Cynthia Lovett: Week 8 @ The HistoryMakers

I continued to process special collections this week, and finished the collection of An Evening With Della Reese with IMLS fellow, Amanda Carter.  Alongside processing, this was a week of five busy days. 

On Monday, we went on a bus for the Chicago Black History tour given by Anthony Burroughs.  We drove past the homes of Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Muhammad Ali. We also passed by the Chicago Defender and Alison Saar’s sculpture dedicated to the Great Migration. 

The home of Gwendoyn Brooks.

In our African American history seminar we discussed World War II and the Freedom Movement.  We learned about how the “Golden Thirteen” received perfect scores on their exam and were asked by the pentagon to re-take the test. After the second test, they still made perfect scores. In 1987, the building for new navy recruits was named Golden Thirteen in their honor.   In Dr. Salvatore’s archives seminar we discussed donor relations and thought about how to present a collection and services to a donor even with limited resources. We also talked about codes of ethics for archivists such as privacy, trust, and authenticity of the record.

Later in the week we visited the Center for Black Music Research at Columbia College, founded by Sam Floyd.  We met Suzanne Flandreau, head librarian and archivist; Laurie Lee Moses, their archivist and digital librarian; Janet Harper, the catalog librarian, and executive director, Dr. Monica Hairston O’Connell.  We learned about their recent challenges involving Columbia attempting to shut down their department. Thanks to the public outcry, it seems that they will remain open for the time being.  They also showed us some of their materials and gave us a tour of their archival spaces. O’Connell explained that she has learned that activism has become a part of her role in working with this repository, and that many culturally specific archives are under siege.

CBMR Digital Archivist Laurie Lee Moses

AfriCOBRA artist, Barbara Jones-Hogu at the South Side Community Center

AfriCOBRA artist, Barbara Jones-Hogu and IMLS Fellow Skyla Hearn

IMLS Fellow Skyla Hearn gives us a tour of the archival room at South Side Community Art Center

This weekend I went with a few other colleagues to the South Side Community Art Center where our fellow, Skyla Hearn, interviewed AfriCOBRA (African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists) artist, Barbara Jones-Hogu.  We got the opportunity to see some of her pieces and hear her discuss her work through its various phases of printmaking, photography, and video.  Skyla has done a great deal of work with the South Side Community Art Center, including organizing the room where much of the artwork is stored.  She also showed us the archive room with the papers that were organized through Dr. Jacqueline Goldsby’s Mapping the Stacks project.

The Ghanaian Festival