Amanda J. Carter: Week 4 (June 25-29, 2012) @ the HistoryMakers

Chicago Skyline at Night

This week I have been playing “catch up” with my evaluations.  Unfortunately, I did not get as far ahead as I had hoped.  The good news is that I am no further behind.  Third-grade teacher turned yoga instructor Rebecca Love’s Eastern-centric beliefs were fascinating even if her explanations were a bit extraordinary.  Entrepreneur Delories Ricks-Wallace’s interview was rich with names and places about her family history and her life.  While I enjoyed evaluating her interview, trying to record the pertinent details in a timely manner was a challenge.  I am now in the process of evaluating Bonita Gooch’s interview.  She is a businesswoman in Wichita, Kansas, who owns and runs an African American newspaper called The Community Voice.  By the end of the week, I had also received feedback on my previous evaluations, so I now have two fully completed EAD and EAC-CPF finding aids.  Yay!  I have made two more finding aids for further review and have one left to finish on Monday.  It feels good to be able to see the whole process complete.  I am still working on increasing my speed, but I am afraid that I am getting a little “burned-out” listening and typing, listening and typing, so next week I will be alternating my schedule to include sorting my special collection boxes for my An Evening With collections of Colin Powell, Della Reese, and Richard Parsons.

After another discussion with Dr. Jessie Smith, the dean of Franklin Library at Fisk University,   I found out that the collection I will be processing for the university is the William McKissack papers.  He owned and ran McKissack & McKissack Architects, the oldest African American architectural firm in the United States, until his wife took over as CEO in 1975.  McKissack’s wife, Leatrice McKissack, and daughter, Cheryl McKissack Felder, are both HistoryMakers and I will be evaluating Felder as one of my assigned interviews.  How serendipitous!  Dr. Smith and I also discussed other aspects of my upcoming presentation on July 9, so I have now created a slideshow for it.  Now if I can just get in touch with Meharry Medical College’s special collections, I will soon be ready to present.  They called Friday while I was out touring the University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center so I will have to call back on Monday.

UC Special Collections Gallery

Speaking of touring the University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center, I was extremely impressed!  They have five archivists (almost unheard of in many academic libraries), a beautiful new research center and gallery area, and an expedient tiered processing system that allows for ALL of the collections to be accessible, even those that have not yet been fully processed.  They even have many digital collections that can be accessed online.  We were running low on time so we were unable to peak into the Mansueto Library which uses an automated system to pull books and collections from their storage underneath the library.  They are truly innovative!

Archival Studies

We had our usual Tuesday and Wednesday lectures with Dr. Cecilia Salvatore, our archival sciences instructor, and Dr. Christopher Reed, our historian.  Dr. Salvatore’s archival instruction was helpful although I must admit that it can be a little confusing to discuss archives in the traditional sense while we are working in one that has such a modern and innovative twist.  I understand Dr. Salvatore is preparing us for our host institutions so that is well and good.  However, my age-old gripe about our literature being old is still a pet peeve that I have about archival science in general.  I know there is something to be said for understanding how procedures and theories evolved to be what they are now, but that will not stop me from being slightly annoyed that we read and discuss 20+ year-old articles that influenced a process that is now somewhat different.  Yes, I am talking about documentation strategy.  Okay, okay, I know it has its merits and that I may be exaggerating somewhat.  Believe me when I say that I realize there is something to be learned from everything and so I will continue to read and learn and grow even though it is not always fun and exciting.  

 I really enjoyed that Dr. Reed brought in some of his family’s pension request records from the Civil War.  It really seems to solidify my understanding of the past when I can see preliminary source materials such as these pension records.  That is why I love archives.  I have read about the Civil War from a variety of perspectives now and I must admit that I always learn something new.  I will never forget learning in my women’s history class that women would dress in uniforms and hide their gender so that they could also fight in the Civil War (and Revolutionary War, at that).  Intriguing! 

I guess that about covers this week.  Next week we have Independence Day off so I am looking forward to a mid-week break and possibly some fireworks!

