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This series consists of application materials submitted for consideration for the Sidney Poitier Fellowship (SPF) competition. The Sidney Poitier Fellowship for Emerging Black Filmmakers was announced by the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame, Inc. (BFHFI) in 1992 as a program to award up to ten fellowships to black film/video artists in the process of beginning or completing projects. The SPF program sought to "discover and provide support to talented persons who are pursuing careers as video and film makers" and to further the BFHFI's mission to provide resources to "those who are creating new and dynamic media images from our cultural perspective" (BFHFI planning document). The BFHFI announced the first Poitier Fellowship winners, who were selected from a pool of 102 applicants, at its 20th and final Oscar Micheaux Awards Ceremony in October 1993. The Awards Ceremony souvenir program includes a listing of the Poitier Fellowship awardees. Although the BFHFI intended to present ten awards bi-annually, the Sidney Poitier Fellowship program did not continue after its initial year.

SPF applicants were required to submit budgets, treatments, scripts, or project proposals, as well as a sample work on videocassette. The applications reflect a broad spectrum of independent film and video making from the early 1990s. Proposals include feature films, film school student projects, documentaries, community television, animation, experimental short films, and new media productions submitted by applicants ranging from first-time filmmakers to experienced mid-career veterans.

Videocassettes included with applications have been arranged in a separate series. Except when unavailable, each application has a corresponding sample work on videocassette found in the Videocassettes Series

The Midwest Migrant Farm Worker collection largely consists of paper records, objects, monographs, and photographs collected by Dave Cormier, both a faculty member at Indiana University Kokomo and an active organizer in the farm labor movement. He helped to organize and worked with the Great Boycott Committee, later known as the Farm Labor Aid Committee, from 1968 to 1974. Other organizers, including Ricardo Parra and Jose Juarez from St. Joseph County, contributed personal papers.

The collection is organized into thirteen series, listed above and detailed further in the following container list. Audiovisual materials and monographs are discoverable in IUCAT, Indiana University Library's catalog, and are stored in the Special Collections Room. Photographs are available in print and have also been digitized to be made available online.

As described by Cormier, many of the materials in the collection "depict the confrontative propaganda and protest methods" used in farm worker organizing. The correspondence, research files, and news clippings are complemented by the objects in the collection, notably including buttons, jewelry, and hand-painted signs.