Last week I have processed materials for a few more McKissack projects: the Cotton brothers, Fisk University, A & I State College [Tennessee State University], and the University of Haiti. I was able to process these projects more quickly because there is much less documentation for these than for the previous ones. While there are a number of projects yet to be processed, the limited amount of information will result in my finishing this section of the finding aid tentatively by the end of next week or the beginning of the week after next. Once all of these less documented projects are processed, I will then move on to the final six boxes that include information pertaining to community services, photographs, and realia. That should take approximately two weeks at which point I will then finalize the blueprints series.
After the information for the collection has been thoroughly recorded, I will make a final, slight rearrangement of the collection which will result in fewer boxes. Currently, I have most of the projects separated into their own boxes so that it will be easier to arrange all of the projects chronologically once the dates have been determined. Once the projects have been arranged chronologically and merged together to save space, I suspect that I will be able to slightly reduce to total number of boxes containing the collection. The final steps in processing after finalizing the arrangement will be to print and apply labels, shelve the collection, report it to the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collection (NUCMC), and deposit a copy of the finding aid in Special Collections while another CD copy is placed in the vault.
Interesting Finds
I made a fascinating discovery while processing the University of Haiti proposal records. Correspondence in the University of Haiti file includes a memorandum to Father Jean Baptiste Georges and a letter to President Francois Duvalier dated early 1959. I was having difficulty finding any background or history on the university itself, so I decided to research these names in the hopes of finding a little more information. While I did not find information about the university, I did discover a fascinating political struggle involving both men. Apparently, a few years before this letter was written, Duvalier was in hiding from ruling Haitian regime. Right before Duvalier came to power as president, Georges hid him out in his house for a while. However, the very year the McKissacks wrote their proposal, Duvalier exiled Georges from Haiti. A few newspaper articles I found suggest that years later, in the mid to late 1960s, Georges was a part of a rebellion that attempted to overthrow Duvalier. Had the rebellion succeeded, Georges was to take Duvalier’s place as president. What a fascinating story! These serendipitous discoveries are largely why I love processing collections so much.
Blueprints
On Monday, volunteer Evelyn Jones and I spent the morning flattening, dusting, and recording metadata for the blueprints. We made it a little further than originally anticipated because many of the blueprints that we thought were in extremely poor condition were only in poor condition and thus could be handled a little more easily. Fortunately, we were able to finish flattening all blueprints positively identified as belonging to the McKissack collection. We will spend one more morning together to flatten, dust, and record metadata for about four sets of blueprints that cannot be traced directly to the McKissack collection other than by their proximity to the McKissack blueprints when I arrived.
Interesting Finds
We found more blueprints for Fisk University’s Scribner Hall. On these blueprints and on a separate aerial drawing of campus, an interesting discovery was made. The consulting architect was none other than Paul R. Williams, a famous African American architect. Dr. Smith had asked me previously if I had seen any collaboration between the McKissacks and Williams, so I was happy to be able to report this information when we found it.
Until next time…
Amanda J. Carter
Franklin Library, Fisk University
IMLS HistoryMakers Fellow 2012-2013
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