Self Central Time: Alex Champion's Week 8

Week eight marks the two-thirds point of the HistoryMakers Fellowship 2012 summer institute. I knew almost since the day of acceptance that it would be taxing psychologically, with long hours in an unfamiliar city, but also taxing intellectually as I worked under a non-archivist with very particular needs and desires. Although I have experience with not-for-profit directors from my time at the Swiss Center of North America, that was for a new, developing manuscript archive in a one person shop rather than a sophisticated heritage organization with a dozen employees; it’s all the difference between a $3,000 Dr. Scholl Foundation grant and a nearly $900,000 Institute for Museum and Library Services grant. Executive Director Julieanna Richardson is adamant to get the grant renewed and her desires permeate in everything we do.

One symptom of this adamancy is in the demands she placed on our participation plans. Previous IMLS fellows drafted a plan via a presentation application (e.g. PowerPoint) to talk up their placement institution and what work they will perform there. Since much of the institutional information necessary for many of the second year fellows remained on the server, Julieanna decided we should gather similarly in-depth information for another repository or collection; my predecessor’s presentation file was not on the server and it took four pairs of eyes to find the footage of her actual presentation before the group. By then I already acquired most of the institutional information on my own.

Following an uncomfortable conversation just days before the scheduled date of my presentation (See my Week 4 blog) Julieanna ruled I would describe an HBCU archive instead of the March on Milwaukee digital library. I told her flat out that budgetary information would be nigh impossible to extract but I continued nevertheless; I contacted Morgan, Virginia Union, Howard, and Lincoln to varying degrees of success but still nothing that would satisfy the detail she expected.

A dry run of my presentation went pretty well. Julieanna enjoyed most of the humor but told me to get rid of a couple jokes that undermined the sobriety of a fellowship placement concerning the legacy of slavery in Maryland; she mainly wanted more details about my work patterns. I already told her on three or four occasions that the Maryland State Archives did not have a particular schedule in mind. To remedy this problem I included a calendar of the previous fellow’s activities as a sample. This was not good enough but I did not understand how to improve it; the circumstances of fellow Fellow Ardra gave me a better understanding of what Julieanna wanted.

Chaitra Powell, Ardra Whitney, and then I were supposed to give our presentations during the first month of the fellowship but were rescheduled because they did not meet the level of detail Julieanna demanded. Ardra was the first to give the actual presentation, on Tuesday, July 24. Technical problems delayed the start and caused several hiccups with her conferenced supervisor Georgette Mayo but this did not affect the content. It was rich, insightful, thoroughly researched, and well designed but agonizingly detailed. I learned a lot about Charleston, South Carolina, the Gullah/Geechee culture, and the history of the Avery Normal School that preceded the Avery Research Center—but it took well over an hour even though a majority of the slides were skipped due to time. As the anchor of The HistoryMakers, Julieanna is constantly consulted—though rarely distracted—much like Avery’s Jill of all trades, Ms. Mayo, and both were running out of time. 

In the group critique that followed, Cynthia Lovett gave the most constructive, succinct criticism of the meeting; Ardra needed to keep herself at the center. It was an obvious assessment in hindsight but nevertheless an exceedingly useful one. Thankfully my descriptions of Maryland and the Maryland State Archives were confined to a few short slides but I realized I quickly realized they removed me from the presentation. With this new found revelation, and new constructive critiques by my host institution, I left slightly early from work (7:10 is still early) and resumed revisions on my draft. Aside from the brand new slides reviewing the Blair-Caldwell African American ResearchLibrary’s black manuscript collections, the most significant revisions elaborated upon the mission and purpose of the Legacy of Slavery in Maryland (LOSIM) within the Maryland State Archives and my place within that. I articulated what was special about their archives and the LOSIM program.

The Blair-Caldwell African American Research Library, Denver

The presentation itself went along fairly well. The technical needs were pre-arranged with but a few minor adjustments to improve the call quality for my conferenced supervisors. I lightened the mood with some opening PowerPoint humor; animated content and slide advances were timed precisely to the tune of John Philip Sousa’s “Liberty Bell (March),” better known as the theme to Monty Python’s Flying Circus, all while I played ignorant as to what my presentation was about. Julieanna instructed us to dress formally for our presentations so—in my bow tie and corduroy evening jacket—I must have looked like an English fool as my slides claimed I was presenting on organizations with the acronym “MSA.” The Missouri Scholars Academy? No, that doesn’t sound right. How about the Mycological Society of America! No, that’s not it either… Then, following a very slow vertical blinds animation of the flag of Maryland—my favorite state flag in fact—the “The Maryland” and “State Archives” appeared twice each in alternating quadrants; black letters for the red and white portions and red letters for the yellow and black. I remained in character and pretended to be surprised and relieved to finally have my answer. I made sure to advance my slides before “Liberty Bell” went too far beyond the Monty Python snippet. Other songs included Jimi Hendrix’ “Star Spangled Banner” on the state history page, a “School House Rock!” interlude for school outreach, a somber harmonica solo from a Japanese cartoon called Azumanga Daioh, and the song “Fly Away” from the “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” soundtrack.  PowerPoint refused MP3s so these songs were embedded as WAVs. Together with two four megabyte TIFs these songs made my presentation too big for e-mail. I should look into a rudimentary photo and audio/visual-editing suite to reduce future presentation sizes. At the very least it won’t take over a minute to save the dang things!

During the presentation I also demonstrated the usefulness of the digitized slave runaway ads through a randomly selected sample introduced earlier but elaborated upon towards the end. It was a $150 reward for the capture of a 24 year old slave named Polly who belonged to a Louisiana family that often travelled to the Washington, D.C. area. She is described as a “dark mulatto” although her daughter, whose name appears to be a Coeleste, is “much lighter” with straight hair. The ad contends that Polly was “enticed away” given her years of faithful service and trusted place within the family. The slave owner’s stated refusal to believe that Polly, who was “raised in the house,” was simply biding her time for freedom and the unapologetic admission of her and her daughter’s white paternity also clue the modern reader into the mindset of the slaveholding culture. 

The IMLS fellows visited Columbia University’s Center for Black Music Research and toured Bronzeville with Tony Burroughs but I will write more about these next week following our visit to the National Archives regional office.  I suspect they will provide a delectable contrast.

And now, onto something completely different...