Ardra Whitney: Week 33 @ Avery Research Center

 

 

Monday, April 15^th:

I began the morning with reviewing and updating Avery’s Twitter and Facebook pages; adding pertinent posts about the Fisk Jubilee Singers concert and Color in Freedom: Journey Along the Underground Railroad—Joseph Holston’s new exhibit at Avery, which is on view now through May 20^th. While doing this I noticed that last year’s IMLS Fellow of the Maryland State Archives, Krystal Appiah’s Twitter page came up in the who to follow feed. Clicking on the link to her page, I took a look and was really impressed with the quality of her posts and retweets. Her page included posts pertaining to African American history, library and archival studies, archives of color; and museum, archives and library fellowships and scholarships for students. I recommend Ms. Appiah’s Twitter page to anyone interested in current trends and issues in libraries and archives and seeking refreshing and informative updates on what’s going on in various cultural institutions around the world.

 

Towards the end of the day, I went to post another round of updates to Avery’s Twitter page but was not able to log in. Subsequently, I went to speak with Assistant Director, Deborah Wright in her office about the problem of not being able to access Avery’s Twitter account—Ms. Wright is the primary administrator for all of Avery’s social media accounts. After several log in tries, it turned out that we had to change the account password.

 

Tuesday, April 16^th:

Graduate Assistant, Daron Calhoun II sent me and Manager of Archival Services, Aaron Spelbring an e-mail about an online directory of archival institutions in order to document black intellectual history. It's essentially a participant generated list, where you can add links to archives and archival collections that specialize in documenting the intellectual history of African Americans. The thread for the H-Net discussion concerning the directory was started by Dr. Abdul Alkalimat McWorter, a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's Graduate School of Library and Information Science.

 

I replied back to Mr. Calhoun about how much I liked his idea of including links to Avery’s collections and shared my thoughts on it with him and Mr. Spelbring. We are just waiting to hear more from Mr. Spelbring and Processing Archivist, Georgette Mayo about their suggestions on which collections from Avery’s archives they would like to see added to the directory. I also shared a link to the H-Net discussion with the rest of the fellows; since we are all performing residencies at African-American archival repositories, we all have the opportunity to contribute links to collections from our respective repositories we feel should be made part of the directory.

 

Wednesday, April 17^th - Thursday, April 18^th:

On Wednesday, I spoke with Mr. Spelbring about conducting an interview on the digitization project him and Lowcountry Digital Library Intern, Lauren Hess did for American Experience’s Abolitionist Map of America—powered by Historypin. From the moment I heard about this project I was really excited, so I wanted to touch base with Mr. Spelbring and find out about the status of the project. I am also planning to write an article on the project for the spring issue of Avery’s newsletter, the Avery Messenger.

 

On Thursday I followed-up with Librarian, Grace Cordial at the Beaufort County Library via e-mail and discussed having reproductions of former Beaufort Sheriff J.E. McTeer’s scrapbooks made for inclusion in my poster presentation.

 

Friday, April 19^th:

By Friday, I had completed processing roughly fourteen out of the eighteen proposed series and sub-series from the Virginia Geraty Papers—that included a large section of printed material and ephemera, i.e., newspaper and magazine clippings. After work, Outreach Education Coordinator, Shelia Harell-Roye was kind enough to drive myself, Mr. Spelbring and Resident Scholar, Dr. Dwana Waugh to Circular Congregational Church for the Fisk Jubilee Singers concert. I had a great time! Dr. Millicent Brown was there with her sister Minerva and complimented my hair. Brown was a plenary speaker at Avery’s Black Power Conference last year and recently gifted her collection of oral histories from her project “Somebody Had To Do It” to the Avery Research Center. Brown has been working on this project for the past several years; gathering stories from the first African-American students to integrate the U.S. school system in the 1960s. I am looking forward to hearing more about this donation in the upcoming issue of the Avery Messenger. As attendees began to pour into the church and we waited for the concert to begin, I started a conversation with the person seated next to me. He explained that he was a member of the Graves family— a noted African American family from Charleston, consisting largely of educators and Avery Institute graduates. He remarked that many of his family members were alumni of Fisk University, including siblings, aunts and uncles.

The concert was amazing! It was an absolute pleasure to hear this illustrious choral group with its rich legacy and nearly 150 year history sing so exquisitely. I particularly enjoyed the songs: “Ain’t That Good News”, “The Battle of Jericho” and “Cert’nly Lawd”, which I remembered being sung by the choir at my father’s church when I was little. The Fisk Jubilee Singers’ concert selections also included two standards and popular favorites with regards to Negro spirituals, “Old Time Religion” and an encore performance of “Wade in the Water”. The concert concluded with all the Fisk University alumni in the audience being invited on stage to sing their alma mater’s song, “The Gold and Blue”. Avery’s own Executive Director, Dr. Patricia Williams Lessane was one of the on stage participants, as she is an alumna of Fisk University.