This week at The HistoryMakers was full of tours and
presentations. On Monday, we joined
the NEH teachers for a black history tour of Chicago’s Southside. Our guide was
Tony Burroughs. Mr. Burroughs pointed out important landmarks and told the
stories of why they were significant. The statue that marks the northern border
of Bronzeville is a black man with a suitcase, it is composed of discarded shoe
soles and the surrounding suitcases are authentically preserved. Mr. Burroughs
showed us the field near U.S. Cellular Field where the Negro leagues used to
play. An interesting fact is that people used to get dressed up in their Sunday
best to go to baseball games. In terms of collective memory, Jackie Robinson
and the integration of baseball could be seen as a positive or a negative
thing. Was the integration about bringing racial unity to the sport or
absorbing the money that blacks were spending at the ballpark? The recruitment
of the best black ball players without the black coaches, black club owners or
black umpires fractured the culture of black baseball. A few weeks ago, I was
watching parts of Ken Burn’s documentary on baseball and many black baseball
players, including Jackie Robinson, have felt a sense of disenfranchisement
within the major leagues from being unrepresented in the leadership of the
sport.
We also visited the Center for Black Music Research at
Columbia College on Friday. We met with the archivists, Laura Lee Moses and
Suzanne Flandreau, and learned more about their collection Compared to our
other tours, the staff at the CBMR gave a pragmatic session on how they deal
with demonstrating their relevance, protecting themselves from copyright issues
and migrating their collection from one medium to another. The executive
director, Monica O’Connell took time to tell us about the institutional
politics that are playing out at Columbia College today in terms of the
existence of the CBMR. She explained how she spoke to a college administrator
who essentially told her that archives are “irrelevant and dusty”. Sometimes, I
feel like people really are in the Matrix, they don’t realize that their
conditioning is conditioned. We need primary source documents to help us
understand how the world came to be the way that it is. We need archivists that
are trained to be inclusive recognize their own bias and how to minimize it. That
is so rare; most professions train their recruits to promote a certain agenda
or perspective. Monica concluded that working in cultural heritage institutions
can easily be seen as a form of activism.
On Tuesday, we had the pleasure of listening to Ardra’s
presentation to her host repository (Avery Repository) in Charleston, South
Carolina. Ardra’s new supervisor will be Georgette Mayo. Ms. Mayo seemed very
nice and enthusiastic about Ardra’s arrival at Avery. On Wednesday, Alex
entertained us with his presentation on the Maryland State Archives which is
located in Annapolis, Maryland. His new supervisor, Chris Haley was the founder
of the Legacy of Slavery Project that Alex will be working on for the remainder
of the fellowship. I applaud Alex and Ardra for taking the first attempts at a
high stakes presentation. I have learned a lot from their efforts which will
make my subsequent presentation better than it would have been. The 2012-2013
fellows also introduced ourselves to members of the HistoryMakers board of
directors, presented on our progress in the program. I was pleased that as
diverse as we are in style and attitude, we put together a cohesive
presentation in 20 minutes, and executed it without any problems. Dr. Salvatore
lectured on the importance of donor relations and outreach within the archives.
Dr. Reed helped us to elaborate on our knowledge of black Chicago gleaned from
Mr. Burroughs black history tour. We also talked about what was happening with
African Americans during World War II. In any free time, Skyla and I continued
to work on the special collections for Valerie Simpson and Eartha Kitt.
This week at The HistoryMakers was full of tours and
presentations. On Monday, we joined
the NEH teachers for a black history tour of Chicago’s Southside. Our guide was
Tony Burroughs. Mr. Burroughs pointed out important landmarks and told the
stories of why they were significant. The statue that marks the northern border
of Bronzeville is a black man with a suitcase, it is composed of discarded shoe
soles and the surrounding suitcases are authentically preserved. Mr. Burroughs
showed us the field near U.S. Cellular Field where the Negro leagues used to
play. An interesting fact is that people used to get dressed up in their Sunday
best to go to baseball games. In terms of collective memory, Jackie Robinson
and the integration of baseball could be seen as a positive or a negative
thing. Was the integration about bringing racial unity to the sport or
absorbing the money that blacks were spending at the ballpark? The recruitment
of the best black ball players without the black coaches, black club owners or
black umpires fractured the culture of black baseball. A few weeks ago, I was
watching parts of Ken Burn’s documentary on baseball and many black baseball
players, including Jackie Robinson, have felt a sense of disenfranchisement
within the major leagues from being unrepresented in the leadership of the
sport. 
We also visited the Center for Black Music Research at
Columbia College on Friday. We met with the archivists, Laura Lee Moses and
Suzanne Flandreau, and learned more about their collection Compared to our
other tours, the staff at the CBMR gave a pragmatic session on how they deal
with demonstrating their relevance, protecting themselves from copyright issues
and migrating their collection from one medium to another. The executive
director, Monica O’Connell took time to tell us about the institutional
politics that are playing out at Columbia College today in terms of the
existence of the CBMR. She explained how she spoke to a college administrator
who essentially told her that archives are “irrelevant and dusty”. Sometimes, I
feel like people really are in the Matrix, they don’t realize that their
conditioning is conditioned. We need primary source documents to help us
understand how the world came to be the way that it is. We need archivists that
are trained to be inclusive recognize their own bias and how to minimize it. That
is so rare; most professions train their recruits to promote a certain agenda
or perspective. Monica concluded that working in cultural heritage institutions
can easily be seen as a form of activism.
On Tuesday, we had the pleasure of listening to Ardra’s
presentation to her host repository (Avery Repository) in Charleston, South
Carolina. Ardra’s new supervisor will be Georgette Mayo. Ms. Mayo seemed very
nice and enthusiastic about Ardra’s arrival at Avery. On Wednesday, Alex
entertained us with his presentation on the Maryland State Archives which is
located in Annapolis, Maryland. His new supervisor, Chris Haley was the founder
of the Legacy of Slavery Project that Alex will be working on for the remainder
of the fellowship. I applaud Alex and Ardra for taking the first attempts at a
high stakes presentation. I have learned a lot from their efforts which will
make my subsequent presentation better than it would have been. The 2012-2013
fellows also introduced ourselves to members of the HistoryMakers board of
directors, presented on our progress in the program. I was pleased that as
diverse as we are in style and attitude, we put together a cohesive
presentation in 20 minutes, and executed it without any problems. Dr. Salvatore
lectured on the importance of donor relations and outreach within the archives.
Dr. Reed helped us to elaborate on our knowledge of black Chicago gleaned from
Mr. Burroughs black history tour. We also talked about what was happening with
African Americans during World War II. In any free time, Skyla and I continued
to work on the special collections for Valerie Simpson and Eartha Kitt. 
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