Far North of Selma, an Allotment of Civil Rights History

They came from fraying binders, from forgotten boxes in storage units, from cobwebbed closets. They had been in Mississippi and South Carolina and Georgia, and included a wallet-size photograph of a familiar preacher with a dream. Their destination was a drab office space in the back of a library in Queens.

Now, a half-century removed from the moments they capture, these artifacts have come to represent the growing, perhaps surprising reputation of Queens College as something of a nexus of civil rights history.

Starting more than two years ago, when a small group of Queens College alumni and faculty members with civil rights backgrounds began contributing items from their personal collections, and cresting in February, when the family of the civil rights activist James Forman donated his remaining collection to the school, the archives have attracted an international audience....