Navy Pier from the Museum Campus

Until next week…

Amanda J. Carter

Franklin Library, Fisk University 

2012-2013 The HistoryMakers IMLS Fellow

Cynthia Lovett: Week 4 @ The HistoryMakers

This week I evaluated the interview of Earlean Collins, the first African American woman and the first woman to serve as an Illinois State Senator in 1976.  I also evaluated Dori Wilson's interview. Wilson, originally from Winona Mississippi, migrated with her family to Chicago and became one of the early African American runway models in the 1960s.  She also was the prototype for the first African American mannequin at the Marshall Field's department store in Chicago Illinois.

In Dr. Christopher Reed's African American History seminar, we continued to look at conflicts and contrasts between the north and south and especially during the civil war.  Although there were many abolitionists in the northern states, there was also latent racism.  There were concerns about arming blacks fighting for the north because people were worried about them becoming revolutionary.  Even though in the south, about 10 percent of the population had large plantations, their lifestyle was heavily dependent on slavery.  

Our trip to the University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center  was fantastic opportunity to see some of the how some of the ideas discussed over the last few weeks in our Archives Seminar with Cecilia Salvatore can be put into practice. We had been discussing traditional concepts of archives as well as the some of the more recent changes as characterized by Mark Greene and MPLP (More Product, Less Process).  At the University of Chicago, the Special Collections Research Center's approach to archives underwent a change in the 1990s, where their main focus moved towards making collections available to researchers and students.  This meant that even though they cannot process all collections fully, they would still be made available.  They use what they call a "tiered" approach where first processing occurs at the collection level, then if necessary, at the series level.  Also the level of processing is determined by the collection; there is no one size fits all methodology.  Having a backlog was considered the natural state of things, but they don't allow that to prevent people from accessing their materials.  One of the things they do is create a basic inventory and post that online as soon as possible so that people can know it is available.

The Special Collections Center also had a relatively new exhibit space where they have a new show every quarter.  

HBCUs: Alex Champion’s Week 4

My on the job education of black history is increasing with every interview. The interviews with every HistoryMakers are all very personal of course but they describe their times almost as much as they describe themselves. I recently evaluated the 2003 interview of a French instructor at Morgan State University in Baltimore. He described his very busy life as he continued working and getting an education but also his time in World War II. His apparent brilliance convinced the army to run him through the Army Specialized Training Program. The best oral history descriptions contain a lot of verified information such as names and dates; upon looking up the ASTP on Wikipedia I saw that prominent men such as Bob Dole, Ed Koch, Mel Brooks, and Gore Vidal went through the program as well. The HistoryMaker himself was reminiscent of Vidal, oddly enough. Upon further verification of his stories I found a biography of the Inspector General of the Army, to whom the HistoryMaker served as executive assistant; it was very surprising to see that a black man in a very white training program in a segregated army personally served an Inspector General from Mississippi. These little bits of history chip away at naïve perspectives.

Every human being is naïve on particular subjects; for me one of them is black culture. I was raised by my black father and white mother in a small town in southern Minnesota. I went received my undergraduate and master’s degrees from the University of Wisconsin—Madison. This was a school that very actively sought diversity and, in its 2001-2002 undergraduate application guide, digitally edited the face of a black student named Diallo Shabazz onto the cover. The school used his image many times for its promotional publications—they owned the image and he did not mind—but this time they used digital trickery to misrepresent a real image.  He eventually won a suit but asked that the money be used for diversity initiatives.

I had an interesting series of conversations with Julieanna Richardson throughout Week 4. One of her main goals for the IMLS grant and one of the several reasons The HistoryMakers exists is to disseminate talented, competent archivists whose interest in black archives will save the black historical record. She expressed this hope to me; I thought she was talking about community archives but instead it was the “HBCUs.” She was mortified to learn that I did not know what those were. How could I not know that? I must have heard them talk about HBCUs in the interviews! Indeed they did, but they called them “historically black colleges.” Despite my black culture naiveté I was familiar with that term and the HistoryMakers never, ever used the acronym. Their college experiences were not abstractions that merited shorthand; it was their own life at Central State, Morehouse, Howard, Virginia Union, and Morgan. Julieanna was raised like I was in a small town in the Midwest but attended an HBCU, which transformed her perspective. Perhaps this fellowship will transform my own as well and I will be compelled to go forth just as she hopes we all will.

