One of CIC's primary activities was to hold massive biweekly meetings called "community dialogues" to discuss broad issues such as racism, police sensitivity, education, and employment discrimination within the city of San Diego. The number of attendees at any given meeting was usually quite high—perhaps as many as 30 or more persons—representing an extremely wide variety of backgrounds, including city officials, educators, administrators, religious leaders, law enforcement, journalists, and minority community spokespersons. The meetings were moderated by CIC Executive Director Carroll Waymon, and his voice is often the first one heard in the audio recordings of the meetings.

Formed in 1963 because of increasing racial tension, the Citizens Interracial Committee (CIC) sought to create community dialogues and educate people about racial issues and concerns within city limits. In 1964, the CIC became an official non-profit organization and received city funding. Initially, the CIC consisted of a director (Carroll Waymon), a secretary, a consultant and a clerk. Over the next several years the city increased CIC funding, allowing the agency to expand to include other employees and services.

0.42 linear ft

The copyright interests in some of these materials have been transferred to or belong to San Diego State University. The nature of historical archival and manuscript collections means that copyright status may be difficult or even impossible to determine. Copyright resides with the creators of materials contained in the collection or their heirs. Requests for permission to publish must be submitted to the Head of Special Collections, San Diego State University, Library and Information Access. When granted, permission is given on behalf of Special Collections as the owner of the physical item and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder(s), which must also be obtained in order to publish.  Materials from our collections are made available for use in research, teaching, and private study. The user must assume full responsibility for any use of the materials, including but not limited to, infringement of copyright and publication rights of reproduced materials.

This collection is open for research.