also arranged chronologically and then alphabetically by magazine title. On the microfilm of this collection, the scrapbook is always filmed first, then the loose clippings for the same time period. Entries in the index may refer to the scrapbook or to the folder of loose clippings that should have gone into the scrapbook, so both sources must be checked in a comprehensive search. Each scrapbook in this section has two numbers, as can be seen from the container list. The first is the number assigned by the BGC staff and is part of the whole sequence of scrapbooks in this collection. The second (in parenthesis) is the number assigned by the BGEA staff. The BGEA staff gave numbers only to magazine scrapbooks.

Part V. This section consists of loose newspaper and magazine clippings from a wide variety of sources. Besides clippings, there are a few press releases, BGEA internal newsletters, and miscellaneous items. They are arranged chronologically, usually one month per folder. In some cases, because of the great volume of clippings, a folder will cover only a few weeks or days. Clippings are usually not in chronological order within the folder. In many, perhaps most cases, the clippings in section V duplicate those to be found in sections I-IV. Clippings are always being added to this section and the number of folders is always growing, therefore there is no box list. Researchers should simply request the folders they wish by month and year.

The subject matter of section I is almost exclusively evangelistic crusades. Stories about crusades also form a large portion of sections II to IV, but there are also stories dealing mainly or peripherally with Graham and, to a much lesser extent, other staff of the BGEA, such as the associate evangelists. To see if there is information for a particular event, it is a good idea to search a time period at least a month before and after the event.

Provenance

The material in this collection came mainly, but not exclusively from the BGEA. Clippings and press releases and other news items have been received by the archives staff almost every month since June, 1975, when the Archives opened. The more important accessions are listed below. The staff prepared the materials in sections I-IV for microfilming in the fall of 1988. The filming was begun by an outside contractor in December, 1988 and finished in April 1990.

Accession: 75-14, 77-5, 81-32, 82-140, 82-153, 82-162, 82-163, 84-4, 84-10, 84-53, 84-125, 85-175, 87-5, 87-109, 88-8, 88-29, 88-41, 88-48, 89-14, 89-45, 89-67, 89-75, 89-82, 89-120, 96-41, 00-69

Microfilm List

Because of the nature of the contents of this collection, there is no box and folder listing. The researcher can find the appropriate scrapbook by consulting the following list and then going to the indicated microfilm reel. And/or it can be requested from section V, the file containing the loose clippings for the time period in which he or she is interested. From page 44 on, there are many dates in boldface and brackets. such as [January 1954]. These are the titles of folders of loose magazine clippings sent by the BGEA to the Center after the microfilming project had started. They were included in the filming. The loose clippings on the microfilm follow the scrapbooks for the same dates.

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