Ardra Whitney: Week 6 @ The HistoryMakers

On Friday, July 13^th and Saturday, July 14^th, IMLS Fellows participated in a two-day oral history training seminar with  professor of journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and former reporter for the Washington Post, Leon Dash. Also in attendance for the oral history training were The HistoryMakers’ NEH Summer Institute Scholars, twenty five teachers chosen from across the country to study the subject of African American political history from Reconstruction to the present.  During Mr. Dash’s seminar we listened to him speak about his time as a reporter in Angola, where he lived with and reported on guerrilla fighters in the mid-1970s; his conversations with Washington, D.C.’s  inner city teens as research for his book on teenage pregnancy among black youths, When Children Want Children: The Urban Crisis of Teenage Childbearing; and “Rosa Lee’s Story”, the eight-part Washington Post series about an urban family living in crisis-- for which he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1995. He and Julieanna Richardson, Founder/Executive Director of The HistoryMakers also discussed oral history methodology; relationships in interviewing and interpreting oral histories. Moreover, seminar participants had the opportunity to split into groups of two and illustrate what we learned at the seminar by conducting oral history interviews on one another.

This week I completed EAD/EAC-CPF finding aids for doll artist, Zenobia Washington and television news correspondent, Suzanne Malveaux. I edited web clips for their interviews, as well as for interviews with Frank Lumpkin and Russ Mitchell.  I also continued working on my interview evaluation for chef/restaurateur, Leah “Dookie” Chase and received back several of the finding aids I submitted to Ms. Richardson for review. In addition, I proofread and provided feedback for four interview evaluations completed by IMLS Fellows, Chaitra Powell and Skyla Hearn. I also e-mailed them two of my own evaluations for review. I found this process of peer review to be both enjoyable and informative. I received great feedback from Ms. Powell on aspects of my writing to be aware of and reviewed a wonderfully concise and well written evaluation from Ms. Hearn.

On July 12^th, fellows met with Ms. Richardson; volunteers, Ms. Alonzo and Ms. Foster; production assistant, Bradley Morgan and science researcher, Julia Wagner to discuss the Special Collections Processing Project. Throughout the week, I continued to work on my assigned collection as part of the project, “An Evening with B.B. King”. I am glad to be working with IMLS Fellow, Alex Champion on the Special Collections Processing Project because I can refer to him with questions about proper classification of the records and documents I am processing.

On Tuesday, July 10^th, fellows attended Dr. Cecilia Salvatore’s archives seminar on collective memory. We discussed assigned readings and focused much of our discussion on identifying examples of potential dilemmas of competing collective memories for persons and events in our lifetimes. At Dr. Christopher Reed’s African American history lecture on Wednesday, July 11^th, fellows learned about impediments to African American advancement following their emancipation from slavery; the role of education and religion in shaping black life in the early 20th century; and black southerners' migration to the North in response to political and racial injustice. We also talked about early 20^thcentury African-American leadership from the likes of Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey and W.E.B. Dubois.

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

Cynthia Lovett: Week 6 @ The HistoryMakers

Over the last week or so we have been looking at the process of evaluating interviews and creating web clips, finding aids, PBCore records, and EAD/EAC-CPF files at the HistoryMakers to see if we can find ways to tighten up the process.  Each of the fellows seems to approach the work differently and we've decided to time our steps to get an idea of how long it takes from start to finish.  In the meantime, the six of us have broken up into pairs and we will tackle special collections processing over the next few weeks.  I will be working with IMLS fellow, Amanda Carter, and we likely begin next Tuesday after we've wrapped up our current evaluations and finding aids.

I evaluated the interview of the Anna Langford this week.  She was the first black woman alderman for the Chicago City Council and was actively involved in Civil rights cases such as the 1964 murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner in Mississippi.  She relayed a fascinating story about her grandfather, Arthur J. Riggs, a Pullman porter, who found secret papers of the Benevolent Protective Order of the Elks (BPOE) on a train and copied them.  He later started the Improved Benevolent Protective Order of the Elks of the World (IBPOEW) in Cincinnati, Ohio, which was open to African Americans. He was their first Grand Exalted Ruler.

In our archives seminar with Cecilia Salvatore we discussed collective memory and the challenges of creating archival exhibitions around controversial subjects and individuals.  In our African American history class with Dr. Reed, we looked at the approaches of challenging white supremacy through the ideas of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B Dubois.  Reed also brought in some documents relating to Marcus Garvey's United Negro Improvement Association such as a chart listing the number of UNIA branches by state.

We had two full days of Oral History Training with Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Leon Dash.   He is a professor of journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  Dash received the Pulitzer Prize for Rosa Lee's Story, published in The Washington Post.  It examines the connections between class and poverty through generations of Rosa Lee Cunningham's family.

Dash took us step by step through his oral history methodology.  It involves a series of interviews divided into areas such as family history, church history, and growing up outside the family.  In each of these segments the first question asked is about the earliest childhood memory with regards to that specific area of the interviewee's life.  Following the first four interviews additional sessions of focused interviews would be scheduled, in which topics are revisited or traversed in greater depth.  For example, if there was a subject the interviewee found difficult to discuss it can be approached from a another angle.  Areas of contradiction can also be explored: Dash explained that each of us learns to wear a public mask and it is the task of the interviewer to slowly peel that away.  As an interviewer you look for something close to the truth, with the realization that you will almost never get it.  If an interviewer has the luxury of time, they can gain the trust of the person and start to take note of contradictions: "Contradictions are closer to the truth," Dash said.

During the workshops we witnessed volunteers from the audience working through the steps. Chairs were pulled to the center of the room and the volunteers interviewed each other.  On the second day, at the end of the session the entire group broke up into pairs and practiced Dash's technique. I got the opportunity to see what it feels like to be in the hot seat: answering questions and reflecting on memories that seemed to have long faded away. After thinking about my earliest childhood memory, all kinds of images resurfaced and I found myself revisiting people and places that I hadn't thought about in years.