Wrapping Up: Alex Champion's Weeks 11-12 at The HistoryMakers

As evidenced by other HistoryMakers employees whose leaves coincided with our summer institute I expected we would work until the very end; these expectations were met--we worked until 7 pm on our final --albeit at a leisurely pace. After receiving Julieanna's revisions of my final interview evaluation I resumed the oral history work and EAD/EAC finding aid XML play that ended when our concentration shifted to special collections. In all I completed ten EAD and ten EAD finding aids out of the original quota of thirty. The finding aids and our three special collections were always a part of the fellowship quota however the level of work involved made this goal impossible. Following the creation of my spreadsheet, known as "the matrix," which indicated the work load was not distributed evenly, our individual progress in the face of relative ease or difficulty was contradictory and hard to read; the matrix precipitated our focus on special collections. The special collections processing was previously abandoned so we could focus on oral history evaluations but it never left the official schedule. Every week had a designated 5-10 hours devoted to them but surely the full brunt of six recent MLS grads would make short work of them. Communication hiccups concerning their records management policies and item level processing proved me wrong. I completed my three special collections with time to spare and even helped my partner Ardra with destapling and refoldering. Despite meeting our quotas Julieanna seemed disappointed that we couldn't do more. As a non-profit manager Julieanna appreciates measurables but not in the manner that archivists do. Once, during a host institution conference call, she asked an archival administrator what her timeline was to completely process her backlog; the administrator was audibly taken aback but explained why this was not feasible. The HistoryMakers archive is very different from most institutions since it operates with concrete objectives--5,000 interviews, twenty special collections for digitization, X thousands of tapes to Library of Congress...

 After numerous delays caused by scheduling/coordination conflicts, quality control problems, and even a mild heart attack, Chaitra, Skyla, Amanda, and Ardra gave their participation plan presentations. Both Amanda and Ardra did an excellent job placing their host institution histories within their presentation and we were all very impressed with the outreach and community engagement of Chaitra’s Mayme Clayton Library and Museum. Skyla’s presentation was informational but she was unnaturally nervous; whereas all our host repository supervisors were conferenced, Skyla’s were actually at the conference room table! Michael Flug and Bev Cook were very invested in Skyla’s accomplishments and appreciated her deep interest in black history. On a personal note it was wonderful to finally meet Flug. After a brief chat, Amanda and I left the back room and asked each other about his accent but could not come to an agreement. Regardless of what we thought, his accent was out of place for a famous Chicago historian and archivist. After an implicit dare from Amanda I approached Flug and asked him directly; Amanda followed a few seconds later.

Flug sat back in his chair and figuratively cross his arms while he assumed a riddler’s air like he was going to tell a well rehearsed story. “Well that’s kind of complicated,” he said. “Where do YOU think my accent comes from?” I said it sounded  Mid-Atlantic, a la “Pennsylvania or New Jersey.” Amanda, emboldened by the countless Mississippi connections in Chicago that simply drew blank stares when she lived in Nashville, claimed her native state. We were both correct: Flug lived most of his life in New York state but lived in Mississippi from 1960-68 where he worked for the Congress on Racial Equality. “Boy,” I said, “that was a very dangerous time to be a white, northern civil rights activist in the south.” He smiled slightly and his eyes twinkled. “That’s an interesting reply. Most of the time when I tell people that they say ‘oh, that must have been very scary’ or ‘very difficult.’ I can honestly say it was the most exciting time of my life.”

The last Wednesday at The HistoryMakers was mostly spent at the Chicago State University Archives. A previous HistoryMakers fellow, Aaisha Haykal. The highlight was the Automated Retrieval System. Our time at the University of Chicago  library expired before we could see their ARS but, thanks to Chaitra’s initiative, we made up for this at CSU. Taking obvious cues from automated warehouse shelving, this was the first use of ARS in a library/archives setting in Illinois. A librarian explained the ins and outs of the ARS but also how the library assigns locations, handles requests, and what administrative concerns rationalized the purchase of an expensive mechanical system in favor of traditional retrieval methods; its highly compact, low personnel cost, and security from theft may have already paid for itself because the new CSU library could be built smaller.

Joe and Rika Mansueto Library, aka "The Egg"

The view behind my apartment building in Annapolis

As I post this I’m sitting in my new Annapolis living room, far away from Chicago, but I leave many fond memories behind.