Chicago State of Mind: Alex Champion's Week 2

As America’s second city Chicago is a smaller version of old New York with its vibrant neighborhoods and tall buildings. As America’s second city Chicago is more compact than Los Angeles; these combinations afford Chicago’s neighborhoods a fiefdom-like status while easily connecting them with mass transit and bicycle paths. My sublet is in Kenwood, immediately north of the invisible line that separates it from Hyde Park, and just two blocks away from President Barack Obama’s private residence. Since the president calls the very Democratic Chicago home and his former aid is the mayor, Obama is quite popular around these parts. Twice in as many weeks he stopped over and each time I missed—arriving immediately after he left or leaving the city before he came. The maintenance man for the condo was cleaning the front door and smiled kindly as he opened it for me; little did he know my bicycling injury the previous week required me to set down my conveyance in order to use the door.  I returned the smile and, modifying a favorite bumper sticker, I commanded him to “look busy,” since “the President’s coming today.” He continued smiling and, with a tinge of pride, gently complained about the security measures.
 

A quarter of the way to work...

This second week in Chicago was the first one where I commuted by bike every day. Kenwood and Hyde Park have no El service and any convenient buses require passing The HistoryMakers’ cross street and transferring to a second bus or walk fifteen minutes to catch a direct bus. The alternative is the Metra commuter line; rather than learn which local trains need to be flagged and which of these go to Soldier Field I simply bike the five and a half miles along the scenic coast. Bicyclists and joggers clog the trails like the car traffic along Lake Shore Drive while ubiquitous parks personnel pick up litter, water the soil with fire hoses, and avoid inattentive bicyclists and joggers who would mow them down.

Unlike Week 1 we had no extended workshop. Our primary tasks were the interview evaluations, the basis of the EAD and EAC finding aids, to Julieanna Richardson’s satisfaction. Unfortunately she was absent for the “A NightWith Warren Washington” ScienceMakers event in Washington, D.C. and gave us our critiques in a single day. We have yet to create a single finding aid but, pending final approval, I have three ready to go. The most recent interview I processed was Bernice King, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s youngest daughter. Interviewed in February 2008, King extensively described her mother and father’s genealogy and her reaction to her father’s death; it was simultaneously touching and tragic that she created no permanent memories of her father. Having just turned five years old, King had an admittedly poor grasp of death’s permanence. In a telling anecdote from his funeral, they played an excerpt from King’s sermon “The Drum Major Instinct” for the eulogy and young Bernice, tired from a long day, believed her father was alive again. His extended absences and, when Coretta toured to continue his legacy, the celebrity of her mother made a normal childhood impossible. I listened to the complete sermon as I revised her interview evaluation and reexamined the controversy behind the King memorial in Washington, D.C.’s paraphrasing of its closing passages; I agree with May Angelou that omitting the “if” clause makes King sound like an arrogant twit, which is precisely what his sermon decries.

Art

Bev Cook shows us around

Curiously, I seem to be building a reputation within the Chicago community. Before our tour of the Carter G. Woodson branch of the Chicago Public Library, the archivist of the Vivian Harsh Collection, Beverly “Bev” Cook, smiled knowingly at me and proclaimed “I was warned about you…” She repeated this phrase every so often when I joked; after my departing quip, which referenced something she said two hours earlier, again she laughed but this time claimed she was “gonna miss me.” Our history professor Dr. Christopher Reed said something similar; Dr. Reed casually wondered aloud if the McCormick-International Harvester Collection at the Wisconsin Historical Society had papers concerning blacks who participated in the development of the reaper. I told him I knew the PA and, if he dropped my name, he may get extra help. He laughed and claimed I was becoming a Chicago politician by using connections like favors and, as I usually do, I played along with the same deadpan delivery I used to announce the connection. Dr. Reed went on to say I was “like his son”; I sincerely hope that is a good thing.

Dr. Reed plays the role of eminent professor

Both experiences were rewarding in their own ways. I always enjoy frank and practical counsel from practicing archivists and Bev certainly fits that description. After the usual introductions we talked about the Vivian Harsh Collection and its place in Chicago history and toured the facility; Bev emphasized their preservation methods and showed me my first de-acidification chamber. After lunch she gave us an assignment to use the library’s website or catalog to find information about particular to us. My assignment involved locating audio visual materials in a collection of scripts, supporting files, and CDs of a 1948-1950 radio drama of black pioneers. I needed to locate the CDs for three scripts, each with an incremental level of difficulty. The first script was found with a simple “Ctrl F” of the subject’s whole name, the second one required me to use their last name because the CD spelled out the subject’s entire time, and the third subject could not be found with “Ctrl F” because the CD portion the inventory had a typo; instead I used the chronological structure of the finding aid to locate the CD.