Chaitra Powell: Week 4 @ The HistoryMakers

On Tuesday night, I left work at 7:30 PM to discover that I had lost my bus card. Instead of walking to Roosevelt and catching a train back to Hyde Park, I decided to buy a bus card and head to the movie theater in Streeterville. It was completely irrational the most I could have done at home was work on editing my evaluations and abstracts, the least would have been to get some sleep, both of which would be better than catching the 9:30 PM showing of “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter”. The movie is based on Seth Graeme-Smith’s novel of the same name and takes the position that the Confederates were made up of vampires who preyed on slaves, thus making the abolition of slavery worth fighting for. Vampires killed Lincoln’s mother and his son, so he had a personal vendetta to resolve by writing the Emancipation Proclamation and winning the Civil War. The movie was ridiculous but it gave me something to think about when Dr. Reed was discussing the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln in class on Wednesday. A theme from the movie and the lecture was that the end of slavery was not about a new found love of black people, depending on the historian/novelist, it was about economics, politics, power or vampires. Even well published abolitionists would not hire black people in their establishments. It is ironic that the end of slavery did not provide any support for the struggle of black people to find a place of peace and equality in America.  

When I was living in Phoenix, Arizona in 2011, I volunteered at the Arizona State Library in their Archives department. In January, the state library hosted the Arizona Archives Summit at the Polly Rosenbaum building in Phoenix. Archivists and record managers from all over the state were invited to talk about their collections, new initiatives and attend lectures in order for everyone to be informed about what was happening with the archival collections in Arizona. The portion of Dr. Salvatore’s lecture dealing with Documentation Strategy took me back to this program. There was a committee who was working to get a survey filled out by every archival repository in the state, so that they could see where the gaps in the collecting were. Although the committee presented with fancy graphs and tables, they conceded that not all of the institutions were represented. They opened the floor for discussions on how they could obtain more accurate reporting. The representatives from the Native American communities quickly spoke up about the irrelevancy of the fields in the survey form. For example, what geographical region (choose one) does a collection represent? To them, their materials spread across county and state lines, and their ancient artifacts do not fit easily into pre-defined categories. Other institutions shared that they had so much unprocessed materials that they could not report with full confidence about the contents of their collections. These are just a few of the problems that archivists face as we try to standardize and balance our collections.      

This week at the HistoryMakers Fellowship, my progress on my finding aids was stalled because of my work on the Mayme Clayton PowerPoint presentation and our field trip to The University of Chicago Special Collections and Research Center. Up until now, I was taking notes and lazily adding slides to my presentation, but now I have it all mapped out in my mind. I chose the California African American Museum (CAAM) as the accompanying institution for my presentation. CAAM has more of a focus on art, while Clayton is a more traditional archive with a wider variety of materials. The field trip to The University of Chicago was very informative. The staff who gave the tour was so knowledgeable and encouraging about their collection and careers in archives. The accessions manager, Isabel, is the lynch pin to the organization’s strategy of processing all collections at a top level and making them available to researchers. I know that there are benefits and drawbacks to all different kinds of processing strategies, but it is hard for me to find flaws in what they are doing at The University of Chicago. I finished the evaluation summary of Suzan-Lori Parks, and Dr. Ronald Gerald Coleman, a professor of African American History at the University of Utah. I began watching tapes for Eric Werner, and hope to complete his evaluation summary early in the week, in order to make up some of the ground that I lost last week.

Ardra Whitney: Week 4 @ The HistoryMakers

My family's first photo in Chicago

I’m so excited that my family is coming to visit me in Chicago next week for the 4^th of July! I spent the past few days trying to decide what we’re going to do when they get here and I think I’ve finally narrowed it down to a few really fun activities. Skyla Hearn, 2012-2013 Carter G. Woodson Chicago Public Regional Library, Vivian Harsh Collection Fellow and Aaisha Hayka, 2011-2012 Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture Fellow, were also gracious enough to recommend some events for my family and I to enjoy this upcoming holiday. If you're interested in learning more about the various events and festivities going on throughout the City of Chicago in celebration of Independence Day 2012, check out the following link: http://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/depts/dca/provdrs/tourism/news/2012/apr/head_to_chicago_forjuly4.html.

On Friday, June 29^th, fellows went on a field trip to the University of Chicago Archives; where we met with various staff members of the Special Collections Research Center (SCRC), including: Daniel Meyer, Director and University Archivist; Kathleen Feeney, Head of Archives Processing and Digital Access; Isabel Gonzalez, Archives and Manuscripts Accession Manager; Eileen Ielmini, Assistant University Archivist and Ashley Locke, Processing Archivist . Mr. Meyer provided fellows with an overview of the SCRC’s institutional history, organizational structure, technology-equipped spaces, innovative processes, dynamic collections, enhanced services and state-of the-art exhibition gallery. I enjoyed listening to Mr. Meyer speak about the funding and financial support the SCRC received from donors in order to renovate and improve its facilities. I also enjoyed learning about the university’s automated storage and retrieval system located underground in the Joe and Rika Mansueto Library-- which has a beautiful glass dome above it. Although, I wish there had been more time during our field trip to actually view the library from the inside. The Mansueto Library gets its name thanks to a $25 million gift from Morningstar CEO and alumni, Joe Mansueto and his wife. Construction on the building began in fall of 2008.

Tour of the University of Chicago Archives

Following the introduction, fellows took a tour of the SCRC’s exhibition gallery, classrooms, stacks, archives and processing facilities—led by Isabel Gonzalez, Eileen Ielmini and Ashley Locke. During the tour, Ms. Ielmini pointed out that the Joseph Regenstein Library used to have color coded carpeting on each floor to denote a particular discipline of study. Ms. Gonzales showed us her work station in the processing office and explained how she manages graduate students who assist her in accessioning new collections. Additionally, Ms. Locke discussed the archives’ tiered processing program, which helps make available the broadest possible range of archival collections and manuscripts in all formats. After the tour, we returned the Marie Louise Seminar Room, where Ms. Feeney gave fellows a presentation on digital collections at the SCRC. We looked at items from the University of Chicago Photographic Archive and large scale digitization content from a mid-19th century paper dolls collection. Ms. Feeney also briefly touched upon the complexities of preparing born-digital collections for public access.

This week I added web clips into FileMaker Pro for my first two interviews and created an EAD/EAC-CPF for PoliticalMaker/EducationMaker, Crain Woods. I also completed interview evaluations for, television news anchor and former CBS newscaster, Russ Mitchell (MediaMaker) and EducationMaker/ArtMaker, Zenobia Washington. Washington was inspired to embark on a new phase of her life as an artist, after the death of her only brother in 1998. She began creating handmade dolls a way to heal herself from the intense pain and deep depression that the loss of her brother caused. Washington was raised in the port city of Georgetown, South Carolina and influenced by the Gullah culture; therefore, through the art of doll making, she is also able to reconnect with the wonder and beauty of her Gullah heritage.

On Tuesday, June 26^th, fellows attended Dr. Celia Salvatore’s archives seminar on archival selection and appraisal. We discussed readings by Frank Boles and Mark Greene, “Et Tu Schellenberg? Thoughts on the Dagger of American Archival Appraisal Theory”; Luciana Duranti,“The Concept of Appraisal and Archival Theory”; and Larry Hackman and Joan Warnow-Blewett, “The Documentation Strategy Process: A Model and a Case Study”. During the seminar, Dr. Salvatore addressed the difficulties in applying theories and methods for archival appraisal to oral history collections (i.e., authenticity, reliability and preservation). Fellows also completed a documentation strategy exercise using their respective host institutions’archival collections. I enjoyed learning about documentation strategy, which was a new concept for me. What’s more, now I know how to use the methodology in order to guide selection and assure retention of adequate information about a specific subject, geographic area, process or event documented in existing records.

At this week’s African American history lecture, fellows listened as Dr. Christopher Reed, discussed the sectional tensions resulting from U.S. slavery during the 1850s and the historical importance of the Civil War. Dr. Reeds’ mention of the archaeological dig taking place at 32nd Street and Rhodes Avenue— in order to find remnants from the Union Army prisoner-of-war camp, Camp Douglas, was particularly fascinating to me—because the historic site is located minutes from where I live. For further information about the excavation of this Civil War site, click on the following link to view an article from the Chicago Tribune: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-camp-douglas-20120701,0,5892510.story.

In archival news, the new summer issue of Metropolitan Archivist, with contributions highlighting the theme of trends and transitions, is now available on the Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York, Inc. (ART) website or for direct download here.

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