Chicago State of Mind: Alex Champion's Week 2

As America’s second city Chicago is a smaller version of old New York with its vibrant neighborhoods and tall buildings. As America’s second city Chicago is more compact than Los Angeles; these combinations afford Chicago’s neighborhoods a fiefdom-like status while easily connecting them with mass transit and bicycle paths. My sublet is in Kenwood, immediately north of the invisible line that separates it from Hyde Park, and just two blocks away from President Barack Obama’s private residence. Since the president calls the very Democratic Chicago home and his former aid is the mayor, Obama is quite popular around these parts. Twice in as many weeks he stopped over and each time I missed—arriving immediately after he left or leaving the city before he came. The maintenance man for the condo was cleaning the front door and smiled kindly as he opened it for me; little did he know my bicycling injury the previous week required me to set down my conveyance in order to use the door.  I returned the smile and, modifying a favorite bumper sticker, I commanded him to “look busy,” since “the President’s coming today.” He continued smiling and, with a tinge of pride, gently complained about the security measures.
 

A quarter of the way to work...

This second week in Chicago was the first one where I commuted by bike every day. Kenwood and Hyde Park have no El service and any convenient buses require passing The HistoryMakers’ cross street and transferring to a second bus or walk fifteen minutes to catch a direct bus. The alternative is the Metra commuter line; rather than learn which local trains need to be flagged and which of these go to Soldier Field I simply bike the five and a half miles along the scenic coast. Bicyclists and joggers clog the trails like the car traffic along Lake Shore Drive while ubiquitous parks personnel pick up litter, water the soil with fire hoses, and avoid inattentive bicyclists and joggers who would mow them down.

Unlike Week 1 we had no extended workshop. Our primary tasks were the interview evaluations, the basis of the EAD and EAC finding aids, to Julieanna Richardson’s satisfaction. Unfortunately she was absent for the “A NightWith Warren Washington” ScienceMakers event in Washington, D.C. and gave us our critiques in a single day. We have yet to create a single finding aid but, pending final approval, I have three ready to go. The most recent interview I processed was Bernice King, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s youngest daughter. Interviewed in February 2008, King extensively described her mother and father’s genealogy and her reaction to her father’s death; it was simultaneously touching and tragic that she created no permanent memories of her father. Having just turned five years old, King had an admittedly poor grasp of death’s permanence. In a telling anecdote from his funeral, they played an excerpt from King’s sermon “The Drum Major Instinct” for the eulogy and young Bernice, tired from a long day, believed her father was alive again. His extended absences and, when Coretta toured to continue his legacy, the celebrity of her mother made a normal childhood impossible. I listened to the complete sermon as I revised her interview evaluation and reexamined the controversy behind the King memorial in Washington, D.C.’s paraphrasing of its closing passages; I agree with May Angelou that omitting the “if” clause makes King sound like an arrogant twit, which is precisely what his sermon decries.

Art

Bev Cook shows us around

Curiously, I seem to be building a reputation within the Chicago community. Before our tour of the Carter G. Woodson branch of the Chicago Public Library, the archivist of the Vivian Harsh Collection, Beverly “Bev” Cook, smiled knowingly at me and proclaimed “I was warned about you…” She repeated this phrase every so often when I joked; after my departing quip, which referenced something she said two hours earlier, again she laughed but this time claimed she was “gonna miss me.” Our history professor Dr. Christopher Reed said something similar; Dr. Reed casually wondered aloud if the McCormick-International Harvester Collection at the Wisconsin Historical Society had papers concerning blacks who participated in the development of the reaper. I told him I knew the PA and, if he dropped my name, he may get extra help. He laughed and claimed I was becoming a Chicago politician by using connections like favors and, as I usually do, I played along with the same deadpan delivery I used to announce the connection. Dr. Reed went on to say I was “like his son”; I sincerely hope that is a good thing.

Dr. Reed plays the role of eminent professor

Both experiences were rewarding in their own ways. I always enjoy frank and practical counsel from practicing archivists and Bev certainly fits that description. After the usual introductions we talked about the Vivian Harsh Collection and its place in Chicago history and toured the facility; Bev emphasized their preservation methods and showed me my first de-acidification chamber. After lunch she gave us an assignment to use the library’s website or catalog to find information about particular to us. My assignment involved locating audio visual materials in a collection of scripts, supporting files, and CDs of a 1948-1950 radio drama of black pioneers. I needed to locate the CDs for three scripts, each with an incremental level of difficulty. The first script was found with a simple “Ctrl F” of the subject’s whole name, the second one required me to use their last name because the CD spelled out the subject’s entire time, and the third subject could not be found with “Ctrl F” because the CD portion the inventory had a typo; instead I used the chronological structure of the finding aid to locate the CD.

My happy face

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Alex Champion~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~