My happy face

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Alex Champion~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ardra Whitney: Week 1 @ The HistoryMakers

Greetings from the Windy City!



For the next 3 months, I will be calling Chicago home as I participate in the 2012 IMLS Summer Immersion Program with The HistoryMakers. The week was filled with several meetings and presentations from HistoryMakers staff, including: Julieanna Richardson, Public Historian and Founder/Executive Director; Dan Johnson, Digital Archivist; Jessica Levy, former Research and Program Coordinator; Y’Houshua Murray, current Program Coordinator; Alison Bruzek, NSF Project Director; and Paul Mackey, Production Manager. Through these various meetings and presentations, fellows received an introduction to The HistoryMakers Digital Archive collection; discussed grant expectations; and learned about the organization’s office and archival procedures. We also got to do some really neat ice breakers to help us become more acquainted with one another.

On Wednesday, June 6^th, fellows had their first African American history lecture with Christopher R. Reed, Professor Emeritus with the Department of History and Philosophy at Roosevelt University. Reed began the lecture by sharing photos and stories about African Americans like journalist and newspaper editor, Ida B. Wells and her husband, newspaper owner, Ferdinand L. Barnett.  He also showed us 19^th century photographs of his great grandparents, who were former slaves. His great grandfather, he said, served in a colored infantry during the Civil War. My favorite part of the lecture was Reed’s discussion of the black presence at the World’s Fair of 1893-- because he mentioned the Fon people from the Dahomey Kingdom in West Africa. I find this group of African people to be particularly fascinating because the Dahomean state maintained an all-female military regiment for nearly 200 years. The women warriors were referred to as Mino, meaning "Our Mothers" in the Fon language.

“The simulated village of the Fon people from Dahomey was among the most widely publicized and frequently visited fair sites. Newspapers and magazines extensively covered the exhibit, photographers included it in souvenir booklets, and many observers flocked there each day. The interest in this exhibit, perhaps more than any other, revealed the disparity in perceptions of Africans by an international audience. Some people saw at the exhibit the rich culture of the Fon people, as well as a reminder of a distant African past that had shaped all humanity--as did Bishop Henry McNeal Turner of the African Methodist Episcopal church, commenting at the concurrent Conference on Africa held in Chicago, publicly expounded his belief that all humanity started black" (p. 184). Other fair goers saw in the Fon village a non-industrial, rural lifestyle that was anathema to their Victorian tastes. The scantily clad, bare breasted women and the robed men with their traditional musical instruments and other accouterments both fascinated and repelled many fair goers.”
 - Excerpt from Reed’s book "All the World Is Here!": The Black Presence at White City

On Thursday, June 7^th and Friday, June 8^th, fellows participated in a 2-day training session on Encoded Archival Description (EAD) and Encoded Archival Context—Corporate Bodies, Persons, and Families (EAC-CPF)  led by Katherine Wisser, Assistant Professor and Co-Director of the Archives/History Dual Degree Program at Simmons College. In addition to her informative and well-presented workshop, Wisser provided great insights into professional networking in the field of archival encoding/description. Case in point, Wisser’s continued interest and participation in the development of EAC-CPF has made her Chair of the EAC Working Group and allowed her to collaborate with information professionals from all around the world.  

At the end of the Summer Immersion Program, I will be responsible for completing 30 interview evaluations and EAD/EAC-CPF finding aid assignments. This week, I completed my first interview evaluation assignment for head waiter, letter carrier, and humble activist, Alvin Little. In watching Little’s interview, I was almost moved to tears by the power and simplicity of his life experiences. He realized early on that nobody would give him anything and that if he wanted something he would have to work for it. In his interview, Little says that in order to be successful in life, one must qualify themselves to achieve their personal and professional goals. Congruently, I look forward to learning from and contributing to my fellowship experience--as much as possible--so that I can qualify myself to do outstanding work as an archivist.

Ardra Whitney
IMLS Fellow
Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture