Ardra Whitney: Week 8 @ The HistoryMakers

This week IMLS Fellows went on not one, but two wonderful field trips. On Monday, July 23^rd, fellows and the NEH Summer Scholars traveled by motor coach on a black history tour of Chicago. The tour was led by genealogist, Tony Burroughs and executive director of The HistoryMakers, Julieanna Richardson. We visited the Stephen Douglas Monument Park, the Victory Monument and the Monument to the Great Northern Migration. We also visited the homes of notable and accomplished African Americans, such as Margaret Burroughs, Louis Armstrong, Nat King Cole, Daniel Hale Williams, Muhammad Ali, Louis Farrakhan, Barack Obama; and other sites connected to Chicago’s black heritage, i.e., Quinn Chapel, Chicago Defender, and Chess Records. I particularly enjoyed touring Bronzeville and getting to see the fifteen foot tall, Monument to the Great Northern Migration—created by sculptor, Alison Saar. It commemorates all the African-American men, women and children who migrated to the south side of Chicago after the Civil War. The figure is covered with patches depicting the worn shoe soles of African Americans that migrated from southern states in search of a northern “Promised Land”. The soles symbolize the often difficult journey they faced during their migration from the south to the north.

On Friday, July 27^th, fellows had a second field trip to the Center for Black Music Research (CBMR) at Columbia College. We met with CBMR staff: Monica Hairston O'Connell, Executive Director; Suzanne Flandreau, Head Librarian and Archivist; Janet Harper, Catalog Librarian; and Laurie Lee Moses, Archivist and Digital Librarian.  We introduced ourselves to one another and each spoke about our education and archival backgrounds. The staff also spoke to the group about the history of the CBMR, its holdings and its fight to remain open this past year. Prior to the field trip we were asked to select collections from the CBMR that we wanted to get a closer look at. I selected the collection: Edmund Thornton Jenkins scores and other material. Edmund Thornton Jenkins was born in Charleston, South Carolina, and studied at Avery Institute and Morehouse College. He received his early musical training at the Jenkins Orphanage founded by his father, and toured with the Jenkins Orphanage Band during the summers. According to Ms. Flandreau, Jenkins’ orchestral rhapsody, Charlestonia, which premiered in Ostend, Belgium in July 1925, was the first large-scale piece of concert music by an African American to achieve acclaim in Europe. After looking at the various collections each fellow chose, Ms. Moses took us on a tour of the CBMR’s archival facilities, i.e. stacks, offices, and reading room and offices.

Throughout the week, I continued working on Special Collections Processing Project: "An Evening with Quincy Jones". I processed a total of five boxes in the categories of “100-Fundraising,” “200-Event,” and “300-Production”. Furthermore, I am one binder and one file drawer away from processing the collection to its completion.

At Dr. Cecilia Salvatore’s archives seminar on Tuesday, July 24^th, we discussed the topic of donor relations and outreach. As part of the seminar, she asked us to complete an exercise where we each devised a strategy or plan for convincing donors to entrust their collections to our repositories—hypothetically speaking. We also talked about the role the Society of American Archivists' Code of Ethics for Archivists and Core Values of Archivists play in establishing trust or “good faith” between an archival repository and a potential donor. 

On Wednesday, July 25^th, I completed of a PowerPoint presentation based on slides created by each IMLS Fellow; which we presented at The HistoryMakers’ Board of Directors meeting. I was very proud of the way all of us worked together in preparation for the meeting. I was also happy that we had been asked to present at such an important occasion.

The topic of this Wednesday’s African American history lecture with Dr. Christopher Reed was World War II and the Freedom Movement, 1954-1965. He discussed increased African American interest in global matters; African American participation in the Second World War; as well as racism in America and xenophobia abroad. Dr. Reed noted the March on Washington’s effectiveness in getting the president to issue an executive order for wartime employment. The president’s order had both immediate impact and a lasting one on employment opportunities for future generations. With regards to the Freedom Movement, we discussed the multidimensional phases of black protest in the 1950s and 1960s: from the boycotts in Montgomery, Alabama to demonstrations in Little Rock, Arkansas to the protests following the murder of Emmett Till and riots in Watts, Los Angeles, California. Dr. Reed also remarked on how President Harry S. Truman’s Administration (1945-1953) was able to produce changes that effected black life in an enormously positive way. Dr. Reed’s discussion of Truman's response to the needs of black Americans reminded me of the photograph Dr. Jacqueline Goldsby showed fellows during her lecture on “Mapping the Stacks”. The image featured Harry S. Truman, John H. Sengstacke and Richard J. Daley at the 1956 Bud Billiken parade. The parade was first held in 1929 and was named after the fictional editor of the Defender's children's section; and by mid-century the annual parade was one of the largest gatherings of African Americans in the United States.

Ardra Whitney
IMLS Fellow
Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture