tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/collections-56045/articles
Collections – The Conversation
2023-06-09T12:29:14Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/204078
2023-06-09T12:29:14Z
2023-06-09T12:29:14Z
The US has a child labor problem – recalling an embarrassing past that Americans may think they’ve left behind
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530946/original/file-20230608-2398-osoifr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=311%2C187%2C2993%2C2286&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Lewis Wickes Hine, 'A little spinner in a Georgia Cotton Mill, 1909.'</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gelatin silver print, 5 x 7 in. The Photography Collections, University of Maryland, Baltimore County (P545)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>At the University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s Special Collections, where I am head curator, we’ve recently completed <a href="https://umbc.edu/stories/preserving-the-photography-of-lewis-hine/">a major digitization and rehousing project</a> of our collection of over 5,400 photographs made by <a href="https://iphf.org/inductees/lewis-hine/">Lewis Wickes Hine</a> in the early 20th century.</p>
<p>Traveling the country with his camera, Hine captured the often oppressive working conditions of thousands of children – some as young as 3 years old. </p>
<p>As I’ve worked with this collection over the past two years, the social and political implications of Hine’s photographs have been very much on my mind. The patina of these black-and-white photographs suggests a bygone era – an embarrassing past that many Americans might imagine they’ve left behind. </p>
<p>But with <a href="https://www.marketplace.org/shows/make-me-smart/in-2023-america-has-a-child-labor-problem/">numerous reports</a> of <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/us-crack-down-child-labor-amid-massive-uptick-2023-02-27/">child labor violations</a>, many involving immigrants, occurring in the U.S., along with an uptick in <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/03/10/1162531885/arkansas-child-labor-law-under-16-years-old-sarah-huckabee-sanders">state legislation</a> <a href="https://apnews.com/article/iowa-child-labor-bill-d2546845dd6ad7ec0a2c74fb3fc0def3">rolling back the legal working age</a>, it’s clear that Hine’s work is as relevant today as it was a century ago.</p>
<h2>‘An investigator with a camera’</h2>
<p>A sociologist by training, Hine began making photographs in 1903 while working as a teacher at the progressive Ethical Culture School in New York City. </p>
<p>Between 1903 and 1908, he and his students photographed migrants at Ellis Island. Hine believed that the future of the U.S. rested in its identity as an immigrant nation – a position that contrasted with <a href="https://pluralism.org/xenophobia-closing-the-door">escalating xenophobic fears</a>. </p>
<p>Based on this work, the <a href="https://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/nclc/background.html">National Child Labor Committee</a>, which advocated for child labor laws, hired Hine to document the living and working conditions of American children. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530975/original/file-20230608-29-2g9rie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Boy covered in soot poses with his hands clasped behind his back." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530975/original/file-20230608-29-2g9rie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530975/original/file-20230608-29-2g9rie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=827&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530975/original/file-20230608-29-2g9rie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=827&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530975/original/file-20230608-29-2g9rie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=827&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530975/original/file-20230608-29-2g9rie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1040&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530975/original/file-20230608-29-2g9rie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1040&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530975/original/file-20230608-29-2g9rie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1040&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lewis Wickes Hine, ‘Trapper Boy, Turkey Knob Mine, MacDonald, West Virginia, 1908.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gelatin silver print. 5 x 7 in. The Photography Collections, University of Maryland, Baltimore County (P148)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By the late 19th century, several states had passed <a href="https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2017/article/history-of-child-labor-in-the-united-states-part-2-the-reform-movement.htm">laws limiting the age of child laborers</a> and establishing maximum working hours. But at the turn of the century, the <a href="https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2017/article/history-of-child-labor-in-the-united-states-part-1.htm">number of working kids soared</a> – between 1890 and 1910, 18% of children ages 10 to 15 were employed.</p>
<p>In his work for the National Child Labor Committee, Hine journeyed to farms and mills in the industrializing South and the streets and factories of the Northeast. He <a href="https://90025031.weebly.com/uploads/2/2/9/4/22941172/6532401.png?256">used a Graflex camera</a> with 5-by-7-inch glass plate negatives and employed flash powder for nighttime and interior shots, hauling upward of 50 pounds of equipment on his slight frame. </p>
<p>To gain entry into factories and other facilities, Hine sometimes disguised himself as a Bible, postcard or insurance salesman. Other times he’d wait outside to catch workers arriving for or departing from their shifts.</p>
<p>Along with photographic records, Hine collected his subjects’ personal stories, including their ages and ethnicities. He documented their working lives, such as their typical hours and any injuries or ailments they incurred as a result of their labor. </p>
<p>Hine, who considered himself “<a href="https://openlibrary.org/books/OL2525831M/Lewis_Hine_in_Europe">an investigator with a camera</a>,” used this information to create what he termed “photo stories” – combinations of images and text that could be used on posters, in public lectures and in published reports to help the organization advance its mission.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Boys standing at a table splayed with seafood as an older worker obsveres" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531002/original/file-20230608-21-jdp136.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531002/original/file-20230608-21-jdp136.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531002/original/file-20230608-21-jdp136.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531002/original/file-20230608-21-jdp136.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531002/original/file-20230608-21-jdp136.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531002/original/file-20230608-21-jdp136.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531002/original/file-20230608-21-jdp136.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lewis Wickes Hine’s photograph of three young fish cutters working at the Seacoast Canning Co. in Eastport, Maine.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/pnp/nclc/00900/00972v.jpg">National Child Labor Committee collection, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Legislation follows</h2>
<p>Hine’s muckraking photographs exemplify the genre of <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/edph/hd_edph.htm">documentary photography</a>, which relies upon the perceived truthfulness of photography to make a case for social change. </p>
<p>The camera serves as an eyewitness to a societal ill, a problem that needs a solution. Hine portrayed his subjects in a direct manner, typically frontally and looking straight into the camera, against the backdrop of the very factories, farmland or cities where they worked. </p>
<p>By capturing details of his sitters’ bare feet, tattered clothes, soiled faces and hands, and diminutive stature against hulking industrial equipment, Hine made a direct statement about the poor conditions and precarity of these children’s lives.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Five young boys wearing caps and holding newspapers in front of an imposing white building." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530972/original/file-20230608-19-jlog7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530972/original/file-20230608-19-jlog7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530972/original/file-20230608-19-jlog7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530972/original/file-20230608-19-jlog7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530972/original/file-20230608-19-jlog7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530972/original/file-20230608-19-jlog7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530972/original/file-20230608-19-jlog7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lewis Wickes Hine, ‘Group of newsies selling on Capitol steps, April 11, 1912.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Photography Collections, University of Maryland, Baltimore County (P2904)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Hine’s photographs made a successful case for child labor reform. </p>
<p>Notably, the National Child Labor Committee’s efforts resulted in Congress establishing the <a href="https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubPDFs/Story_of_CB.pdf">Children’s Bureau</a> in 1912 and passing the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/keating-owen-child-labor-act">Keating-Owen Act</a> in 1916, which limited working hours for children and prohibited the interstate sale of goods produced by child labor.</p>
<p>Although the <a href="http://sites.gsu.edu/us-constipedia/child-labor-law/">Supreme Court later ruled</a> it and a subsequent Child Labor Tax Law of 1919 unconstitutional, momentum for enshrining protections for child workers had been created. In 1938, Congress passed the <a href="https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/flsa">Fair Labor Standards Act</a>, which established restrictions and protections on employing children. </p>
<p>The National Child Labor Committee’s project also included advocacy for the enforcement of existing child labor regulations, a regulatory problem reemerging today as the Department of Labor – the agency tasked with enforcing labor laws – <a href="https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/dols-wage-arm-vows-child-labor-focus-despite-no-rule-changes">comes under fire</a> for failing to protect child workers.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Hooded girl in a field of cotton stares forlornly at the camera." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530998/original/file-20230608-29-alq94t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530998/original/file-20230608-29-alq94t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530998/original/file-20230608-29-alq94t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530998/original/file-20230608-29-alq94t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530998/original/file-20230608-29-alq94t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530998/original/file-20230608-29-alq94t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530998/original/file-20230608-29-alq94t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A young picker carries a large sack of cotton on her back.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/young-cotton-picker-carries-a-large-sack-of-cotton-on-her-news-photo/640486085?adppopup=true">Lewis Wickes Hine/Library of Congress via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The ethics of picturing child labor</h2>
<p>A recent surge of unaccompanied minors, primarily from Central America, has brought new attention to America’s old problem of child labor and has threatened the very laws Hine and the National Child Labor Committee worked to enact. </p>
<p>Some estimates suggest that one-third of migrants under 18 <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/25/us/unaccompanied-migrant-child-workers-exploitation.html">are working illegally</a>, whether it’s laboring more hours than current laws permit, or working without the proper authorizations. Many of them perform hazardous jobs similar to those of Hine’s subjects: handling dangerous equipment and being exposed to noxious chemicals in factories, slaughterhouses and industrial farms.</p>
<p>While the content of Hine’s photographs remains pertinent to today’s child labor crisis, a key distinction between the subject of Hine’s photographs and working children today is race. </p>
<p>Hine focused his camera almost exclusively on white children who arrived in the country during waves of immigration from Europe during the late-19th and early-20th centuries. <a href="https://journalpanorama.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Zelt-American-Photographs-Abroad.pdf">As art historian Natalie Zelt argues</a>, Hine’s pictorial treatment of Black children – either ignored or forced to the margins of his images – implied to viewers that the face of childhood in America was, by default, white. </p>
<p>The perceived racial hierarchies of Hine’s era reverberate into the present, where underage migrants of color live and work at the margins of society.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A group of women hold drums and signs reading 'Popeyes Stop Exploiting Child Labor.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531004/original/file-20230608-29-lcdhg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531004/original/file-20230608-29-lcdhg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531004/original/file-20230608-29-lcdhg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531004/original/file-20230608-29-lcdhg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531004/original/file-20230608-29-lcdhg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531004/original/file-20230608-29-lcdhg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531004/original/file-20230608-29-lcdhg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Workers protest outside a Popeye’s restaurant in Oakland, Calif., on May 18, 2023, after reports emerged of the franchise exploiting child labor.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/betty-escobar-left-and-other-fast-food-workers-protest-at-news-photo/1491552588?adppopup=true">Jane Tyska/Digital First Media/East Bay Times via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.reuters.com/investigates/section/underage-workers/">Contemporary reports</a> of child labor violations offer few images to accompany their texts, graphs and statistics. There are legitimate reasons for this. By not including identifying personal information or portraits, news outlets protect a vulnerable population. <a href="https://www.unicef.org/eca/media/ethical-guidelines">Ethical guidelines</a> frown upon revealing private details of the lives of children interviewed. And, as Hine’s experience demonstrates, it can be difficult to infiltrate the sites of these labor violations, since they are typically kept secure.</p>
<p>Digital cameras and smartphones offer a workaround. Beginning in 2015, the International Labor Organization <a href="https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/our-work/child-forced-labor-trafficking/My-PEC">urged child laborers in Myanmar</a> to become “young activists” and use their own images and words to create “photo stories” – echoing Hine’s use of the term – that the organization could then disseminate.</p>
<p>Photographs of child labor in foreign countries are far more common than those made in the U.S., which leaves the impression that child labor is someone else’s problem, not ours. Perhaps it’s too hard for Americans to look at this domestic issue square in the eyes. </p>
<p>A similar effect is at work when viewing Hine’s photographs today. While they were originally valued for their immediacy, they can seem to belong to a distant past.</p>
<p>But if Hine’s photographic archive of child laborers is evidence of the power of photography to sway public opinion, does the lack of images in today’s reporting – even if nobly intended – create a disconnect? </p>
<p>Is the public capable of understanding the harmful consequences of lack of labor enforcement when the faces of the people affected are missing from the picture?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204078/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Beth Saunders does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
While Lewis Hine’s early-20th century photographs of working children compelled Congress to limit or ban child labor, the US Department of Labor is now under fire for failing to enforce these laws.
Beth Saunders, Curator and Head of Special Collections and Gallery, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/196171
2022-12-16T12:00:16Z
2022-12-16T12:00:16Z
Why Wellcome closed its Medicine Man exhibition – and others should follow suit
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499556/original/file-20221207-25-khi4s6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4030%2C2463&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Wellcome Collection gallery in central London.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/london-january-2018-view-entrance-wellcome-797225785">William Barton</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In November the Wellcome Collection closed their Medicine Man gallery. In a <a href="https://twitter.com/ExploreWellcome/status/1596091202381975552">Twitter thread</a>, they acknowledged that “the display still perpetuates a version of medical history that is based on racist, sexist and ableist theories and language.”</p>
<p>Medicine Man <a href="https://inews.co.uk/culture/arts/wellcome-collection-director-melanie-keen-challenged-relics-colonialism-racism-578335">told history</a> from a narrow, <a href="https://wellcomecollection.org/pages/YLnsihAAACEAfsuu">eurocentric perspective</a>. As such, the Wellcome’s decision to rethink its gallery is not a matter of erasing history, but of deepening it.</p>
<p>As they rethink their collections, Wellcome and others like it must remember that <a href="https://clas.osu.edu/sites/clas.osu.edu/files/Tuck%20and%20Yang%202012%20Decolonization%20is%20not%20a%20metaphor.pdf">decolonisation is not a metaphor</a>, and that this move must be followed up by more concrete action.</p>
<h2>Henry Wellcome and his collection</h2>
<p>Henry Wellcome (1853-1939) was an American collector who amassed a fortune through his pharmaceutical firm.</p>
<p>Through a network of collecting agents, Wellcome accumulated millions of objects over the course of his career.</p>
<p>In 1912, collecting agent Charles Thompson <a href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/ervknb4k">wrote a letter</a> to his colleague Paira Mall advising that he should not come home until “India is completely ransacked.”</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499573/original/file-20221207-3544-liif7b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Sepia portrait shows Henry Wellcome with short hair and a huge handlebar moustache." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499573/original/file-20221207-3544-liif7b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499573/original/file-20221207-3544-liif7b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499573/original/file-20221207-3544-liif7b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499573/original/file-20221207-3544-liif7b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499573/original/file-20221207-3544-liif7b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499573/original/file-20221207-3544-liif7b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499573/original/file-20221207-3544-liif7b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Henry Wellcome photographed in 1890.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/eb8jgc9m">Henry van der Weyde</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTiHMadfw5o">Colonial thinking</a> was a fundamental part of the feverish collecting in Wellcome’s company. The Medicine Man gallery is the culmination of this effort.</p>
<p>15 years old, it housed a selection of Wellcome’s collection, focusing on the collector, with scant context regarding how the objects were acquired. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://societyhistorycollecting.org/forum/shc-caa-decentering-collecting-histories/">myth of the heroic European male collector</a> is pervasive in personal collection museums. Collectors are often portrayed as pioneering men with a <a href="https://pmj.bmj.com/content/93/1102/507">“passion for exploration”</a>.</p>
<p>Museums have been slow to tackle this narrative, which omits the networks of collectors that often relied upon <a href="https://natsca.org/sites/default/files/publications/JoNSC-Vol6-DasandLowe2018.pdf">indigenous labour and knowledge</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499552/original/file-20221207-11275-tzl53c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Nail-studded container for nkisi force, carved wooden figure with mirrored container, Bakongo people, west-central Africa, 1882-1920. Front three quarter view. White background" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499552/original/file-20221207-11275-tzl53c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499552/original/file-20221207-11275-tzl53c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=758&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499552/original/file-20221207-11275-tzl53c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=758&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499552/original/file-20221207-11275-tzl53c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=758&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499552/original/file-20221207-11275-tzl53c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=953&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499552/original/file-20221207-11275-tzl53c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=953&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499552/original/file-20221207-11275-tzl53c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=953&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A nail studded wooden statue from the Democratic Republic of the Congo dated between 1882-1920.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/fvvpmxfm/items">Wellcome Collection</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This portrayal also mutes histories of violence ubiquitous in 19th century collecting. </p>
<p><a href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/fvvpmxfm">One object in the gallery</a>, a nail studded statue from the Democratic Republic of the Congo is dated between 1882-1920. This encompasses 22 years of the <a href="https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/belgian-king-establishes-congo-free-state">Congo Free State</a>, a notoriously violent regime that decimated over half of the country’s population.</p>
<p>Displaying this object without context for its creation and acquisition allows the violence of this history to continue. </p>
<p>Decontextualising objects suppresses public awareness of colonial violence, facilitating historical whitewashing that allows for continued <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/belgian-king-returns-mask-congo-symbolic-gesture-restitution-2022-06-08/">denial of accountability.</a></p>
<p>Thousands of objects in Wellcome’s collection, among millions in UK museums, were <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv18msmcr?turn_away=true&seq=3">acquired in violent, colonial contexts</a> and put on display for audiences to gawk at or walk past, unbothered. Many objects are sacred, intimate, personal. Many contain human remains.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499553/original/file-20221207-15956-is41t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Sepia portrait of Paira Mall in suit, with strong dark moustache." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499553/original/file-20221207-15956-is41t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499553/original/file-20221207-15956-is41t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=826&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499553/original/file-20221207-15956-is41t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=826&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499553/original/file-20221207-15956-is41t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=826&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499553/original/file-20221207-15956-is41t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1038&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499553/original/file-20221207-15956-is41t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1038&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499553/original/file-20221207-15956-is41t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1038&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Paira Mall received a letter from fellow collecting agent Charles Thompson stating that he would not come home until ‘India is completely ransacked’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/u3msy3uj/images?id=daqcnh8t">Wellcome Collection</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Prior to the closing of Medicine Man, Wellcome <a href="https://wellcomecollection.org/event-series/Yv5GQhAAAILuA2Mb">attempted to introduce</a> new perspectives into the gallery: alternative labels, artistic responses to objects and critical engagements led by the Visitor Experience Team.</p>
<p>These interventions showed an evolving attitude. Though, as the museum <a href="https://twitter.com/ExploreWellcome/status/1596091202381975552">acknowledged</a>, this did not change the wider narrative of the gallery. </p>
<p>The pivot from a Wellcome-centric narrative towards “the narratives and lived experiences of those who have been silenced” is a necessary step forward.</p>
<h2>The state of colonial collections in Britain</h2>
<p>Wellcome has had relative freedom within the museum world thanks to its access to private funding.</p>
<p>In 2020, former UK culture secretary <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/letter-from-culture-secretary-on-hm-government-position-on-contested-heritage">Oliver Dowden wrote</a> to national institutions threatening to cut funding if they took “actions motivated by activism or politics”. </p>
<p>As a result, alternatively funded museums such as Wellcome, <a href="https://www.prm.ox.ac.uk/">Pitt Rivers Museum</a> and the <a href="https://powell-cottonmuseum.org/">Powell-Cotton Museum</a> have taken the lead over national ones in confronting their collections.</p>
<p>Though it is important to diversify perspectives in galleries, true decolonial action must stem from the <a href="https://decolonialdictionary.wordpress.com/2020/12/09/return/">active return</a> of <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/new-zealand-toi-moko-repatriation">human remains</a> and <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/on-display-here-wanted-by-india-1988002.html">objects</a>. </p>
<p>Looting was a tool of colonial violence, and it is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/28/opinion/looted-benin-bronzes.html">only through this process</a> that justice can begin.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Exhibitions in the Medicine Man collection are shown, including a display case with artificial limbs." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499555/original/file-20221207-12-9otzao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499555/original/file-20221207-12-9otzao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499555/original/file-20221207-12-9otzao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499555/original/file-20221207-12-9otzao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499555/original/file-20221207-12-9otzao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499555/original/file-20221207-12-9otzao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499555/original/file-20221207-12-9otzao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The now closed Medicine Man collection gallery at Wellcome.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:One_of_the_halls_of_the_Wellcome_Collection,_London.jpg">Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Wellcome has a history of returning human remains, fulfilling claims from <a href="https://wellcomecollection.org/pages/WyjZcCgAAKgALCuN">Māori/Moriori</a> and <a href="https://wellcomecollection.org/pages/WyjbTCgAAKgALDPr">Hawaiian</a> communities. Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum has set up a <a href="https://www.museumsassociation.org/museums-journal/features/2020/11/a-new-approach-to-repatriation/">partnership</a> with Maasai representatives to discuss objects of Maasai origin and London’s Horniman museum <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-63783561">sent back</a> 72 objects to Nigeria in November.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.returningheritage.com/case-studies">More institutions</a> must follow these examples.</p>
<p>Those sceptical of restitution have asked – what would happen to museums if their collections were all returned? For most, this is not a realistic risk.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.britishmuseum.org/sites/default/files/2019-10/fact_sheet_bm_collection.pdf">The British Museum</a> has 80,000 objects on display at any one time – just 1% of their entire collection. </p>
<p>If any museum <em>was</em> emptied through returns, this would be a reflection on the historical injustices in the collection and a major success in accountability.</p>
<p>This question circles back to the Wellcome Collection’s original <a href="https://twitter.com/ExploreWellcome/status/1596091202381975552">tweet</a> - “What’s the point of museums?” It is the job of museum professionals and audiences today to grapple with this, and broaden their perspectives and imagination.</p>
<p>Smaller, emerging museums, such as the <a href="https://www.museumofbritishcolonialism.org/">Museum of British Colonialism</a>, the <a href="https://www.migrationmuseum.org/">Migration Museum</a> and <a href="https://queerbritain.org.uk/">Queer Britain</a>, have risen to the front lines as agents for social change that help <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/53014592">represent</a> and respect all the histories that reflect the British community.</p>
<p>Museums are not neutral - the stories they tell and the objects they display are always an active and powerful choice.</p>
<h2>A long way to go</h2>
<p>Despite Wellcome’s positive steps, they must do more internally to ensure their dedication to addressing racism. A <a href="https://wellcome.org/news/insufficient-progress-anti-racism-wellcome-evaluation-finds">summer report</a> revealed that the Wellcome perpetuated <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-systemic-racism-and-institutional-racism-131152">systematic racism</a> and outlined a pattern of discrimination, harassment and <a href="https://theconversation.com/microaggressions-arent-just-innocent-blunders-research-links-them-with-racial-bias-145894">microagressions</a> faced by staff.</p>
<p>The report reflects broader <a href="https://www.museumsassociation.org/campaigns/anti-racism/museums-and-anti-racism/">structures of institutional racism in the heritage field</a>.</p>
<p>The heritage sector has a lot of work to do before they can genuinely claim anti-racist progress. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-systemic-racism-and-institutional-racism-131152">Explainer: what is systemic racism and institutional racism?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Museums must strengthen their commitments to creating more equitable and just societies. This includes following the <a href="https://openrestitution.africa/reclaiming-restitution-report/">advice of activists</a> in repatriating colonial collections and fostering equitable environments in their own communities.</p>
<p>Closing the Medicine Man gallery was a good step forward, but there is still a long way to go.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/196171/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anaïs Walsdorf is a previous employee of the Wellcome Collection.</span></em></p>
Closing racist exhibitions is a good step, but it doesn’t go far enough to decolonise our museums – an expert explains.
Anaïs Walsdorf, PhD candidate, History, University of Warwick
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/185342
2022-06-22T11:22:47Z
2022-06-22T11:22:47Z
How Octavia E. Butler mined her boundless curiosity to forge a new vision for humanity
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469849/original/file-20220620-14209-9u1snj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C6%2C1747%2C1140&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Octavia E. Butler poses in a Seattle bookstore in 2004. The celebrated science fiction author died in 2006.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.trbimg.com/img-5912ac85/turbine/la-1494396033-a3umy5cuis-snap-image">AP Photo/Joshua Trujillo</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In 2021, <a href="https://sc.edu/study/colleges_schools/artsandsciences/english_language_and_literature/our_people/directory/collins_alyssa.php">Alyssa Collins</a> was awarded a yearlong Octavia E. Butler Fellowship from <a href="https://www.huntington.org/">The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens</a> in San Marino, California.</em> </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Woman poses in black shirt with one arm on hip." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470068/original/file-20220621-25-qlybds.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470068/original/file-20220621-25-qlybds.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=686&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470068/original/file-20220621-25-qlybds.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=686&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470068/original/file-20220621-25-qlybds.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=686&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470068/original/file-20220621-25-qlybds.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=863&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470068/original/file-20220621-25-qlybds.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=863&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470068/original/file-20220621-25-qlybds.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=863&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Alyssa Collins.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://sc.edu/study/colleges_schools/artsandsciences/african_american_studies/images/profile_images/collins_alyssa255x300.jpg">University of South Carolina</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em>Butler, whose papers are held at the Huntington, was the first science fiction writer to be awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant. A pioneering writer in a genre long dominated by white men, her work explored power structures, shifting definitions of humanity and alternative societies.</em></p>
<p><em>In an interview, which has been edited for length and clarity, Collins explains how Butler’s boundless curiosity inspired the author’s work, and how Butler’s experiences as a Black woman drew her to “humans who must deal with the edges or ends of humanity.”</em> </p>
<p><em>Butler, who <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/01/books/octavia-e-butler-science-fiction-writer-dies-at-58.html">died in 2006</a>, would have turned 75 years old on June 22, 2022.</em></p>
<hr>
<p><strong>How did you become interested in Octavia E. Butler?</strong></p>
<p>I first read Butler’s work in a graduate course on feminist literature and theory. We read “<a href="https://www.grandcentralpublishing.com/titles/octavia-e-butler/parable-of-the-sower/9781538732182/">Parable of the Sower</a>,” an apocalyptic novel published in 1993 but set in 21st-century America. I was really intrigued by the prescient nature of the novel. But I wanted to know if she had anything weirder on her backlist.</p>
<p>I managed to get my hands on “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/bloodchi.htm">Bloodchild</a>,” an award-winning short story that came out in 1984 about aliens and male pregnancy. After reading that story, I was pretty much hooked.</p>
<p><strong>Can you give us an idea of the scope of this collection, in terms of its volume and value, and how much of it you were able to read during your fellowship?</strong></p>
<p>The Octavia E. Butler collection consists of manuscripts, correspondence, photos, research materials and ephemera. It’s housed in 386 boxes, one volume, two binders and 18 broadside folders. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469845/original/file-20220620-24-wdikss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Magazine cover with drawing of insect and young person with hole in body." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469845/original/file-20220620-24-wdikss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469845/original/file-20220620-24-wdikss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469845/original/file-20220620-24-wdikss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469845/original/file-20220620-24-wdikss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469845/original/file-20220620-24-wdikss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1114&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469845/original/file-20220620-24-wdikss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1114&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469845/original/file-20220620-24-wdikss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1114&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Octavia E. Butler’s short story ‘Bloodchild’ appeared in a 1984 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://file770.com/wp-content/uploads/Butler-bloodchild-asimovs-cover.jpg">File 770</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As you can imagine, it’s a great deal of collected material – so much, that when I began my fellowship, I was told by the curator who processed the collection that I wouldn’t be able to see everything. </p>
<p>I’ve spent most of my time working through Butler’s research materials, her correspondence with authors and her drafting materials, including her notecards and notebooks. I’ve found that the content in these notebooks has been an invaluable window into Butler’s scientific thinking. </p>
<p><strong>What was one of the most surprising things you learned about Butler from the collection?</strong></p>
<p>Even given what I knew about Butler as a celebrated writer and scholar, every day I spent in her archive only increased the amount of esteem I hold for her. I was continually surprised by not only the breadth of her interests and the depth of her knowledge, but also in the way she was able to synthesize seemingly disparate topics. </p>
<p>Her interest in subjects such as slime-molds, cancer and biotechnology come through in her stories in ways that readers might not expect. Take Butler’s interest in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtbi.2017.08.001">symbiogenesis</a>, an evolutionary theory based on cooperation rather than Darwinian competition. In “Bloodchild,” in which humans help insectlike aliens procreate, readers can see Butler plumbing this theory by imagining different ways humans can interact and evolve with other species. </p>
<p><strong>Your project is called “Cellular Blackness: Octavia E. Butler’s Posthuman Ontologies.” What is posthumanism and how does it relate to Butler’s work?</strong></p>
<p>My book project was born out of a project I started in graduate school that was interested in how Black speculative writers in the 20th century imagined and interacted with a field of thought called <a href="https://ethics.org.au/ethics-explainer-post-humanism/">posthumanism</a>. Scholars of posthumanism think about the limits of what makes us human – or how we define humanity – and if there are couplings with technology that might make us posthuman now or in the future. </p>
<p>I wanted to know how Black writers were engaging with the idea or concept of posthumanism when Blackness <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12913">had historically been imagined as inhuman</a> – in, for example, justifications for the trans-Atlantic slave trade, Jim Crow segregation and ongoing state violence against Black people. </p>
<p>What interested me about Butler’s work is that her writing consistently represents humans who must deal with the edges or ends of humanity. She also places important decisions about humanity in the hands of Black women characters – individuals who have been dehumanized or erased. My book project looks at how Butler imagines these decisive moments and how she sees humanity defined and realized in her novels.</p>
<p><strong>What about this idea of “cellular Blackness”?</strong></p>
<p>It seems that Butler’s own speculative investigation of humanity doesn’t happen on the scale of bodies, but instead on the scale of cells. </p>
<p>In Butler’s 1987 novel “<a href="https://www.grandcentralpublishing.com/titles/octavia-e-butler/dawn/9781538753712/">Dawn</a>,” a Black woman named Lilith considers helping a group of aliens who are interested in interbreeding with humans in a way that would effectively “end” the human race. Lilith, who has a history of cancer in her family and a tumor that the aliens removed, has what the aliens call a “talent for cancer.” They’re interested in the possibilities that could come from regulating cellular growth.</p>
<p>It turns out that Butler was interested in the story of <a href="https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/henriettalacks/">Henrietta Lacks</a>, a 31-year-old Black cancer patient whose tumor cells were collected without her knowledge at Johns Hopkins in 1951. Unlike the other samples that had been collected at the lab over the years, Lacks’ rapidly reproduced and stayed alive even after Lacks died that same year. To this day, her prolific cell line – <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-are-hela-cells-a-cancer-biologist-explains-169913">called HeLa cells</a> – are used around the world to study cancer cells and the effects of various treatment. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Sepia toned portrait photograph of young woman on a mantle." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469847/original/file-20220620-12734-23dmfa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469847/original/file-20220620-12734-23dmfa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469847/original/file-20220620-12734-23dmfa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469847/original/file-20220620-12734-23dmfa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469847/original/file-20220620-12734-23dmfa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469847/original/file-20220620-12734-23dmfa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469847/original/file-20220620-12734-23dmfa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Octavia E. Butler was fascinated by the story of Henrietta Lacks and her famous cell line.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/photo-of-henrietta-lacks-sits-in-the-living-room-of-her-news-photo/1234369412?adppopup=true">Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In her unpublished notes, Butler imagines what HeLa cells, with their unending replication, could offer outside of a person’s death. In works like “Dawn,” you can see Butler thinking about cellular replication as a concept that extends humanity, whether it’s symbiosis with other species or through human evolution. </p>
<p><strong>The “<a href="https://www.octaviabutler.com/parableseries">Parable</a>” books, which were written in the 1990s and set in the 2020s, have seen a resurgence in popularity in recent years. Butler’s vision of the near future in these works – with society on the brink due to looming environmental catastrophe, unchecked corporate greed and worsening economic inequality – seems prescient. Did your time in the collection give you any new insights on their enduring relevance?</strong></p>
<p>At Butler makes clear, the problems of extreme climate change, income inequality, capitalistic exploitation, housing shortages, racial prejudice and the defunding of education aren’t new problems. </p>
<p>She read widely – newspapers, scientific textbooks, anthropological tomes, fiction, self-help books – and thought deeply about what she read. I think Butler simply took what she learned from these sources, which hinted at where things were heading, and imagined what a not-so-distant future would look like if nothing were fixed. </p>
<p>Well, as Butler shows us, these problems haven’t been fixed, and they’ve only worsened in the 30-plus years since she wrote the books. </p>
<p>The first “Parable” novel’s protagonist, Lauren, creates a belief system called “Earthseed.” It contains mottos of change – for example, “God is Change” and “All that you Change, Changes you” – and I think Butler hoped Earthseed might encourage people to change the world in some meaningful way. These books feel relevant because there are still a lot of people who are interested in pushing for, imagining and making change.</p>
<p><em><a href="https://www.sc.edu/study/colleges_schools/artsandsciences/about/contact-us/faculty-staff/erskine_laura.php">Laura Erskine</a> contributed to this interview.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/185342/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alyssa Collins has received funding from The Huntington Library. </span></em></p>
In an interview, scholar Alyssa Collins explains how her time spent plumbing the sci fi writer’s papers left her stunned by the breadth of her interests and the depth of her scientific knowledge.
Alyssa Collins, Assistant Professor of English Language and Literature, University of South Carolina
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/161437
2021-05-31T20:09:59Z
2021-05-31T20:09:59Z
Elder, lawman, survivor: stamp research is the latest chapter in Gwoja Tjungurrayi’s remarkable life in pictures
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/416216/original/file-20210816-19-w0q5x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=22%2C18%2C2471%2C1716&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Geelong stamp. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains images and names of deceased people.</em></p>
<p>Every contemporary Australian has likely seen Gwoja Tjungurrayi’s image. Tjungurrayi, a stockman, traditional lawman, and survivor of the brutal 1928 Coniston massacre, is the Warlpiri-Anmatyerr Aboriginal man engraved on our <a href="https://www.ramint.gov.au/two-dollars">two dollar coin</a>. </p>
<p>Tjungurrayi (whose name is sometimes spelled Gwoya Tjungurrayi, Gwoya Jungarai or Gwoya Djungarai) first rose to unlikely fame not on currency, but on the face of a postage stamp. In 1950 he became the first living Australian — settler or Aboriginal — to be featured on a stamp. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/403271/original/file-20210528-21-c3kugw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Australian $2 coin" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/403271/original/file-20210528-21-c3kugw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/403271/original/file-20210528-21-c3kugw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403271/original/file-20210528-21-c3kugw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403271/original/file-20210528-21-c3kugw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403271/original/file-20210528-21-c3kugw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403271/original/file-20210528-21-c3kugw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403271/original/file-20210528-21-c3kugw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tjungurrayi on the $2 coin, which replaced the note in 1988.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/australian-two-dollar-coin-macro-shot-647306152">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>From 1950 to 1966, <a href="https://gather.sl.nsw.gov.au/digital-heritage/gwoja-tjungurrayi-one-pound-jimmy">99 million stamps</a> featuring Tjungurrayi’s portrait were sold, and he became known to Australia and the world as “<a href="http://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p21521/pdf/ch055.pdf">One Pound Jimmy</a>”.</p>
<p>Fresh academic <a href="https://press.anu.edu.au/publications/journals/aboriginal-history-journal">research</a> has shown the 1950 stamp was, in fact, not the first to feature Tjungurrayi. The identification is the latest twist in a life story told in images.</p>
<h2>The face of Geelong</h2>
<p>In 1938, a postage stamp was released to mark the centenary of the Victorian town Geelong. It has no decimal mark as it was not issued by the Post-Master General’s Department. Hence it could not be used to send mail but was produced by the city as a collector’s item. </p>
<p>While researching images of Aboriginal people on stamps, in an online stamp collecting forum, I realised the man on the Geelong stamp was unmistakably Tjungurrayi, pictured 12 years before the “One Pound Jimmy” stamp. It’s the first time the image has been formally identified in an academic publication as Tjungurrayi. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/416216/original/file-20210816-19-w0q5x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=22%2C18%2C2471%2C1716&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/416216/original/file-20210816-19-w0q5x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=22%2C18%2C2471%2C1716&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/416216/original/file-20210816-19-w0q5x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/416216/original/file-20210816-19-w0q5x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/416216/original/file-20210816-19-w0q5x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/416216/original/file-20210816-19-w0q5x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/416216/original/file-20210816-19-w0q5x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/416216/original/file-20210816-19-w0q5x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The 1938 Geelong stamp juxtaposing Tjungurrayi’s image against the town.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Both stamps are based on a Roy Dunstan photograph of Tjungurrayi that first appeared in the Australian National Travel Association magazine Walkabout in 1936. Tjungurrayi had <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235799949_Resisting_the_Captured_Image_How_Gwoja_Tjungurrayi_'One_Pound_Jimmy'_escaped_the_'Stone_Age">encountered Dunstan and magazine editor Charles Holmes</a> east of Alice Springs, allowing Dunstan to take his photograph. </p>
<p>This chance encounter had a lasting impact on Tjungurrayi’s life, transforming him into an enduring public figure. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/403084/original/file-20210527-23-1mowoge.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Indigenous man with spear" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/403084/original/file-20210527-23-1mowoge.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/403084/original/file-20210527-23-1mowoge.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=742&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403084/original/file-20210527-23-1mowoge.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=742&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403084/original/file-20210527-23-1mowoge.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=742&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403084/original/file-20210527-23-1mowoge.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403084/original/file-20210527-23-1mowoge.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403084/original/file-20210527-23-1mowoge.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gwoja Tjungurrayi (</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://gather.sl.nsw.gov.au/digital-heritage/gwoja-tjungurrayi-one-pound-jimmy">Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales and Courtesy Australian National Travel Association.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A remarkable life</h2>
<p>Tjungurrayi was born around 1895 in the Tanami Desert north-west of Alice Springs. He was a survivor of the <a href="https://www.commonground.org.au/learn/coniston-massacre">1928 Coniston massacre</a> in which up to 70 people were brutally murdered. </p>
<p>One son <a href="http://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p21521/pdf/ch055.pdf">described</a> Tjungurrayi “worm[ing] his way out from among the dead and dying”. Another son said he was captured and chained to a tree, but freed himself. He fled to the Arltunga region. </p>
<p>Tjungurrayi was a stockman and station hand by trade. But he was also a traditional lawman, land custodian, cultural intermediary and guide for visiting anthropologists, and family man. He took his responsibility as a father and law custodian very seriously, and was dedicated to ensuring traditional law and knowledge of country was passed down to future generations. </p>
<p>Tjungurrayi died in March 1965, having lived many years in the Tanami region. <a href="http://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p21521/pdf/ch055.pdf">Obituaries</a> to him appeared in Northern Territory News and on the Centralian Advocate’s front page.</p>
<p>Between Federation in 1901 and the 1930s, Aboriginal people were conspicuously absent in visual representations of Australian nationhood, which centred on native flora and fauna. </p>
<p>The use of Aboriginal motifs on stamps prior to Tjungurrayi’s image in 1950 was rare. The first stamps to feature Aboriginal themes were released between 1934 and 1950 — but there were only four designs and they didn’t portray real people. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/403251/original/file-20210528-23-1eou1e3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Indigenous man on postage stamp" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/403251/original/file-20210528-23-1eou1e3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/403251/original/file-20210528-23-1eou1e3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=709&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403251/original/file-20210528-23-1eou1e3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=709&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403251/original/file-20210528-23-1eou1e3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=709&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403251/original/file-20210528-23-1eou1e3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=891&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403251/original/file-20210528-23-1eou1e3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=891&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403251/original/file-20210528-23-1eou1e3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=891&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The 1950 stamp.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Australianstamp_1566.jpg">Australia Post/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Still, the use of images like that of Tjungurrayi exemplify what academic <a href="http://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p21521/pdf/ch055.pdf">Jillian E. Barnes</a> calls the “pioneer tourist gaze”, presenting him as an adversarial “other”. </p>
<p>Australian modernist artists and writers at this time such as <a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/artists/preston-margaret/">Margaret Preston</a> and the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/Jindyworobak-movement">Jindyworobak literary movement</a> became interested in Aboriginal designs and mythology, often appropriating these in their work.</p>
<p>“<a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-05/aboriginalia-and-the-politics-of-aboriginal-kitsch/8323130">Aboriginalia</a>” souvenirs and bric-a-brac depicting Aboriginal people according to racial stereotypes were displayed in suburban homes. Aboriginal people’s creative works and performances meanwhile, were still commonly classified as “ethnography”, not art, thus they were not afforded the opportunity to represent themselves and their own culture.</p>
<p>The 1938 stamp shows an apparently “authentic” Aboriginal presence in Australia, but relegates it to a distant and ancient time. In doing so it suggests the contemporary presence of Aboriginal people was anachronistic. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-politics-of-aboriginal-kitsch-73683">Friday essay: the politics of Aboriginal kitsch</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A new generation</h2>
<p>The Geelong centenary stamp may have drawn inspiration from <a href="https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/133172096752">a 1934 Victorian centenary stamp</a>. In both, a standing Indigenous figure is used to contrast the supposed “stasis” of Aboriginal pre-history with the “progress” and modernity of the Australian settler colony. </p>
<p>But as Tjungurrayi’s own life story demonstrates, Aboriginal people continued to survive and thrive, often against the odds. Tjungurrayi’s three sons became leaders in the Western Desert art movement in the 1970s. </p>
<p>One son, <a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/artists/tjapaltjarri-clifford-possum/">Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri</a>, became one of Australia’s best known and well regarded Aboriginal artists. </p>
<p>In 1988, a new chapter in legacy of the family’s engagement with the postage stamp began.</p>
<p>The painting Ancestor Dreaming (1977) by Tjungurrayi’s son <a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/artists/tjapaltjarri-tim-leura/">Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri</a> was featured on an Australia Post stamp as a part of a series celebrating Western Desert art. </p>
<p>Unlike his father’s designation as “Aborigine” in 1950, or his anonymity on the 1938 stamp, Tim was showcased as a significant artist. </p>
<p>In 2019, the Northern Territory electorate formerly named Stuart was renamed <a href="https://ntec.nt.gov.au/Electoral-divisions/Legislative-Assembly-division-profiles/2020-division-profiles/division-of-gwoja">Gwoja</a> <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-19/electoral-push-recognition-john-stuart-gwoya-tjungurrayi/10912356">in honour of Tjungurrayi</a>. </p>
<p>Contemporary Australia is finally willing and able to remember and celebrate Tjungurrayi as an Elder, lawman and survivor.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-stamp-of-approval-for-legendary-sports-commentators-but-only-the-male-ones-131398">A stamp of approval for legendary sports commentators - but only the male ones</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<hr>
<p><em>Update: after publication The Conversation was alerted that a <a href="https://www.glenstephens.com/snoctober10.html">2010 blog post</a> by Glen Stephens had previously identified Gwoya Tjungurrayi on the 1938 Geelong stamp. The article has been reworded accordingly.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/161437/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paige Gleeson received a Graduate Research Scholarship funded by the Australia Research Council and University of Tasmania.</span></em></p>
Gwoja Tjungurrayi features on our $2 coin and was the first living Australian to feature on a postage stamp. It turns out he made his stamp debut much earlier.
Paige Gleeson, PhD Candidate, University of Tasmania
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/156805
2021-03-31T12:15:57Z
2021-03-31T12:15:57Z
What can you do with unwanted holy cards and Grandma’s religious statues?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390413/original/file-20210318-17-pptjkx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C6669%2C4466&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Holy cards are highly collectible but also very, very numerous.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://ecommons.udayton.edu/imri_holy_cards/">Ryan O'Grady, The Marian Library, University of Dayton</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When a rosary was made for <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/642826">King Henry VIII</a> in 1509, it was hand-carved in intricate detail by a master artisan. By contrast, many of the rosaries around today are made from the same plastic that goes into mass-produced objects such as children’s toys or water bottles. </p>
<p>It doesn’t matter much to the faithful; for devoted Catholics, praying with plastic is just as good as praying with a great work of art.</p>
<p>But it does pose a dilemma for us. As librarians at the University of Dayton’s <a href="https://udayton.edu/marianlibrary/">Marian Library</a>, we help curate a collection of religious artifacts that, depending on how you count it, numbers in the hundreds of thousands. It includes postage stamps, wine labels, books, statues and rosaries. Many of the items are Catholic and have been gifted to the library by charitable individuals looking to do the right thing with a family heirloom or the collection of a recently deceased loved one. Donations could include anything from medieval manuscripts to a <a href="https://ecommons.udayton.edu/imri_artifacts/26/">car air freshener featuring Our Lady of Guadalupe</a>.</p>
<p>In many cases, donations are welcome. But we struggle with what to do when donations duplicate items we already have, or if the gifted item is not of particular value. And this happens frequently, especially with mass-produced items such as rosaries or cheap plastic statues.</p>
<h2>Mass-produced cards</h2>
<p>Another example is the <a href="https://ecommons.udayton.edu/imri_holy_cards/">holy card</a>. Holy cards or prayer cards are in many ways the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/02/legacy-funeral-cards/459963/">religious equivalent to baseball trading cards</a> – they even attract the same type of fanatical collecting. The front usually includes an image of a saint or a religious scene, while the back often has a particular prayer, or the biography of the saint. Early examples of holy cards might be printed on silk or colored by hand. Some can look a bit like the <a href="https://ecommons.udayton.edu/ul_holy_cards/215/">fanciest Valentine’s Day card</a>, with lace borders and room for personal messages.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A holy card depicting the Virgin Mary holding infant Jesus with Sacred Heart" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392304/original/file-20210329-19-1hb6vd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392304/original/file-20210329-19-1hb6vd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392304/original/file-20210329-19-1hb6vd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392304/original/file-20210329-19-1hb6vd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392304/original/file-20210329-19-1hb6vd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392304/original/file-20210329-19-1hb6vd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392304/original/file-20210329-19-1hb6vd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Some holy cards are intricately designed and made with lace borders.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://ecommons.udayton.edu/ul_holy_cards/215/">The Marian Library, University of Dayton</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>With advances in printing processes, mass production of holy cards accelerated in the 19th century and continues today, with millions being produced each year. Today, you can purchase 100 new holy cards for less than US$20, and they’re common to pick up at funerals, baptisms or special Masses. </p>
<p>With the mass production and wide distribution of items like holy cards and rosary beads, donations to our collection can multiply quickly. Most months we receive unsolicited gifts of mass-produced materials in the mail. And we are not alone – other libraries, archives and museums likewise receive such gifts.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/sacristy-manual/oclc/760089910">widely used guide for running a Catholic church</a> by liturgical scholar G. Thomas Ryan suggests that objects no longer needed should be donated to an archive or museum. But often institutions are short on both staff to process the gifts and space to house them.</p>
<h2>Anything can be blessed</h2>
<p>Our first step with an unwanted donation is to try to return it to the donor. But that is not always possible when materials appear anonymously or the donor does not want them back.</p>
<p>Someone who has driven several hours to deposit Grandma’s statues unannounced often just wants to drive away unencumbered. So, we look for good homes for items when possible, such as local Catholic schools or parishes.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A Lady of Guadalupe car air freshener on display at the Marian Library" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392612/original/file-20210330-25-d0zg17.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392612/original/file-20210330-25-d0zg17.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1008&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392612/original/file-20210330-25-d0zg17.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1008&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392612/original/file-20210330-25-d0zg17.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1008&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392612/original/file-20210330-25-d0zg17.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1267&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392612/original/file-20210330-25-d0zg17.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1267&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392612/original/file-20210330-25-d0zg17.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1267&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Purifying the air in a saintly fashion.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://ecommons.udayton.edu/imri_artifacts/26/">The Marian Library, University of Dayton</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When regifting isn’t an option, we are presented with a problem. While some unwanted nonreligious donations to libraries might be able to go straight into the trash, that is not an option with many religious objects. As a result, we have needed to investigate the correct way to dispose of religious objects. </p>
<p>According to <a href="https://www.vatican.va/archive/cod-iuris-canonici/cic_index_en.html">canon law of the Catholic Church</a>, certain types of especially sacred material, such as holy water and holy oil, must be treated with care and disposed of in specific ways.</p>
<p>The law explains that “sacred objects, set aside for divine worship by dedication or blessing, are to be treated with reverence.” But the law does not explicitly define which objects count as sacred.</p>
<p>Catholic convention is that discarding objects such as statues, rosaries or the palms from Palm Sunday should be by means of respectful burning or burial. But this is not normal practice for most libraries, and the burning of books and artwork has worrying associations with censorship or even <a href="https://www.pbs.org/therapeofeuropa/">war crimes</a>. </p>
<p>But in Catholicism, it would be more scandalous to throw certain religious objects in the trash or sell them for a profit than it would be to burn or bury them, even if no one wants them and they do not fit in our collection.</p>
<p>In addition to protocols around specific types of object, many other Catholic artifacts could be considered sacred depending on how they have been used. This is especially the case if they have been prayed with or blessed. </p>
<p>It can be impossible for us as librarians to know the history of how an object has been used by previous owners – especially if passed to us from a third party. Any holy card, statue or painting could have been <a href="http://ritualeromanum.info/blessings-and-other-sacramentals-introduction-and-general-rules/blessings-of-things-designated-for-sacred-purposes/16-solemn-blessing-of-an-image/">blessed as an image</a> and therefore designated as sacred.</p>
<p>In addition to blessings for objects designated for sacred purposes, the Catholic Church literally has a “<a href="https://ritualeromanum.info/blessings-and-other-sacramentals-introduction-and-general-rules/blessings-of-things-designated-for-ordinary-use/29-blessing-of-anything/">blessing of anything</a>,” meaning any object could have been blessed by a priest. While this does not necessarily render an object sacred, it does indicate the freedom with which blessings are distributed.</p>
<h2>Burn after reading room?</h2>
<p>So what are curators supposed to do, given the ongoing mass production, wide distribution and frequent donation of such objects?</p>
<p>The best solution we have found is to remember that intention matters. Our intentions as stewards of these items are good: We communicate up front that not all donations can be accepted, and we try to find new homes for objects that do not belong in the Marian Library – whether by offering items for free to the community or communicating with another library that might be a better fit.</p>
<p>Disposal would be a last resort. To date, we have yet to have a prayerful, respectful fire to destroy duplicate holy cards – but we are not ruling it out. </p>
<p>[<em>Over 100,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletter to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=100Ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/156805/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The mass production of religious items such as rosaries and holy cards poses a problem for the curators of religious artifacts at libraries and museums. How do you dispose of unwanted donations?
Kayla Harris, Librarian/Archivist at the Marian Library and Associate Professor, University of Dayton
Sarah B. Cahalan, Director of the Marian Library, University of Dayton
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/154721
2021-02-26T21:55:32Z
2021-02-26T21:55:32Z
How Black people in the 19th century used photography as a tool for social change
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386116/original/file-20210224-21-161orsb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C1%2C1225%2C761&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jubilee singers at Fisk University, in Nashville, Tennessee, pose for
promotional photograph, circa 1871.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/w/wcl1ic/x-178/WCL000251?from=index;lasttype=boolean;lastview=thumbnail;med=1;resnum=141;size=20;sort=relevance;start=141;view=entry;rgn1=ic_all;q1=African+American;evl=undefined">William L. Clements Library</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Frederick Douglass is perhaps best known as an abolitionist and intellectual. But he was also the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-sight/wp/2016/03/15/douglass/?arc404=true">most photographed American of the 19th century</a>. And he encouraged the use of photography to <a href="https://www.whatitmeanstobeamerican.org/identities/why-abolitionist-frederick-douglass-loved-the-photograph/">promote social change for Black equality</a>.</p>
<p>In that spirit, this article – using images from the David V. Tinder Collection of Michigan Photography at the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan – examines different ways Black Americans from the 19th century used photography as a tool for self-empowerment and social change. </p>
<h2>Black studio portraits</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386149/original/file-20210224-23-1t14oek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Cabinet card portraits of African Americans" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386149/original/file-20210224-23-1t14oek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386149/original/file-20210224-23-1t14oek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386149/original/file-20210224-23-1t14oek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386149/original/file-20210224-23-1t14oek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386149/original/file-20210224-23-1t14oek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386149/original/file-20210224-23-1t14oek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386149/original/file-20210224-23-1t14oek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cabinet card portraits of African Americans from the David V. Tinder Collection of Michigan Photography. Left: Man with Pipe, circa 1887. Right: Woman in Silk Dress, circa 1888.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">William L. Clements Library</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Speaking about how accessible photography had become during his time, Douglass once <a href="https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-frederick-douglass-photographed-american-19th-century">stated</a>: “What was once the special and exclusive luxury of the rich and great is now the privilege of all. The humblest servant girl may now possess a picture of herself such as the wealth of kings could not purchase fifty years ago.” </p>
<p>To pose for a photograph became <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/turn-of-century-african-americans-camera-tool-empowerment-180971757/">an empowering act for African Americans</a>. It served as a way to counteract <a href="https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_2001-0930-23">racist caricatures</a> that distort facial features and mocked Black society. African Americans in urban and rural settings participated in photography to demonstrate dignity in the Black experience.</p>
<p>The first successful form of photography was the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/technology/daguerreotype">daguerreotype</a>, an image printed on polished silver-plated copper. The invention of <a href="https://blog.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/find-out-when-a-photo-was-taken-identify-a-carte-de-visite/">carte de visite</a> photographs, followed by <a href="https://blog.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/find-out-when-a-photo-was-taken-identify-a-cabinet-card/">cabinet cards</a>, changed the culture of photography because the process allowed photographers to print images on paper. Cartes de visite are portraits the size of a business card with several copies <a href="https://www.gallery.ca/photo-blog/collecting-cards-cartes-de-visite">printed on a single sheet</a>. The change from printing images on metal to printing on paper made them <a href="https://www.familytree.com/blog/cost-of-that-19th-century-photo/#:%7E:text=One%20would%20run%20between%2025,the%20was%20at%20that%20time.">more affordable to produce</a>, and anyone could commission a portrait.</p>
<h2><strong>Collecting kinship: Arabella Chapman albums</strong></h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386121/original/file-20210224-23-18k8yz.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Arabella Chapman" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386121/original/file-20210224-23-18k8yz.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386121/original/file-20210224-23-18k8yz.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=788&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386121/original/file-20210224-23-18k8yz.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=788&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386121/original/file-20210224-23-18k8yz.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=788&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386121/original/file-20210224-23-18k8yz.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=991&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386121/original/file-20210224-23-18k8yz.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=991&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386121/original/file-20210224-23-18k8yz.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=991&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Arabella Chapman poses for a portrait from her public carte de visite album, circa 1878 - 1880s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">William L. Clements Library</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>During Victorian times, it was <a href="https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-victorian-brits-obsessed-trading-tiny-photo-portraits">fashionable for people to exchange cartes de visite</a> with loved ones and collect them from visitors.<br>
<a href="https://www.albany.edu/arce/ChapmanXX.html">Arabella Chapman</a>, an African American music teacher from Albany, New York, assembled two cartes de visite photo albums. The first was a private album of family pictures, while the other featured friends and political figures for public viewing. The creation of each book allowed Chapman to store and share her photographs as intimate keepsakes. </p>
<h2><strong>Innovative entrepreneurs: The Goodridge Brothers</strong></h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386125/original/file-20210224-17-4ay548.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The Goodridge Brothers, Backview of the Washington Street fire," src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386125/original/file-20210224-17-4ay548.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386125/original/file-20210224-17-4ay548.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=346&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386125/original/file-20210224-17-4ay548.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=346&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386125/original/file-20210224-17-4ay548.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=346&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386125/original/file-20210224-17-4ay548.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386125/original/file-20210224-17-4ay548.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386125/original/file-20210224-17-4ay548.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Children stare at the burned remains from the Washington Street fire, circa 1870s. David V. Tinder Collection of Michigan Photography.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">William L. Clements Library</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When photography became a viable business, African Americans started their own photography studios in different locations across the country. <a href="https://www.svsu.edu/newsroom/news/2016/october/preservingthegoodridgebrothersphotos/preservingthegoodridgebrothersphotos.html">The Goodridge Brothers</a> established one of the earliest Black photography studios in 1847. The business, opened first in York, Pennsylvania, moved to Saginaw, Michigan in 1863.</p>
<p>The brothers – Glenalvin, Wallace and William – were known for producing studio portraits using a variety of <a href="https://www.nms.ac.uk/explore-our-collections/stories/science-and-technology/victorian-photography/victorian-photography/victorian-photographic-techniques/">photographic techniques</a>. They also produced documentary photography printed on <a href="https://www.reframingphotography.com/page/stereo-cards">stereo cards</a> to create 3D images. </p>
<p>Saginaw, Michigan, was an expanding settlement, and the brothers photographed new buildings in the town. They also documented natural disasters in the area. Photographers would capture 3D images of fires, floods and other destructive occurrences to record the impact of the event before the town rebuilt the area. </p>
<h2>Documenting communities: Harvey C. Jackson</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386132/original/file-20210224-17-16zsin3.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Burning the mortgage of the Phyllis Wheatley Home" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386132/original/file-20210224-17-16zsin3.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386132/original/file-20210224-17-16zsin3.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386132/original/file-20210224-17-16zsin3.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386132/original/file-20210224-17-16zsin3.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386132/original/file-20210224-17-16zsin3.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386132/original/file-20210224-17-16zsin3.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386132/original/file-20210224-17-16zsin3.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Burning the Mortgage of the Phyllis Wheatley Home in Detroit, Michigan, on Jan. 4, 1915. By Harvey C. Jackson.
David V. Tinder Collection of Michigan Photography.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">William L. Clements Library</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The development of Black photography studios allowed communities greater control to style images that authentically reflected Black life. <a href="https://www.hourdetroit.com/the-way-it-was-articles/the-way-it-was-harvey-c-jackson-1910/">Harvey C. Jackson</a> established Detroit’s first Black-owned photography studio in 1915. He collaborated with communities to create cinematic scenes of important events. In one photo, Jackson documents a mortgage-burning celebration at the <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/phyllis-wheatley-womens-clubs-1895/">Phyllis Wheatley Home</a>, established in 1897. Its mission was to improve the status of Black women and the elderly by providing lodging and services.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.phillytrib.com/news/vine-memorial-baptist-holds-mortgage-burning-ceremony/article_f0874e1c-663d-5616-be36-ed28d340dc10.html">Mortgage-burning ceremonies</a> are a tradition churches observe to commemorate their last mortgage payment. Harvey Jackson documented this occasion with each person holding a string attached to the mortgage to connect each person in burning the document.</p>
<p>African Americans’ engagement with photography in the 19th century began a tradition for <a href="https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2020/08/04/black-photographers-document-movement/">Black photographers’ use of photography today</a> to promote social change. African Americans, whether they are in front or behind the camera, create empowering images that define the beauty and resilience contained within the Black experience. </p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/154721/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Samantha Hill is affiliated with the Society of American Archivists</span></em></p>
Cameras played a critical role in the quest for social equality for Black Americans in the post-slavery era.
Samantha Hill, 2019 - 2021 Joyce Bock Fellow at the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan and current graduate student at U-M School of Information, University of Michigan
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/136108
2020-04-23T12:11:43Z
2020-04-23T12:11:43Z
Scientists are working to protect invaluable living collections during coronavirus lockdowns
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/328867/original/file-20200419-152585-xyu2ve.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=82%2C21%2C1962%2C1336&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Campus shutdowns mean researchers must be classified as essential personnel to tend collections, like these fungus-colonized plants.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Cameron Stauder</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>During World War II, a devoted group of botanists guarded <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/vavilov-research-institute-of-plant-industry">the world’s oldest collection of plants</a> over the 28-month-long siege of Leningrad. Nearly a dozen of them starved to death, valuing the survival of the collection over their temptation to eat seeds. </p>
<p>These scientists at the Vavilov Institute of Plant Industry in what is today St. Petersburg, Russia displayed extraordinary dedication to ensure an invaluable biological collection had a future, even when they did not. </p>
<p>This tragic story resonates with many scientists today who have dedicated careers to cataloging and preserving Earth’s biological diversity. Many are risking their personal health during the coronavirus pandemic to ensure the survival of awe-inspiring assemblages of algae, arthropods, bacteria, fungi, mammals, plants, viruses and fishes.</p>
<p>Staying on top of these collections is time-consuming during the best of times, and this task becomes even more complex in the age of social distancing. Yet hundreds of scientists across the United States are doing just that, maintaining everything from crickets, to tissue cultures, mice, powdery mildews, nematodes, psyllids, zebrafish and even rust fungi.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VSCM-GYmCsE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<h2>Worth the risk</h2>
<p>Like a beloved backyard garden, these collections must be constantly nurtured. They need to be ready to accommodate new specimens but also relinquish those that are no longer viable. Such collections have taken lifetimes to build, as specimens are painstakingly acquired and undergo observation, purification and scrutiny of genetics and measurable traits.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/329612/original/file-20200422-82672-qm9tdq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/329612/original/file-20200422-82672-qm9tdq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/329612/original/file-20200422-82672-qm9tdq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/329612/original/file-20200422-82672-qm9tdq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/329612/original/file-20200422-82672-qm9tdq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/329612/original/file-20200422-82672-qm9tdq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/329612/original/file-20200422-82672-qm9tdq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/329612/original/file-20200422-82672-qm9tdq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Wearing social distancing PPE, Rita Rio tends her tsetse fly colony during campus closure.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rita Rio</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=cg6LRZYAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra">Scientists</a> <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=8NN2ZEUAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">like</a> <a href="https://www.lovettbr.com/about">us</a> collect what we do partly because these organisms inspire our research and capture our imaginations. But just as importantly, these collections are significant to society and its advancement. </p>
<p>Seed vaults, like the St. Petersburg plant collection, safely store bygone seeds with unique traits that can be plucked from dormancy and bred with modern varieties to improve them. Within other collections, similar secrets await discovery with potential insights into human disease, microbiology and food biosecurity. As modern science techniques like genome sequencing continue to advance, researchers will certainly learn more from these living collections and further increase their value to humanity.</p>
<p>Living collections are typically housed within academic or government labs but are generally accessible to the broader scientific community. Funding for maintenance often comes from the public, with many collections relying on the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health for support.</p>
<p>The hidden costs of living collections are often shouldered by collections managers and staff. No one sees the days or even months curators and technical workers spend cultivating a single unique organism or colony, the holidays spent setting up cages, the weekends changing food, providing water, and, yes, picking up waste. </p>
<p>It takes a lot of labor and technical skill to keep collections alive and solvent. </p>
<h2>Our own living collections</h2>
<p>During a global pandemic, this unassuming work becomes even more difficult. Many scientists have been left scrambling to justify the importance of their collections to their administrations in order to gain laboratory access during social distancing restrictions. We know this because we’re spending our time maintaining living collections of our own here at <a href="https://www.wvu.edu/">West Virginia University</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/329604/original/file-20200421-82666-15tjrgq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/329604/original/file-20200421-82666-15tjrgq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/329604/original/file-20200421-82666-15tjrgq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=652&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/329604/original/file-20200421-82666-15tjrgq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=652&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/329604/original/file-20200421-82666-15tjrgq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=652&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/329604/original/file-20200421-82666-15tjrgq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=820&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/329604/original/file-20200421-82666-15tjrgq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=820&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/329604/original/file-20200421-82666-15tjrgq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=820&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A watch glass containing microscopic spores of diverse strains of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. These beneficial fungi form spores inside and outside the roots of their plant hosts.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Matt Kasson</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We maintain <a href="https://invam.wvu.edu/">INVAM</a>, the world’s largest collection of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. These are fungi that have formed an intimate beneficial partnership with plant roots – so intimate that they can be cultured only on a living plant. </p>
<p>To maintain our collection of more than 900 individual strains, these fungi must be individually partnered with their plant hosts. Then the plants must be maintained in greenhouses for several months each year. With 250 to 300 isolates cultured every three months and watered daily, this is a serious time commitment. We also need to support commercial sales, which are part of the collection, problematic cultures that need special attention, and research projects that require additional space, labor and maintenance.</p>
<p>Despite the many challenges, it is worth this effort because our collection provides scientists with an unparalleled resource to ask questions about how these close partnerships evolve and how they can be leveraged to grow healthier food and fitter crops now and under our changing environment now and in the near future.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/329573/original/file-20200421-82699-1dwj28b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/329573/original/file-20200421-82699-1dwj28b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/329573/original/file-20200421-82699-1dwj28b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/329573/original/file-20200421-82699-1dwj28b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/329573/original/file-20200421-82699-1dwj28b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/329573/original/file-20200421-82699-1dwj28b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/329573/original/file-20200421-82699-1dwj28b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/329573/original/file-20200421-82699-1dwj28b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tsetse flies are reared in temperature, light and humidity controlled incubators within negative pressure rooms.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rita Rio</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Elsewhere on campus, the <a href="http://www.as.wvu.edu/%7Errio/Site/Welcome.html">Rio lab</a> maintains one of only two tsetse fly colonies in the United States. These bloodthirsty flies transmit parasites that cause some of the most devastating neglected diseases. These colonies are critical to advancing scientists’ understanding of fly biology and parasite interactions and <a href="https://www.who.int/trypanosomiasis_african/disease/vector/en/">for devising novel pest control strategies</a>.</p>
<p>These finicky insects are constantly in search of blood and require feeding multiple times a week, no matter what is happening in the world. Like people, individual tsetse flies have a low number of offspring. This means it’s important to keep tsetse fly numbers high in colonies to promote genetic diversity. </p>
<h2>Keeping collections alive during a pandemic</h2>
<p>To keep collections going while observing social distancing rules, scientists seem to have taken two approaches: Put collections into “hibernation” or bring them home.</p>
<p>For regulatory and logistical reasons, we could not bring our collections home, so we’ve carefully planned the minimum required maintenance to limit personnel required and the number of visits to the university. Our goal is simply to usher as many fungal strains or flies through this human public health crisis as possible without conducting experiments or growing our collections.</p>
<p>To accomplish this, we’ve had to justify our status as essential employees to our university. We go in wearing masks and scrupulously disinfect shared surfaces. We not only coordinate with other essential personnel to ensure that we’re on campus at different times, but use different routes through the building. We do this to protect our communities, while also protecting scientific resources that have consumed considerable time and effort to amass.</p>
<p>The other option is to bring collections home. This works for organisms that take up little space and can leave the confines of a laboratory, unlike permit-regulated tsetse flies, and can handle the conditions of our households.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/B-Ib4RQnl7a/?igshid=9dlpe88hkx4g","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<p>This short-term solution allows more effective social distancing but presents new logistical challenges. Imagine sharing your home with <a href="https://twitter.com/StegoSteven/status/1248386916455600129?s=20">a few hundred social spiders</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/prairie_rex/status/1248456728481370113?s=20">400 overwintering Boisduval’s butterflies</a> or even <a href="https://twitter.com/AndiFischer10/status/1248750956960813056?s=20">1,500 widow spiders</a>. </p>
<p>Though their scientist caretakers are well suited to deal with the challenges of rearing these organisms at home, they’re still faced with difficult questions. Where do you store them? How will you secure enough food to weather this ambiguous period of self-isolation? How do you keep your cats or kids out of <a href="https://twitter.com/LehmanWeiss/status/1248677843569004545?s=20">incubators full of flour beetles</a>?</p>
<p>The imposition of bringing a colony of insects home or jumping through risky hoops to visit collections living in the lab is well worth it for scientists like us. The effort necessary during this pandemic to literally keep science alive is justified by the value these collections provide to researchers and society.</p>
<p>[<em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklysmart">You can get our highlights each weekend</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/136108/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew T. Kasson receives funding from NSF, USDA and The Ohrstrom Foundation. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rita Rio receives funding from NIH NIAID.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brian Lovett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
From fungi and flies to spiders and fish, living collections need care and feeding even when their human keepers are dealing with a pandemic and its resultant social distancing.
Matt Kasson, Assistant Professor of Plant Pathology and Mycology, West Virginia University
Brian Lovett, Postdoctoral Researcher in Mycology, West Virginia University
Rita Rio, Professor of Biology, West Virginia University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/131442
2020-03-10T12:13:37Z
2020-03-10T12:13:37Z
Graphic novels help teens learn about racism, climate change and social justice – here’s a reading list
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/319163/original/file-20200306-58017-706d9p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C437%2C3994%2C1808&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The success of 'Maus' made the genre more visible.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/view-of-graphic-novels-for-sale-during-new-york-comic-con-news-photo/1045587282">Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images for New York Comic Con</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Teen activists worldwide are making headlines for their social justice advocacy on everything from <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/read-greta-thunberg-s-full-speech-united-nations-climate-action-n1057861">climate change</a> and <a href="https://www.pbs.org/inthemix/shows/show_teen_immigrants5.html">immigration</a> to <a href="https://teens.drugabuse.gov/teens/drug-facts">substance abuse</a> and <a href="https://itgetsbetter.org">LGBTQ issues</a>. As young people get more vocal about these issues, this trend is being reflected in the <a href="https://socialjusticebooks.org/booklists/graphic-novels">graphic novels</a> they are reading.</p>
<p>It’s a relatively new genre. The term graphic novel first came about when cartoonist <a href="http://www.willeisner.com/">Will Eisner</a> used the phrase to get publishers to recognize his 1978 work, “<a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393609189">A Contract with God: And Other Tenement Stories</a>,” as a novel rather than a comic book. Later, to help others understand the term he coined the definition: “a long comic book that would need a bookmark.”</p>
<p>Later, the cartoonist Art Spiegelman created “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/171058/maus-i-a-survivors-tale-by-art-spiegelman/">Maus</a>,” which relayed his father’s experiences during the Holocaust through pictures in which Jews were mice, Germans were cats and Poles were pigs. The book became the <a href="https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-year/1992">first Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel</a> in 1992. It was a game-changer, giving credibility to a format that many people, and <a href="https://www.visitthecapitol.gov/exhibitions/congress-investigates/comic-books-and-juvenile-delinquency">even Congress</a>, had previously criticized.</p>
<p><a href="https://icv2.com/articles/markets/view/44970/december-comic-graphic-novel-sales-up-9-2">Sales have soared</a> since then.</p>
<p>Because the combination of <a href="http://www.childrenssoftware.com/kindersley.html">text and images</a> in graphic novels can communicate issues and emotions that words alone often cannot, more educators and parents are finding them to be <a href="https://bookriot.com/2019/12/05/kids-comics-about-tough-topics/">effective tools for tackling tough issues</a> with kids. The acclaimed author <a href="https://abookandahug.com/i-am-alfonso-jones/">Nikki Giovanni</a> has put it this way. “A comic book is no longer something to laugh with but something to learn from.”</p>
<p>We are library and information science professors <a href="https://www.sc.edu/study/colleges_schools/cic/faculty-staff/gavigan_karen.php">in the U.S.</a> and <a href="https://arts-ed.csu.edu.au/schools/sis/staff/profiles/lecturers/kasey-garrison">Australia</a> who are curating a collection of these books to share with educators, parents and students. Here are some highlights, grouped by category.</p>
<h2>Racism and other forms of bigotry</h2>
<p>In the graphic novel memoir “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/605187/they-called-us-enemy-by-george-takei-justin-eisinger-steven-scott-harmony-becker/">They Called Us Enemy</a>,” actor, activist and Star Trek legend <a href="https://www.ted.com/speakers/george_takei">George Takei</a> partnered with co-authors <a href="http://www.topshelfcomix.com/catalog/justin-eisinger">Justin Eisinger</a> and <a href="http://www.topshelfcomix.com/catalog/steven-scott">Steven Scott</a> and the illustrator <a href="https://www.instagram.com/hamini/">Harmony Becker</a> to share his family’s experience during World War II. During this time, U.S. citizens like Takei’s Japanese American family were <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/japanese-american-relocation">forcibly moved to internment camps</a> and treated like criminals. Takei encourages readers to give their voices to those who are silenced so that history does not repeat itself.</p>
<p>Another good example in this vein is “<a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062691200/new-kid/">New Kid</a>” by African American author and illustrator <a href="https://jerrycraft.com/">Jerry Craft</a>. Its main character, Jordan, attends a private school where he is one of the few students of color. Jordan feels like a fish out of water, struggling to fit in at school and his neighborhood. New Kid" recently won the <a href="http://www.ala.org/alsc/awardsgrants/bookmedia/newberymedal/newberymedal">Newbery Medal</a> – the first time that a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/28/graphic-novel-new-kid-wins-prestigious-newbery-medal">graphic novel</a> has won the prestigious U.S. children’s literary award.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/317472/original/file-20200226-24668-ilbnq6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/317472/original/file-20200226-24668-ilbnq6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/317472/original/file-20200226-24668-ilbnq6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=846&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317472/original/file-20200226-24668-ilbnq6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=846&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317472/original/file-20200226-24668-ilbnq6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=846&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317472/original/file-20200226-24668-ilbnq6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1063&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317472/original/file-20200226-24668-ilbnq6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1063&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317472/original/file-20200226-24668-ilbnq6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1063&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Exerpt from ‘They Called Us Enemy.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/605187/they-called-us-enemy-by-george-takei-justin-eisinger-steven-scott-harmony-becker/">Penguin Random House</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Addiction and mental illness</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/jarrett_j_krosoczka_how_a_boy_became_an_artist?language=en">Jarrett Krosoczka</a>, the author and illustrator of “<a href="https://kids.scholastic.com/kids/book/hey-kiddo-by-jarrett-j-krosoczka/">Hey Kiddo! How I Lost My Mother, Found My Father, and Dealt with Family Addiction</a>,” makes his dysfunctional childhood as normal as possible by expressing himself through drawing. His powerful graphic memoir can help spark discussions about challenging issues with teens. </p>
<p>Another author and illustrator who drew her own path is <a href="https://katiegreen.co.uk/author/katiegreenbean/">Katie Green</a>. With stark black-and-white illustrations, she presents the story of her struggle and recovery from eating disorders in “<a href="https://www.lionforge.com/lighter-than-my-shadow/">Lighter Than My Shadow</a>.” A scribbly black cloud in the book represents Green’s disorders and the anguish that came with them. </p>
<h2>Climate change</h2>
<p>The graphic anthology “<a href="https://fulcrum.bookstore.ipgbook.com/wild-ocean-products-9781938486388.php">Wild Ocean: Sharks, Whales, Rays, and Other Endangered Sea Creatures</a>” explores the plight and beauty of endangered animals. Overfishing, global warming and other man-made dangers threaten the lives of these sea creatures. This eco-themed book, edited by comic artist and author <a href="http://matt-dembicki.blogspot.com/?view=classic">Matt Dembicki</a>,
helps students connect with climate change issues. Reading the book may motivate them to develop ideas to help save our seas. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/317471/original/file-20200226-24690-16o8hkj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/317471/original/file-20200226-24690-16o8hkj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/317471/original/file-20200226-24690-16o8hkj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=619&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317471/original/file-20200226-24690-16o8hkj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=619&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317471/original/file-20200226-24690-16o8hkj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=619&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317471/original/file-20200226-24690-16o8hkj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=778&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317471/original/file-20200226-24690-16o8hkj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=778&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317471/original/file-20200226-24690-16o8hkj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=778&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Excerpt from ‘Wild Ocean: Sharks, Whales, Rays, and Other Endangered Sea Creatures.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://fulcrum.bookstore.ipgbook.com/wild-ocean-products-9781938486388.php">Fulcrum Publishing</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Immigration and refugees</h2>
<p>As the number of worldwide refugees increases, so has the number of graphic novels about them. </p>
<p>“<a href="https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-08224-0.html">Escaping Wars and Waves: Encounters with Syrian Refugees</a>,” by the visual journalist <a href="https://www.ai-ap.com/publications/article/20300/illustrator-profile-olivier-kugler-draw-what-i.html">Olivier Kugler</a>, “<a href="https://www.fireflybooks.com/index.php/catalogue/product/11566-escape-from-syria">Escape from Syria</a>,” by foreign correspondent <a href="https://www.samyakullab.com/">Samya Kullab</a> together with illustrator <a href="http://www.jrocheworkshop.com/">Jackie Roche</a>, and “<a href="https://www.hmhbooks.com/shop/books/The-Unwanted/9781328810151">The Unwanted: Stories of the Syrian Refugees</a>” by author and illustrator <a href="https://www.hmhbooks.com/author/Don-Brown/2241993">Don Brown</a>“ are powerful stories about Syrians forced to leave their homes and families. Their stories of the refugees’ struggles paint a stark picture of a problem that today’s young people may well have to fix in the decades ahead.</p>
<h2>LGBTQ teens</h2>
<p><a href="https://gaycenter.org/about/lgbtq/">LGBTQ</a> and <a href="https://isna.org/faq/what_is_intersex/">intersex</a> teens often feel isolated, confused and afraid while coming to terms with their sexual orientation and gender identity. Reading graphic novels with characters like themselves can help them understand it is OK to be who they are. Likewise, putting a book with these characters in the hands of non-LGBTQ teens can help them empathize with LGBTQ friends.</p>
<p>”<a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626726413">Bloom</a>,“ by writer <a href="http://kevinpanetta.com/">Kevin Panetta</a> and illustrator <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/author/savannaganucheau">Savanna Ganucheau</a>, is a graphic novel about Ari, a recent high school graduate. He feels pressured to work in the family bakery rather than following a musical career. When Ari hires a young man as his replacement, love is in the air and ready to bloom.</p>
<p>[<em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=youresmart">You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/131442/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Karen Gavigan received funding for this project from:
Carnegie-Whitney Grant (American Library Association;
Southeastern Conference (SEC) Travel Grant to study at the Baldwin Library, University of Florida; and
Albers Fellowship to study at the Reinberger Children’s Library Center, available through the iSchool at Kent State University
</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kasey Garrison received funding for this project from: Carnegie-Whitney Grant (American Library Association; Southeastern Conference (SEC) Travel Grant to study at the Baldwin Library, University of Florida; and Albers Fellowship to study at the Reinberger Children’s Library Center, available through the iSchool at Kent State University.</span></em></p>
Some graphic novels can spur teens’ engagement with social justice issues.
Karen W. Gavigan, Professor of Library and Information Science, University of South Carolina
Kasey Garrison, Senior lecturer, Charles Sturt University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/132559
2020-02-28T14:05:53Z
2020-02-28T14:05:53Z
How one man fought South Carolina Democrats to end whites-only primaries – and why that matters now
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/317666/original/file-20200227-24668-xhaypd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=76%2C85%2C1879%2C1511&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">George and Laura Elmore (left) voting after wining a landmark case ending white-only primaries in South Carolina</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://civilrights.sc.edu/">University of South Carolina Civil Rights Center</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A rusting chain-link fence represents a “color line” for the dead in Columbia, South Carolina. In Randolph Cemetery, separated by the barrier from the well-manicured lawn of the neighboring white graveyard, lies the remains of George A. Elmore.</p>
<p>A black business owner and civil rights activist, Elmore is little remembered despite his achievement. But a granite monument at his grave attests to the “unmatched courage, perseverance and personal sacrifice” that saw him take on the South Carolina Democratic Party of the 1940s over its whites-only primaries – and win.</p>
<p>Nearly 75 years after Elmore’s battle, the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates made <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/biden-faces-competition-black-vote-firewall-sc-68861978">fervent appeals to African American voters</a> in South Carolina ahead of the primary being held on Feb. 29. For some of the all white front-runners in the race, it could be a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/joe-biden-meets-his-make-or-break-moment-in-south-carolina/2020/02/26/59256c22-58ae-11ea-ab68-101ecfec2532_story.html">make-or-break moment</a> – a failure to win over sufficient black support would be a major setback, potentially campaign-ending.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/317667/original/file-20200227-24664-okadgs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/317667/original/file-20200227-24664-okadgs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/317667/original/file-20200227-24664-okadgs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317667/original/file-20200227-24664-okadgs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317667/original/file-20200227-24664-okadgs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317667/original/file-20200227-24664-okadgs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1060&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317667/original/file-20200227-24664-okadgs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1060&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317667/original/file-20200227-24664-okadgs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1060&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">George Elmore in front of his Store.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://civilrights.sc.edu/">University of South Carolina Civil Rights Center</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is a far cry from the South Carolina of August 1946, when Elmore, a fair-skinned, straight-haired manager of a neighborhood five-and-dime store, consulted with local civil rights leaders and agreed to try once again to register to vote.</p>
<p>It followed blatant attempts to deprive African American citizens of their constitutional rights by white Democratic Party officials who would move voter registration books from store to store and hide them the moment a black voter entered.</p>
<p>When a clerk mistakenly allowed Elmore to register – thinking he was white, contemporary sources suggest – NAACP activists had a plaintiff to challenge the last whites-only primary in the nation.</p>
<h2>‘Let the chips fall’</h2>
<p>Excluding black voters at the ballot had already been ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1944’s <a href="https://www.naacpldf.org/case-issue/landmark-smith-v-allwright">Smith v. Allwright</a> decision. But in defiance, the South Carolina General Assembly simply redefined the state’s Democratic Party as a private club not subject to laws regulating primaries. <a href="https://casetext.com/case/elmore-v-rice">Gov. Olin D. Johnston declared</a>: “White supremacy will be maintained in our primaries. Let the chips fall where they may.”</p>
<p>Elmore’s name was promptly purged from the rolls and a cadre of prominent civil rights activists arranged for the NAACP to plead his case.</p>
<p>Columbia civil rights attorney Harold Boulware filed the <a href="https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/72/516/2238812/">federal lawsuit</a>. In June 1947, Thurgood Marshall and Robert Carter – like Boulware, graduates of the Howard University School of Law – argued Elmore’s case as a class lawsuit covering all African Americans in the state of voting age. The trial inspired a packed gallery of African American observers, including a young <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Matthew-James-Perry-Jr">Matthew J. Perry Jr.</a>, a future federal district judge, who commented: “Marshall and Carter were hitting it where it should be hit.”</p>
<p>In July, an unlikely ally, Charleston blueblood <a href="https://unexampledcourage.com">Judge J. Waties Waring</a> agreed, ruling that African Americans must be permitted to enroll. “It is time for South Carolina to rejoin the Union,” he concluded. “It is time … to adopt the American way of conducting elections.” </p>
<p>The state Democratic Party again defied the ruling, requiring voters to sign an oath supporting segregation. Judge Waring issued a <a href="https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/80/1017/1868993/">permanent injunction in 1948</a> to open the voting rolls: “To say that these rules conform or even pretend to conform to the law as laid down in the case of Elmore v. Rice is an absurdity.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/317668/original/file-20200227-24668-1qy686e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/317668/original/file-20200227-24668-1qy686e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317668/original/file-20200227-24668-1qy686e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317668/original/file-20200227-24668-1qy686e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317668/original/file-20200227-24668-1qy686e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317668/original/file-20200227-24668-1qy686e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317668/original/file-20200227-24668-1qy686e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Voters in Columbia, August 1948.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://digital.tcl.sc.edu/digital/collection/mccrayjh/id/9271/rec/6">South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In that year’s state primary, more than 30,000 African Americans, including George Elmore and his wife Laura, voted. Elmore remarked, “In the words of our other champion, Joe Louis, all I can say is ‘I’m glad I won.’” </p>
<p>His <a href="https://digital.tcl.sc.edu/digital/collection/mccrayjh/id/9271/rec/6">photos</a> of the long line of voters in his community’s precinct are now in the archives of the University of South Carolina <a href="https://www.sc.edu/study/colleges_schools/artsandsciences/history/our_people/directory/donaldson_bobby.php">where I teach history</a>.</p>
<p>In the years that followed, <a href="http://www.processhistory.org/voter-education-project/">voter education</a> and <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4788322">registration programs</a> by civil rights organizations transformed the Democratic Party in the state, both in terms of the makeup of its membership and the policies it pursued. The move sparked the departure of many white Democrats to the Republican Party, including the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/27/us/strom-thurmond-foe-of-integration-dies-at-100.html">segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond</a>.</p>
<p>Thurmond’s defection in 1964 legitimized the move for other white Democrats and hard-core segregationists who aligned themselves with an increasingly conservative Republican Party. Not surprisingly, some of the key architects of Richard Nixon’s invidious <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/07/26/what-we-get-wrong-about-southern-strategy/">Southern strategy</a>, which sought to weaken the Democratic Party in the South through the use of dog-whistle politics on racial issues, came from South Carolina.</p>
<p>As this year’s presidential candidates focus on South Carolina, it is clear that the racial makeup of the state’s electorate is <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2020/01/31/just-how-demographically-skewed-are-the-early-democratic-primary-states/">vastly different</a> than that in Iowa or New Hampshire, two of the states where the popularity of candidates has already been tested. But Democrats should view the South Carolina primary as more than a shift from voting in small, mostly white states. They should see the state as representative of the party’s strategic core, a strong African American constituency with diverse interests and perspectives.</p>
<p>African Americans in South Carolina have been fighting and winning legal and political battles for voting rights and electoral power <a href="https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/01/the-many-black-americans-who-held-public-office-during-reconstruction-in-southern-states-like-south-carolina.html">since Reconstruction</a> and as Democrats since the 1940s.</p>
<h2>A personal price</h2>
<p>After Elmore’s victory in 1947, state NAACP President James M. Hinton gave a somber, prophetic warning: “White men want office, and they want the vote of our people. We will be sought after, but we must be extremely careful who we vote for. … We must have a choice between those who have fought us and those who are our friends.”</p>
<p>George Elmore and his family paid a price for challenging the entrenched power of the white Democratic Party in 1946. In an interview with the University of South Carolina’s <a href="http://civilrights.sc.edu/">Center for Civil Rights History and Research</a>, which I lead, his 81-year-old son Cresswell Elmore recalled the retaliation the family experienced. Ku Klux Klan terrorists burned a cross in their yard and threatened their family. Laura Elmore suffered a nervous breakdown and went into a mental hospital. State agents raided Elmore’s liquor store, claiming the liquor he had bought from the standard wholesaler was illegal, and broke the bottles. Soda bottling companies and other vendors refused to send products on credit. Banks called in loans on their home and other property. Forced into bankruptcy, the family moved from house to house and the disruption scattered Cresswell and his siblings. When Elmore died in 1959 at the age of 53, only scant attention was paid to his passing.</p>
<p>The monument at his grave was unveiled in 1981, at a ceremony attended by civil rights veterans including his original attorney, Harold Boulware.</p>
<p>As the Democratic Party and presidential candidates appeal to African American voters, they would do well to remember the remarkable fight Elmore and others waged against the forces of bigotry and injustice. These historical struggles illuminate both the gains made over many generations and the ongoing battle against inequities and voter suppression tactics that persist to this day in South Carolina and across the nation.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/132559/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bobby J. Donaldson receives funding from National Park Service.</span></em></p>
South Carolina’s black community has a long history of fighting for democratic rights.
Bobby J. Donaldson, Associate Professor of History; Director Center for Civil Rights History and Research, University of South Carolina
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/129968
2020-02-25T20:22:24Z
2020-02-25T20:22:24Z
How civil rights leader Wyatt Tee Walker revived hope after MLK’s death
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/316013/original/file-20200218-10991-10ixqxz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C22%2C1014%2C838&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Civil rights leader Wyatt Tee Walker addresses a crowd at St. Phillips AME Church in Atlanta.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/photograph-of-wyatt-tee-walker-address-a-crowd-at-st-news-photo/513516932?adppopup=true"> Afro American Newspapers/Gado/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Four years after the assassination of <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/assassination-martin-luther-king-jr">Martin Luther King, Jr.</a>, the novelist James Baldwin would write on the pages of <a href="https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a14443780/james-baldwin-mlk-funeral/">Esquire</a> magazine, “Since Martin’s death, in Memphis, and that tremendous day in Atlanta, something has altered in me, something has gone away.”</p>
<p>Baldwin wrote about how “the act of faith” – that is, his belief that the movement would change white Americans and ultimately America – maintained him through the years of the black freedom movement, through marches and petitions and torturous setbacks. </p>
<p>After King’s death, Baldwin found it hard to keep that faith. </p>
<p>Nearly two weeks after King’s funeral, in April of 1968, King’s confidant and former strategist <a href="https://library.richmond.edu/collections/rare/walker.html">Wyatt Tee Walker</a> tried to renew this faith. Drawing on a tradition of black faith, Walker encouraged a grieving community to embrace hope even in the face of despair. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://jepson.richmond.edu/faculty/bios/cwalker3/">scholar of religion and American public life</a>, I recognize the important lessons Walker offers for current times when America is deeply divided. </p>
<h2>Faith in action</h2>
<p>Black public faith has a storied place in American life. </p>
<p>The black church has been a <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/godinamerica-black-church/">place of fellowship and affirmation</a> from colonial America to modern day, empowering individuals to undertake public acts to transform politics and society. </p>
<p>The 19th-century <a href="https://coloredconventions.org/">National Negro Convention</a> movement, which ran from 1831 to 1864, demonstrated this black faith in action. Its leaders advocated for the abolition of slavery and full citizenship for African Americans. One activist reflected years later that the “colored conventions” were “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=E73iOQSkHdwC&pg=PA84&lpg=PA84&dq=colored+conventions+are+almost+as+frequent+as+church+meetings&source=bl&ots=b4i3vIc0Et&sig=ACfU3U28IMGGi84u9yVWLqTg6c-VJHxqww&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj2iKPU1tvnAhUHkXIEHcQOAygQ6AEwAHoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=colored%20conventions%20are%20almost%20as%20frequent%20as%20church%20meetings&f=false">almost as frequent as church meetings</a>.”</p>
<p>The civil rights movement <a href="https://library.richmond.edu/collections/rare/walker-birmingham-tapes.html">carried this faith in action forward</a>. Theologian <a href="https://divinity.uchicago.edu/directory/dwight-n-hopkins">Dwight Hopkins</a> has written how the sermons and songs of black faith empowered and sustained African Americans, even in bleak times. </p>
<p>These practices on Sunday morning, he noted served to “<a href="https://www.baylorpress.com/9781602580138/black-faith-and-public-talk/">recharge the worshipers’ energy</a>” so they could deal with the “rigors and racism of ‘a cruel, cruel world’ from Monday though Saturday.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/317126/original/file-20200225-24694-2aqwu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/317126/original/file-20200225-24694-2aqwu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317126/original/file-20200225-24694-2aqwu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317126/original/file-20200225-24694-2aqwu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317126/original/file-20200225-24694-2aqwu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317126/original/file-20200225-24694-2aqwu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317126/original/file-20200225-24694-2aqwu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Civil rights and Union leaders sing ‘We Shall Overcome’ at the conclusion of the Selma to Montgomery civil rights march on March 25, 1965 in Montgomery, Alabama.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/dr-civil-rights-and-union-leaders-sing-we-shall-overcome-at-news-photo/507992160?adppopup=true">Stephen F. Somerstein/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It was this faith that empowered many African Americans to maintain their faith in the possibilities of democracy while facing entrenched white opposition to their civil rights. Marches, sit-ins, demonstrations and mass meetings were all public displays of black faith. </p>
<h2>The risk of faith</h2>
<p>In the wake of King’s assassination, the words of his last published book, “<a href="http://www.thekinglegacy.org/books/where-do-we-go-here-chaos-or-community">Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos or Community</a>,” reverberated throughout the nation. </p>
<p>Urban rebellions erupted in the wake of King’s death. With parts of over <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/04/the-riots-that-followed-the-assassination-of-martin-luther-king-jr/557159/">100 cities smoldering or in ruins</a>, chaos seemed a more likely future in 1968 America than community. </p>
<p>In a sermon called “Faith as Taking the Risk,” delivered at <a href="https://www.ptsem.edu/">Princeton Theological Seminary</a>, Walker sought to address a question posed by a young theologian <a href="https://utsnyc.edu/faculty/james-h-cone/">James H. Cone</a> after King’s death: “<a href="https://www.orbisbooks.com/said-i-wasnt-gonna-tell-nobody-en.html">Without King, where was the hope</a>?” </p>
<p>Deftly navigating the tension between hope and despair, Walker based his message on the response of the <a href="https://journals-sagepub-com.newman.richmond.edu/doi/pdf/10.1177/004057366802500207">Hebrew prophet Elisha in the Book of Kings</a> who faced crisis and despair with an invading Syrian army, widespread famine and people ready to give up. </p>
<p>Drawing inspiration from the faith of the community, Elisha encouraged the community to keep faith in their nation. </p>
<h2>Horizon of hope</h2>
<p>Elisha’s example powered Walker’s message. At Princeton, Walker encouraged the black seminarians not to countenance a nostalgia for the past. In moments of deep discouragement, Walker said, distressed people tend to <a href="https://journals-sagepub-com.newman.richmond.edu/doi/pdf/10.1177/004057366802500207">retreat into a romanticized past</a>. </p>
<p>“In the jargon of the street,” Walker said, “it sounds like this: ‘Child, don’t you wish it was like it was back in the good old days… .” </p>
<p>“And yet,” he declared, “not by any wishing or hoping or praying or anything else can we find any day when things were better. There was no such day!”</p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/B8_6TacncUm","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<p>Walker proceeded to caution his audience against maintaining the status quo. Walker <a href="https://journals-sagepub-com.newman.richmond.edu/doi/pdf/10.1177/004057366802500207">proclaimed</a>, “Whatever dream of life it is we envision for our children, ourselves, our community, our church, we will never bring it to our fingertips unless it begins first with some initial risk.” </p>
<p>For Walker, challenging the status quo was a fundamental aspect of existence. </p>
<p>“The elemental character of life is one that is moving and dynamic,” he <a href="https://journals-sagepub-com.newman.richmond.edu/doi/pdf/10.1177/004057366802500207">said</a>. </p>
<p>Walker closed his sermon by urging the audience to embrace hope-filled struggle. But he did not deny the desperate reality. </p>
<p>Instead, in the face of despair, he urged the young seminarians to take a risk of faith and build a future that has not been. For Walker, that meant “doing, trying, moving toward things which have never been tried before.” </p>
<h2>Hope in democracy</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/317130/original/file-20200225-24676-z818bw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/317130/original/file-20200225-24676-z818bw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/317130/original/file-20200225-24676-z818bw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=867&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317130/original/file-20200225-24676-z818bw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=867&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317130/original/file-20200225-24676-z818bw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=867&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317130/original/file-20200225-24676-z818bw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1089&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317130/original/file-20200225-24676-z818bw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1089&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317130/original/file-20200225-24676-z818bw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1089&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Wyatt Tee Walker in Montgomery, Alabama on April 3, 1962.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/photograph-of-wyatt-tee-walker-holding-up-a-document-and-news-photo/513516914?adppopup=true">Afro American Newspapers/Gado/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The lasting testament of black public faith is its affirmation of new possibilities during moments of deep doubt. Rather than relying on a myth of the past or upholding the status quo, Walker offered the seminarians at Princeton a <a href="https://journals-sagepub-com.newman.richmond.edu/doi/pdf/10.1177/004057366802500207">new vision of a political community</a>. </p>
<p>“What I’m saying to you,” Walker declared, “is that I have the ultimate faith that we are going to find a tranquility with justice in this nation, in this world. We must! And it is conceivable it could happen in our time.”</p>
<p><a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/news/458741-poll-70-percent-angry-at-political-establishment">Many Americans are angry</a> with the state of the political system. And acts of <a href="https://apnews.com/6127102807d5433e8aec096517d79284">racial bigotry</a> and <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/10/tree-life-and-legacy-pittsburghs-synagogue-attack/600946/">religious intolerance</a> have become far too ordinary. </p>
<p>In such times, Wyatt Tee Walker’s words can remind people to muster hope and keep faith with the possibilities of American democracy while continuing the struggle for a just society.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/129968/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Corey D. B. Walker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
In a sermon two weeks after MLK’s funeral, civil rights leader, Wyatt Tee Walker, urged young seminarians to be hopeful and take action for making change happen. His sermon has valuable lessons today.
Corey D. B. Walker, Visiting Professor, University of Richmond
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/131628
2020-02-25T13:53:33Z
2020-02-25T13:53:33Z
The surprising source of Ansel Adams’ signature style
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/316657/original/file-20200221-92493-4k27ra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=70%2C31%2C5174%2C3931&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Photographer Ansel Adams poses on a bluff with his camera.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/photographer-ansel-adams-stands-on-a-bluff-above-the-news-photo/929127942?adppopup=true">Roger Ressmeyer/CORBIS/VCG via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ansel Adams’ bold, black-and-white landscapes of the American wilderness are so iconic that most people know an Adams photograph when they see it.</p>
<p>You might be surprised to learn that Adams didn’t learn his craft by attending an elite art institution or by apprenticing with a master photographer.</p>
<p>My 2020 book, “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=Y6LQDwAAQBAJ&newbks=0&hl=en&source=newbks_fb">Making a Photographer: The Early Work of Ansel Adams</a>,” charts Adams’ early years, demonstrating how this self-taught expert learned from experience to identify his audience, hone his message and imbue his photographs with drama and emotion. I discovered that the eight years he spent working for the marketing department of the Yosemite Park and Curry Company – the sole provider of lodging, dining and entertainment services for Yosemite National Park – had a particularly profound influence on his later work.</p>
<p>Although Ansel Adams is a well-known artist, almost nothing has been written about his work with the Yosemite Park and Curry Company, or how it influenced his career. </p>
<h2>Developing twin passions</h2>
<p>A San Francisco native, Ansel Adams first visited Yosemite Valley in 1916 as a 14-year-old boy on summer vacation with his parents. Armed with his <a href="https://www.brownie-camera.com/">Kodak Box Brownie camera</a>, he snapped photographs of the waterfalls and rock formations. </p>
<p>Though he experimented with light and composition, his initial efforts were clearly that of an amateur. Even though he continued to refine his photographic technique, <a href="https://iphf.org/inductees/ansel-adams/">he dreamed of one day becoming a concert pianist</a>. Every year for the next 10 years, he returned to Yosemite National Park to hike, camp and take photos, and his passion for photography and the outdoors only grew.</p>
<p>Piano eventually fell by the wayside: By 28, he’d decided he wanted to become a photographer. At the time, however, there were few professional opportunities for photographers. Photographs weren’t widely collected or exhibited, and popular pictorial magazines like <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-issue-of-life-is-published">Life</a> and <a href="https://memory.loc.gov/ammem/awhhtml/awpnp6/look_coll.html">Look</a> hadn’t launched yet.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/316906/original/file-20200224-24672-9ll4md.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/316906/original/file-20200224-24672-9ll4md.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/316906/original/file-20200224-24672-9ll4md.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316906/original/file-20200224-24672-9ll4md.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316906/original/file-20200224-24672-9ll4md.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316906/original/file-20200224-24672-9ll4md.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1041&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316906/original/file-20200224-24672-9ll4md.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1041&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316906/original/file-20200224-24672-9ll4md.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1041&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Inspired by his time spent in the wilderness, Adams eventually realized he wanted to be a photographer.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So Adams sought out commercial jobs that would give him an opportunity to work as a photographer. They included taking portraits, photographing homes and buildings for architects and interior designers, and taking promotional photographs for businesses like wineries and banks.</p>
<p>Then, in 1929, Adams took a job that would prove to have an unexpected and meaningful impact on his life as an artist: He was hired to be a photographer for <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-10-02-mn-41470-story.html">the Yosemite Park and Curry Company</a>.</p>
<h2>Selling Yosemite</h2>
<p>The company wanted Adams to publish bold, captivating photographs to lure more tourists to Yosemite, and its marketing department coached Adams about the most effective approach to making photographs.</p>
<p>For instance, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=Y6LQDwAAQBAJ&newbks=0&hl=en&source=newbks_fb">in a letter</a>, the head of the Yosemite Park and Curry Company instructed Adams that, when taking a winter photograph, he should only shoot trees and houses “heavily ladened with freshly fallen snow.” Likewise, Adams was told to take photographs of only the best-dressed ice skaters using the valley’s ice rink.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/316901/original/file-20200224-24701-nrfut8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/316901/original/file-20200224-24701-nrfut8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/316901/original/file-20200224-24701-nrfut8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=877&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316901/original/file-20200224-24701-nrfut8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=877&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316901/original/file-20200224-24701-nrfut8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=877&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316901/original/file-20200224-24701-nrfut8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1102&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316901/original/file-20200224-24701-nrfut8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1102&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316901/original/file-20200224-24701-nrfut8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1102&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Adams often featured the park’s spectacular scenery as a backdrop.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Adams ended up photographing a wide range of vacation pastimes, including sleigh riding, dog sledding, horseback riding, fishing, golfing and back-country camping. He also photographed the park’s distinctive vistas. These pictures appeared in brochures and newspaper articles, on postcards and menus, and in a deluxe souvenir book called “The Four Seasons in Yosemite National Park.” The job had many benefits for the photographer: a good income, the challenge of attracting more visitors to his beloved Yosemite and the opportunity to practice making pictures.</p>
<p>As with all forms of advertising, the goal was persuasion. In Adams’ photographs, the action taking place is easy to understand, the setting spectacular and the composition simple and focused, with few distractions. The resulting images could also be easily reproduced in a newspaper, magazine or glossy brochure. Particularly effective ones showed people participating in the Yosemite Park and Curry Company’s tourist activities with the park’s dazzling scenery as a backdrop. </p>
<p>[<em>Too busy to read another daily email?</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?source=inline-toobusy">Get one of The Conversation’s curated weekly newsletters</a>.]</p>
<p>During his time with the Yosemite Park and Curry Company, Adams was also involved in the marketing process beyond just making photographs. He wrote captions to accompany his images, worked on store window displays that promoted Yosemite and consulted on the design of souvenirs that featured his pictures. </p>
<h2>From marketer to artist</h2>
<p>At the end of 1937, Adams left the Yosemite Park and Curry Company to focus on his fine art photography. <a href="http://anseladams.com/ansel-adams-defined-the-modern-environmental-movement/">As a passionate environmentalist</a>, Adams hoped viewers of his photographs would be so impressed by the magnificence of nature that they would be compelled to explore and preserve it. The lessons he learned promoting the park’s activities had clearly been of value: In his famous landscapes of America’s wilderness, you can see the same bold, emotional and emphatic style.</p>
<p>Adams <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/wcpa/servlet/DCARead?standardNo=0821225758&standardNoType=1&excerpt=true">once said</a>, “A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed and is, thereby, a true manifestation of what one feels about life in its entirety.”</p>
<p>Previously, he had supported his employer’s aim to compel people to visit Yosemite. Now he had his own goals to pursue. And thanks to his ability to harness the communicative power of photography, Adams would go on to convince millions of the grandeur and value of nature.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/131628/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rebecca Senf's publication received funding from the College Art Association. </span></em></p>
Largely self-taught, Adams learned to harness the communicative power of photography during his years as a marketing photographer.
Rebecca Senf, Chief Curator, Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/130991
2020-02-13T19:20:22Z
2020-02-13T19:20:22Z
Historic Iwo Jima footage shows individual Marines amid the larger battle
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313579/original/file-20200204-41507-vdsqru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C4%2C537%2C387&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Two Marines in the Marine Corps' 5th Division cemetery on Iwo Jima pay their respects to a fallen comrade.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://digital.tcl.sc.edu/digital/collection/MarineCorps/id/2182/rec/1">United States Marine Corps Film Repository, USMC 101863 (16mm film frame)</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When most Americans think of the World War II battle for Iwo Jima – if they think of it at all, more than 75 years later – they think of one image: Marines raising the U.S. flag atop Mount Suribachi, the island’s highest point. </p>
<p>That moment, captured in black and white by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal and as a color film by Marine Sergeant William Genaust, is powerful, embodying the spirit of the Marine Corps. </p>
<p>But these pictures are far from the only images of the bloodiest fight in the Marines’ history. A larger library of film, and the men captured on them, is similarly emotionally affecting. It can even bring Americans alive today closer to a war that ended in the middle of the last century.</p>
<p>Take for instance, just one scene: Two Marines kneel with a dog before a grave marker. It is in the final frames of a film documenting the dedication of one of the three cemeteries on the island. Those two Marines are among hundreds present to remember the more than 6,000 Americans killed on the island in over a month of fighting. The sequence is intentionally framed by the cinematographer, who was clearly looking for the right image to end the roll of film in his camera.</p>
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<p>I came across this film clip in my work as a curator of a collection of motion picture films shot by Marine Corps photographers from World War II through the 1970s. In a <a href="https://digital.library.sc.edu/marinecorps/">partnership</a> between the History Division of the Marine Corps and the University of South Carolina, where I work, we are digitizing these films, seeking to provide direct public access to the video and expand historical understanding of the Marine Corps’ role in society. </p>
<p>Over two years of scanning, I have come to realize that our work also enables a more powerful relationship with the past by fostering individual connections with videos, something that the digitizing of the large quantity of footage makes possible.</p>
<p><iframe id="WmPmG" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/WmPmG/2/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>The campaign within the battle</h2>
<p>Iwo Jima, an island in the western Pacific less than 1,000 miles south of Tokyo, was considered a key potential stepping stone toward an invasion of Japan itself.</p>
<p>During the battle to take the island from the Japanese, more than 70,000 Marines and attached Army and Navy personnel set foot on Iwo Jima. That included combat soldiers, but also medical corpsmen, chaplains, service and supply soldiers and others. More than <a href="https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/b/battle-for-iwo-jima.html">6,800 Americans were killed on the island and on ships</a> and landing craft aiding in the attack; more than 19,200 were wounded.</p>
<p>More than 50 Marine combat cameramen operated across the eight square miles of Iwo Jima during the battle, which stretched from Feb. 19 to March 26, 1945. Many shot still images, but at least 26 shot motion pictures. Three of these Marine cinematographers were killed in action. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7uc2F7Vq7hY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Curator Greg Wilsbacher discusses selected clips from the newly digitized archive.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Even before the battle began, Marine Corps leaders knew they wanted a comprehensive visual account of the battle. Beyond a historical record, combat photography from Iwo Jima would assist in planning and training for the invasion of the Japanese main islands. Some Marine cameramen were assigned to the front lines of individual units, and others to specific activities, like engineering and medical operations.</p>
<p>Most of the cameramen on Iwo Jima used 100-foot film reels that could capture about two and a half minutes of film. Sgt. Genaust, who shot the color sequence atop Suribachi, shot at least 25 reels – just over an hour of film – before he was killed, roughly halfway through the campaign. </p>
<p>Other cameramen who survived the entire battle produced significantly more. Sgt. Francis Cockrell was assigned to document the work of the 5th Division’s medical activities. Shooting at least 89 reels, he probably produced almost four hours of film. </p>
<p>Sgt. Louis L. Louft fought with the 13th Marines, an artillery regiment; his more than 100 film reels likely resulted in more than four hours of content. Landing on the beach with engineers of the 4th Division on Feb. 25, 1945, Pfc. Angelo S. Abramo compiled over three hours of material in the month of fighting he witnessed.</p>
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<p>Even taking a conservative average of an hour of film from each of the 26 combat cameramen, that suggests there was at least 24 hours of unique film from the battle. Many surviving elements of this record are now part of the film library of the Marine Corps History Division, which we’re working with. The remainder are cataloged by the National Archives and Records Administration.</p>
<p>While military historians visiting the History Division in the past have used this large library, the bulk of its films have not been readily available to the public, something that mass digitization is finally making possible.</p>
<p>For many decades, the visual records made by Marines have been seen by the public only piecemeal, often with selected portions used as mere stock footage in films, documentaries and news programs, chosen because a shot has action, not because of the historical context of the imagery. </p>
<p>Even when they are used responsibly by documentary filmmakers, the editing and selection of scenes imposes the filmmaker’s interpretation on the images. As a historian and archivist, though, I believe it is important for people to directly engage with historical sources of all types, including the films from Iwo Jima.</p>
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<h2>The ‘highest and purest’ form</h2>
<p>After the battle, the Americans buried their dead in temporary cemeteries, awaiting transportation back to the U.S. The film segment just before the graveside scene shows a service honoring the Americans of all backgrounds who had bled and died together.</p>
<p>At that service, Rabbi Roland B. Gittelsohn, the Marines’ first-ever Jewish chaplain, gave a eulogy that has become one of the Marine Corps’ most treasured texts. Noting the diversity of the dead, Gittelsohn said, “<a href="https://www.usmcu.edu/Research/Marine-Corps-History-Division/Frequently-Requested-Topics/Historical-Documents-Orders-and-Speeches/The-Purest-Democracy/">Here lie officers and men</a>, Negroes and whites, rich men and poor … together. Here are Protestants, Catholics, and Jews together. Here no man prefers another because of his faith or despises him because of his color.” </p>
<p>Gittelsohn called their collective sacrifice “the <a href="https://www.usmcu.edu/Research/Marine-Corps-History-Division/Frequently-Requested-Topics/Historical-Documents-Orders-and-Speeches/The-Purest-Democracy/">highest and purest democracy</a>.”</p>
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<h2>Connecting to the present</h2>
<p>After the dedication ceremonies, <a href="https://digital.tcl.sc.edu/digital/collection/MarineCorps/id/2182/rec/1">Marines walked the 5th Division cemetery</a>, looking for familiar names. The photographers were there, and one recorded the footage of the two Marines – names not known – and the dog, at a grave with only the number 322 as a visible marking.</p>
<p>The image stood out. The two Marines looking directly at the camera seemed to reach across the decades to compel a response. Researchers at the History Division identified the Marine beneath marker 322 as Pfc. Ernest Langbeen from Chicago. It felt appropriate and important to add his name to the online description for that film, so I did.</p>
<p>I then located members of the Langbeen family, and told them that this part of their family’s history existed in the History Division’s collections and was now preserved and available online after more than seven decades.</p>
<p>Speaking with the family, I learned more about the Marine in grave 322. One of the two Marines in the picture may well be his best friend from before the war, a friend who joined the Corps with him. They asked to serve together and were assigned to the same unit, the 13th Regiment.</p>
<p>Now, family members who never knew this Marine have a new connection to their history and the country’s history. More connections will come for others. The digital archive we’re building will make it easier for researchers and the public at large to explore the military and personal history in each frame of every film.</p>
<p>The visual library of more than 80 online videos from Iwo Jima carries in it countless Pfc. Langbeens, ordinary Americans whose lives were disrupted by a global war. Each film holds traces of lives cut short or otherwise irrevocably altered.</p>
<p>The films are a reminder that, more than 75 years after the end of World War II, all Americans remain tied to Iwo Jima, as well as battlegrounds across the world like <a href="https://www.historynet.com/breaking-the-gustav-line.htm">Monte Cassino</a>, <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/battle-of-peleliu">Peleliu</a>, <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/bataan-death-march-begins">Bataan</a> and <a href="https://www.abmc.gov/cemeteries-memorials/europe/normandy-american-cemetery">Colleville-sur-mer</a>. Americans may find their relatives in this footage, or they may not. But what they will find is evidence of the sacrifices made by those fighting on their behalf, sacrifices that connect each and every American to the battle of Iwo Jima.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/130991/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The United States Marine Corps Film Repository at the University of South Carolina is made possible in part through the generous support of the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation, the Parris Island Historical and Museum Society as well as donations from Marine Corps Leagues and individuals.</span></em></p>
Films of the battle for Iwo Jima, being digitized 75 years after they were made, offer connections and lessons for Americans of today.
Greg Wilsbacher, Curator of Newsfilm and Military Collections, University of South Carolina
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/130988
2020-02-13T14:14:08Z
2020-02-13T14:14:08Z
America’s postwar fling with romance comics
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315078/original/file-20200212-61912-op3vlq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=125%2C52%2C1067%2C711&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">With over 100 issues, 'Young Love' was one of the longest running romance comics series. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gary Lee Watson Comic Book Collection, Irvin Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, University of South Carolina Libraries</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Last year, comic book enthusiast <a href="https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/582733/gary-watson-comic-collection-donated-university-south-carolina">Gary Watson</a> donated his massive personal collection to <a href="https://sc.edu/about/offices_and_divisions/university_libraries/browse/irvin_dept_special_collections/index.php">the Irvin Department of Rare Books and Special Collections</a> at the University of South Carolina. </p>
<p>As the <a href="https://sc.edu/about/offices_and_divisions/university_libraries/about/contact/faculty-staff/weisenburg_michael.php">reference and instruction librarian</a>, I’m tasked with getting to know the collection so I can exhibit parts of it and use the materials for teaching. One of the great pleasures of assessing and cataloging Watson’s collection has been learning about how comic books have changed over time. Sifting through Watson’s vast collection of 140,000-plus comics, I’m able to see the genre’s entire trajectory.</p>
<p>Before World War II, superheroes were all the rage. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/aug/17/art-spiegelman-golden-age-superheroes-were-shaped-by-the-rise-of-fascism">Reflecting anxieties</a> over the Great Depression, the rise of fascism and the march to war, readers yearned for mythical figures who would defend the disenfranchised and uphold liberal democratic ideals.</p>
<p>Once the war ended, the content of comic books started to change. Superheroes gradually fell out of fashion and a proliferation of genres emerged. Some, such as <a href="http://www.powerhousebooks.com/books/golden-age-western-comics/">Westerns</a>, offered readers a nostalgic fantasy of a pre-industrial America. Others, like <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=114164218">true crime</a> and <a href="https://www.outrightgeekery.com/2017/10/18/the-rise-fall-and-rebirth-of-horror-comics-a-history/">horror</a>, hooked readers with their lurid tales, while <a href="https://comicsalliance.com/best-silver-age-sci-fi-covers-gallery/">science fiction comics</a> appealed to the wonders of technological advancement and trepidation about where it might lead us.</p>
<p>But there was also a brief period when the medium was dominated by the romance genre. </p>
<p>Grounded in artistic and narrative realism, romance comics were remarkably different from their superhero and sci-fi peers. While the post-war popularity of romance comics only lasted a few years, these love stories ended up actually having a strong influence on other genres.</p>
<h2>Romance comics’ origin story</h2>
<p>Though today they are most famous for creating “Captain America,” the creative duo of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=gUCgAwAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PA46#v=onepage&q&f=false">launched the romance comic book genre in 1947</a> with the publication of a series called “Young Romance.” </p>
<p>Teen comedy series like “<a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/1/26/13149304/archie-comics-riverdale-evolution">Archie</a>” had been around for a few years and occasionally had romantic story lines and subplots. Romance pulps and true confession magazines had been around for decades. </p>
<p>But a comic dedicated to telling romantic stories hadn’t been done before. With the phrase “Designed for the More Adult Readers of Comics” <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Young_Romance_Issue_1.jpg">printed on the cover</a>, Simon and Kirby signaled a deliberate shift in expectations of what a comic could be. </p>
<p>While most scholars have argued that <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=9pPgDE63U9oC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA127#v=onepage&q&f=false">romance comics tend to reinforce conservative values</a> – making marriage the ultimate goal for women and placing family and middle-class stability on a pedestal – the real pleasure of reading these books came from the mildly scandalous behavior of their characters and the untoward plots that the narratives were ostensibly warning against. With titles like “I Was a Pick-Up!,” “The Farmer’s Wife” and “The Plight of the Suspicious Bridegroom,” “Young Romance” and its sister titles <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=9pPgDE63U9oC&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&lpg=PP1&dq=Comic%20Book%20Nation%3A%20The%20Transformation%20of%20Youth%20Culture%20in%20America.&pg=PA128#v=onepage&q&f=false">quickly sold out of their original print runs</a> and began outselling other comics genres.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315088/original/file-20200212-61958-1y8dre8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315088/original/file-20200212-61958-1y8dre8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315088/original/file-20200212-61958-1y8dre8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315088/original/file-20200212-61958-1y8dre8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315088/original/file-20200212-61958-1y8dre8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315088/original/file-20200212-61958-1y8dre8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=625&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315088/original/file-20200212-61958-1y8dre8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=625&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315088/original/file-20200212-61958-1y8dre8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=625&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Issue #1 of ‘Teen-Age Romances’ (St. John, 1949).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gary Lee Watson Comic Book Collection, Irvin Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, University of South Carolina Libraries</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Other publishers noticed the popularity of the genre and followed suit with their own romance titles, most of which closely followed Simon and Kirby’s style and structure. <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=ndJ7BwAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false">By 1950</a>, about 1 in 5 of all comic books were romance comics, with almost 150 romance titles being sold by over 20 publishers.</p>
<p>The rage for all things romance was so sudden that publishers eager to take advantage of the new market altered titles and even content in order to save on <a href="https://www.comichron.com/faq/postalsalesdata.html">second-class postage permits</a>. Second-class or periodical postage is a reduced rate that publishers can use to save on the cost of mailing to recipients. Rather than apply for new permits every time they tested a new title, comics publishers would simply alter a failing title while retaining the issue numbering in order to keep using the preexisting permit. To comics historians, this is a telltale sign that the industry is undergoing a sudden change. </p>
<p>One striking example of this is when comics publisher Fawcett ended its failing superhero comic “<a href="https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=72086">Captain Midnight</a>” in 1948 with issue #67 and launched its new title, “<a href="https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=63254">Sweethearts</a>,” in issue #68. In this case, the death of a superhero comic became the birth of a romance comic. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315086/original/file-20200212-61912-e6lwjk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315086/original/file-20200212-61912-e6lwjk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315086/original/file-20200212-61912-e6lwjk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315086/original/file-20200212-61912-e6lwjk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315086/original/file-20200212-61912-e6lwjk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=651&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315086/original/file-20200212-61912-e6lwjk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=651&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315086/original/file-20200212-61912-e6lwjk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=651&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Issue #3 of ‘Bride’s Romances’ (Quality Comics, 1953).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gary Lee Watson Comic Book Collection, Irvin Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, University of South Carolina Libraries</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>With so many new titles flooding newsstands and department stores, the bubble was bound to burst. In what comic book historian Michelle Nolan <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=ndJ7BwAAQBAJ&lpg=PR4&ots=e23lp1L4DI&dq=Nolan%2C%20Michelle%20(2008).%20Love%20on%20the%20Racks%3A%20A%20History%20of%20American%20Romance%20Comics.%20McFarland%20%26%20Company%2C%20Inc.&pg=PA62#v=onepage&q&f=false">has dubbed</a> “the love glut,” 1950 and 1951 witnessed a rapid boom and bust of the romance genre. Many romance titles were canceled by the mid-1950s, even as stalwarts of the genre, such as “Young Romance,” remained in print into the mid-1970s. </p>
<p>There was the brief popularity of the sub-genre of gothic romance comics in the 1970s – series with names like “The Sinister House of Secret Love” and “The Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love.” But romance comics would never approach their brief, postwar peak.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315111/original/file-20200212-61966-vvwu6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315111/original/file-20200212-61966-vvwu6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=554&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315111/original/file-20200212-61966-vvwu6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=554&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315111/original/file-20200212-61966-vvwu6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=554&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315111/original/file-20200212-61966-vvwu6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=696&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315111/original/file-20200212-61966-vvwu6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=696&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315111/original/file-20200212-61966-vvwu6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=696&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gothic romances – like this issue of ‘The Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love’ – had a brief run in the 1970s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gary Lee Watson Comic Book Collection, Irvin Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, University of South Carolina Libraries</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A brief boom, an enduring influence</h2>
<p>Among collectors, issues of romance comics are less sought after than those of other genres. For this reason, they tend to go under the radar.</p>
<p>Romance comics, however, featured work by pioneering artists like <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/real-life-comic-book-superhero-74267">Lily Renée</a> and <a href="https://www.twomorrows.com/media/MattBakerPreview.pdf">Matt Baker</a>, both of whom worked on first issue of “Teen-Age Romances” in 1949. </p>
<p>Baker is the first-known black artist to work in the comic book industry and Renée was one of comics’ first female artists. Prior to working on “Teen-Age Romances,” they both drew “<a href="https://www.goodgirlcomics.com/good-girl-history/">good girl art</a>” – a set of artistic tropes borrowed from pinups and pulp magazines – for several titles. Their work in both genres exemplifies how earlier pulp magazine themes of desire and seduction could readily be applied to newer genres. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315090/original/file-20200212-61912-w4chvh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315090/original/file-20200212-61912-w4chvh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315090/original/file-20200212-61912-w4chvh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=895&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315090/original/file-20200212-61912-w4chvh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=895&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315090/original/file-20200212-61912-w4chvh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=895&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315090/original/file-20200212-61912-w4chvh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1125&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315090/original/file-20200212-61912-w4chvh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1125&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315090/original/file-20200212-61912-w4chvh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1125&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘But He’s the Boy I Love’ was one of the few romance comic to feature black characters.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gary Lee Watson Comic Book Collection, Irvin Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, University of South Carolina Libraries</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After the “love glut,” sub-genre mashups nonetheless emerged. For example, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=ndJ7BwAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PA86#v=onepage&q&f=false">cowboy romances</a> were briefly popular. Later, in response to the civil rights movement, Marvel published the 1970 story “<a href="https://truelovecomicstales.blogspot.com/2016/02/our-love-story-but-hes-boy-i-love.html">But He’s the Boy I Love</a>,” which was the first story in a romance comic to feature African-American characters since Fawcett’s three-issue run of “<a href="https://www.mycomicshop.com/search?TID=360151">Negro Romance</a>” in 1950. </p>
<p>Even after romance comics largely fell out of fashion, the genre’s visual tropes and narrative themes became more prevalent during what’s known as the “<a href="https://www.cosmiccomics.vegas/latest-news/the-history-of-silver-age-comic-books/">Silver Age</a>,” a superhero revival that lasted from 1956 to 1970. Titles such as “Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane” often borrowed heavily from romance for their plots to generate intrigue and tension in the hopes of driving up sales. </p>
<p>Issue 89, in which Lois marries Bruce Wayne, is a prime example of such marketing techniques. Issues such as these were often situated as “what if” narratives that offered readers speculative story lines, such as “What if Lois Lane married Bruce Wayne?” Though they’re generally thought of as separate from the superhero canon, these love stories show that comic book writers had internalized the main narrative techniques of romance comics even if the genre itself was in decline. </p>
<p>But other comics didn’t merely use romantic themes for the occasional gimmick issue. Instead, they made the love lives of their characters a central plot point and a fundamental aspect of their characters’ identities. Comics such as the “Fantastic Four” and the “X-Men” rely heavily on the heated emotions and jealousies found in group dynamics and love triangles.</p>
<p>Take Wolverine. Presumably tough and stoic, he’s so enamored of Jean Grey – and so envious of her love interest, Scott Summers – that you could argue that unrequited love is one of his primary motivations throughout the series.</p>
<p>Thanks to romance comics, even stoic superheroes got bitten by the love bug.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael C. Weisenburg does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
During the ‘love glut,’ roughly 1 in 5 of all comic books were romance comics, as publishers scrambled to appease readers’ appetites for scandalous storylines.
Michael C. Weisenburg, Reference & Instruction Librarian at Irvin Department of Rare Books & Special Collections, University of South Carolina
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/129846
2020-01-30T13:13:43Z
2020-01-30T13:13:43Z
Union gunboats didn’t just attack rebel military sites – they went after civilian property, too
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311438/original/file-20200122-117917-8aavdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=111%2C123%2C3930%2C2675&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The USS Cairo pulls up to the banks of the Mississippi River in 1862.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/nhhc/our-collections/photography/numerical-list-of-images/nhhc-series/nh-series/NH-61000/NH-61568.html">U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>During the American Civil War, huge metal monsters roamed the Mississippi River. Called ironclads, these boats were about 50 yards long, carried 75 tons of armor on their hulls and decks, sported up to 13 guns, and had crews numbering up to 250 men. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.nps.gov/vick/learn/historyculture/city-class-ironclads.htm">seven city-class ironclads</a>, sometimes called the turtles, were the most recognizable boats in the fleet, but northern laborers also converted a few existing steamboats into armored vessels. </p>
<p>The Union used this cutting-edge naval technology to attack Confederate forts at places like Tennessee’s <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/fall-fort-henry">Fort Henry</a> and <a href="https://www.essentialcivilwarcurriculum.com/island-no.-10.html">Island No. 10</a>, and <a href="https://www.nps.gov/vick/index.htm">Vicksburg, Mississippi</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311442/original/file-20200122-117943-104l601.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311442/original/file-20200122-117943-104l601.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311442/original/file-20200122-117943-104l601.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=736&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311442/original/file-20200122-117943-104l601.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=736&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311442/original/file-20200122-117943-104l601.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=736&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311442/original/file-20200122-117943-104l601.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311442/original/file-20200122-117943-104l601.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311442/original/file-20200122-117943-104l601.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The USS Essex operating on the Mississippi River on Nov. 1, 1862, as drawn by William M.C. Philbrick, a crew member of a nearby Navy ship.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/nhhc/our-collections/photography/numerical-list-of-images/nhhc-series/nh-series/NH-54000/NH-54284.html">U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But these conventional battles are only one part of the larger story of the Union’s Mississippi River Squadron.</p>
<h2>Piecing together fragments</h2>
<p>As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=SsoLG_0AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Civil War historian</a> who has been researching the Union’s river navy for seven years, I have learned that the fleet was important in ways beyond its attacks on southern forts. It protected Union transports and supply boats from Confederate ambushes. In the process, the Union navy waged a nasty war against southerners who supported the insurgents.</p>
<p>The evidence for this unconventional war is hidden in the shadows of the archives. Bits and pieces of information are littered throughout the <a href="http://collections.library.cornell.edu/moa_new/ofre.html">Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies</a>, materials in the National Archives, collections of sailors’ letters and <a href="https://www.rbhayes.org/clientuploads/pdfs/Manuscripts/James%20A.%20Dickinson%20Diary%20Transcription.pdf">diaries</a>, and <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=SMoOAAAAIAAJ&printsec=titlepage&dq=military+order+loyal+legion+united+states&source=gbs_summary_r">post-war accounts</a>. </p>
<p>Piecing together this fragmentary material, I created a database of 559 separate episodes where gunboats attacked a target, southerners shot at a federal boat, or there was a mutual fight. I then worked with <a href="https://gis.colostate.edu/">my university’s mapping experts</a> to analyze the data using computers.</p>
<p>As the resulting map makes clear, combat between Union gunboats and southerners occurred across the Civil War’s western theater but was also clustered in a few important areas. My research also reframes our understanding of the Civil War away from well-known battles to a constant, grinding war that sucked in thousands of civilians. </p>
<p><iframe id="QUj79" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/QUj79/10/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>Confederates seek loot and supplies</h2>
<p>This irregular guerrilla war was an improvisation that began in earnest in the summer of 1862. By that point, Union ironclads and speedy rams had squashed the measly <a href="https://www.navalhistory.org/2015/10/27/battle-report-ramming-speed">Confederate River Defense Fleet</a> at Memphis. As northern armies began to march overland toward Vicksburg and elsewhere, they depended on steamboats for supplies. </p>
<p>The Confederates created mobile ambush squads that were conglomerations of artillery and cavalry and sent them to the shores of the Mississippi River and its tributaries to attack Union supply boats and the ironclad gunboats that protected them. </p>
<p>One of these ambush groups was a mixture of about 250 men from the <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=pst.000006018795&view=1up&seq=398">Third Maryland Artillery</a> and a squadron of Texas cavalry. They had four cannons, including one christened “Black Bess.” On May 3, 1863, they captured the Minnesota, a steamer carrying US$40,000 worth of Union supplies. </p>
<p>Hungry Confederates swarmed aboard to find “<a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=pst.000006018795&view=1up&seq=398">flour, bacon, potatoes, pickles of all sorts</a>, sugar, coffee, rice, ginger, syrup, cheese, butter, oranges, lemons, preserves, canned oysters, whiskey, wines, musquito [sic] nets, clothing, stationery, tobacco, etc. etc.” After wolfing down “a luxurious dinner,” a member of the artillery remembered how the rebels shared their extra food with sympathetic civilians in the area.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311440/original/file-20200122-117911-1qqhga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311440/original/file-20200122-117911-1qqhga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311440/original/file-20200122-117911-1qqhga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311440/original/file-20200122-117911-1qqhga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311440/original/file-20200122-117911-1qqhga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311440/original/file-20200122-117911-1qqhga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=604&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311440/original/file-20200122-117911-1qqhga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=604&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311440/original/file-20200122-117911-1qqhga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=604&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The USS Rattler, a so-called ‘tinclad’ gunboat made by putting armor on a rivergoing steamboat.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/nhhc/our-collections/photography/numerical-list-of-images/nhhc-series/nh-series/NH-55000/NH-55836.html">U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Union fights back</h2>
<p>Union commanders realized that their ironclads clustered their men into a few boats, so they improvised and created a fleet of <a href="https://www.history.navy.mil/our-collections/photography/numerical-list-of-images/nhhc-series/nh-series/NH-55000/NH-55524.html">tinclads</a>, also known as “mosquitoes.” These boats were lightly armored, had a crew of about 70 men, carried six to eight light cannons and could go just about anywhere because they had a draft of 30 inches of water. </p>
<p>By the end of 1862, the Union put 17 tinclads into action and fitted out 74 by the time Robert E. Lee surrendered in 1865.</p>
<p>The crews of the tinclads and the other gunboats waged a deadly game of whack-a-mole along the western rivers. Whenever rebels popped up and attacked a boat, the fleet tried to smite it. </p>
<p>This reactive strategy failed because rebels could quickly retreat into the southern countryside, so <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/david-dixon-porter">Admiral David Dixon Porter</a> devised a new strategy. </p>
<p>He gave Union commanders the authority to confiscate or destroy civilian property, including food, animals, cotton, buildings and personal property. Porter intended to starve rebels by depriving the men and their horses of food. He also hoped to inflict enough punishment on civilians that they would withdraw their support from the insurgents. </p>
<h2>Punishment turns to plunder</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311439/original/file-20200122-117943-1722kbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311439/original/file-20200122-117943-1722kbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311439/original/file-20200122-117943-1722kbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=938&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311439/original/file-20200122-117943-1722kbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=938&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311439/original/file-20200122-117943-1722kbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=938&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311439/original/file-20200122-117943-1722kbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1179&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311439/original/file-20200122-117943-1722kbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1179&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311439/original/file-20200122-117943-1722kbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1179&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">U.S. Navy Admiral David Dixon Porter.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:David_Dixon_Porter_-_Mathew_Brady%27s_National_Photographic_Art_Gallery.jpg">Mathew Brady/Restored by Adam Cuerden/Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Union sailors were quick to carry out Porter’s orders. For instance, when Confederate-aligned guerrillas near Helena, Arkansas, killed one sailor from the USS Cairo and nearly captured another, revenge was swift. Union sailor <a href="https://www.nps.gov/vick/learn/education/language-arts-sailors-story.htm">George Yost</a>, who was a 14-year-old cabin boy, reported that 40 sailors from the boat landed at a nearby plantation and burned “up all the houses barns and everything combustible near the scene of the assassination.”</p>
<p>But such punitive attacks often became plundering sprees. When the USS Cincinnati stopped at a plantation on the Mississippi River in March 1863, sailors went ashore and, after chasing away the owner, took 150 chickens, 600 pounds of bacon, a bull, some geese and a couple of guinea hens. </p>
<p>According to a sailor whose letters are in the <a href="http://www.buffalohistory.org/">Buffalo History Museum</a>, they also helped themselves to bed clothes, pictures, crockery, “&c. &c. &c. &c. &c. &c.” – a clear implication that they took all kinds of personal possessions.</p>
<p>This strategy of exhaustion produced indifferent results. The Mississippi River Squadron was not able to quash resistance. Many civilians stayed loyal to the Confederacy and supported guerrillas until the war ended. </p>
<p>And since the boats only patrolled the water, they could not occupy the land and drive out the rebels. But the river navy provided enough protection to Union supply lines to ensure victory over the Confederate army. The Union’s Mississippi River Squadron didn’t have to win its war; it merely had to prevent the rebels from winning theirs.</p>
<p>[ <em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/129846/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Gudmestad does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
A new look at detailed data about Civil War skirmishes along the Mississippi River reveals another key to the Union’s victory.
Robert Gudmestad, Professor and Chair of History Department, Colorado State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/126484
2020-01-22T13:37:24Z
2020-01-22T13:37:24Z
Stoneflies and mayflies, canaries of our streams
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308426/original/file-20200103-11900-2fldm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=214%2C118%2C1913%2C1275&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The presence of mayflies and stone flies indicates clean water is nearby.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/andrew_ww/7275127502">Andrew/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Experienced anglers recognize that for a trout, the ultimate “steak dinner” is a stonefly or mayfly. That’s why fly fishing enthusiasts will go to extreme lengths to imitate these graceful, elegant and fragile insects. </p>
<p>I share their passion, but for different reasons. As a an entomologist who has <a href="https://bspm.agsci.colostate.edu/people-button/faculty/boris-kondratieff/">studied stoneflies and mayflies</a> for over 40 years, I’ve discovered these insects have value far beyond luring trout – they are indicators of water quality in streams and are a crucial piece of the larger food web. And they are in trouble.</p>
<h2>Collecting bugs</h2>
<p>I have served as director of the <a href="https://bspm.agsci.colostate.edu/gillette-museum/">C. P. Gillette Museum of Arthropod Diversity</a> since 1986. The greatest thrill of my career has been collecting and adding mayflies and stoneflies to our collection.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309127/original/file-20200108-107219-1r624aq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309127/original/file-20200108-107219-1r624aq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309127/original/file-20200108-107219-1r624aq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309127/original/file-20200108-107219-1r624aq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309127/original/file-20200108-107219-1r624aq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309127/original/file-20200108-107219-1r624aq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309127/original/file-20200108-107219-1r624aq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Boris Kondratieff collecting aquatic insects in Oregon with former student Chris Verdone.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To find specimens, I have traveled to pristine streams in every U.S. state, Canada, Mexico, Central America, Brazil, Ecuador, the Arabian Peninsula and Europe. My collecting trips have yielded more than 100 new species of mayflies and stoneflies.</p>
<p>One of my favorites literally fell into my lap as I was beating lush foliage along a pristine stream in southern Oregon during May 2014. The beating sheet is an efficient means of sampling dense, streamside vegetation, where adult insects hide. The sheet itself is made of sturdy canvas stretched over two wooden cross members. A stick is used to knock the insects from the vegetation onto the canvas, where they are collected.</p>
<p>When I saw a large yellow and black insect drop onto my sheet, I knew immediately it was a new stonefly species, previously unknown to science. I was ecstatic. My colleagues and I <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315373464_KATHROPERLA_SISKIYOU_A_NEW_STONEFLY_SPECIES_FROM_CALIFORNIA_AND_OREGON_USA_PLECOPTERA_CHLOROPERLIDAE">subsequently described it as <em>Kathroperla siskiyou</em></a>, after the Siskiyou mountains of southern Oregon. </p>
<p>Mayflies and stoneflies thrive in unpolluted water – a fact my colleagues and I have witnessed firsthand on our numerous expeditions. Not only do we see greater overall abundance of these insects in clean streams, but more diversity of species, as well. In polluted areas, we observe the exact opposite. Without a doubt, the presence or absence of mayflies and stoneflies in a stream <a href="https://www.epa.gov/national-aquatic-resource-surveys/indicators-benthic-macroinvertebrates">is a reliable indicator of the quality of its water</a>. </p>
<p>The role of mayflies and stoneflies in the food chain is fundamental, as well. Immature mayflies and stoneflies consume algae, living plants, dead leaves, wood and each other. In this nymph phase, when they have gills and live exclusively underwater, they are an important food source for many animals further up the food chain, including fish and wading birds. When the mayflies and stoneflies emerge from the water as adults, they are essential food for spiders, other insects such as dragonflies and damselflies, and many kinds of birds and bats.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308425/original/file-20200103-11914-1yaa33q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308425/original/file-20200103-11914-1yaa33q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308425/original/file-20200103-11914-1yaa33q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308425/original/file-20200103-11914-1yaa33q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308425/original/file-20200103-11914-1yaa33q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308425/original/file-20200103-11914-1yaa33q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308425/original/file-20200103-11914-1yaa33q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308425/original/file-20200103-11914-1yaa33q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mayflies are on the menu for this hungry fledgling.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/keithmwilliams/48561842382/">Keith Williams/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Currently, scientists estimate that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2019.01.020">33% of all aquatic insects</a> are threatened with extinction worldwide. Many of these species are mayflies and stoneflies. The mayfly species <a href="https://www.itis.gov/servlet/SingleRpt/SingleRpt?search_topic=TSN&search_value=101536#null"><em>Ephemera compar</em> has already gone extinct in Colorado</a>, and several <a href="http://cnhp.colostate.edu/ourdata/trackinglist/arthropods_insects/">other species of aquatic insects are threatened in my home state</a>.</p>
<h2>Life drains into a stream</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.ngwa.org/what-is-groundwater/About-groundwater/information-on-earths-water">Less than 1% of Earth’s water is potable</a> and available for human use. Maintaining water quality has become an ever increasing challenge because of the large number of chemicals people use in everyday life and in commerce. Common contaminants such as sediment, organic enrichment including fertilizers and animal waste and heavy metals are constantly <a href="https://www.environmentalpollutioncenters.org/water/causes/">making their way into the waters</a>, as well. Declining water quality is like a police siren alerting humanity to current, ongoing and emerging pollution problems.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308428/original/file-20200103-11914-jlv768.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308428/original/file-20200103-11914-jlv768.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308428/original/file-20200103-11914-jlv768.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308428/original/file-20200103-11914-jlv768.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308428/original/file-20200103-11914-jlv768.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308428/original/file-20200103-11914-jlv768.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308428/original/file-20200103-11914-jlv768.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308428/original/file-20200103-11914-jlv768.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Native plantings along a waterway can reduce storm water runoff.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/native-plantings-along-riparian-zone-waterway-1122153395">Sheryl Watson/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One of my great passions is to enlighten others on how to protect the most valuable natural resource of the planet: streams and rivers. Individually, citizens can make a difference. <a href="https://www.epa.gov/npdes/npdes-stormwater-program">Storm water is the number one water quality problem</a> nationally. Enhancing and planting <a href="https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/detail/national/home/?cid=nrcs143_023568">riparian buffers</a> – that is, planted areas near streams – can help to prevent precipitation and sprinkler runoff. People can also prioritize using only native plants; decreasing mowing areas; recycling or composting yard waste; using less or no fertilizer; avoiding the use of pesticides; and bagging pet waste. Insisting that environmental laws be enforced and strengthened will also help reduce water pollution.</p>
<p>Without clean water, life on Earth will become difficult or impossible for mayflies and stoneflies, not to mention people.</p>
<p>[ <em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=youresmart">You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126484/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Boris Kondratieff receives funding from National Park Service, Agricultural Experiment Station, and National Science Foundation.. </span></em></p>
Mayflies and stone flies are extremely vulnerable to water pollution, which has implications for the larger food chain.
Boris Kondratieff, Professor of Entomology and Curator of the C. P. Gillette Museum of Arthropod Diversity, Colorado State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/127684
2020-01-06T12:06:54Z
2020-01-06T12:06:54Z
Building a digital archive for decaying paper documents, preserving centuries of records about enslaved people
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308376/original/file-20200102-11939-1kf1r17.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C30%2C2038%2C1333&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Converting aging paper documents to digital archives can be a painstaking effort.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Slave Societies Digital Archive</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Paper documents are still priceless records of the past, even in a digital world. Primary sources stored in local archives throughout Latin America, for example, describe a centuries-old multiethnic society grappling with questions of race, class and religion. </p>
<p>However, paper archives are vulnerable to flooding, humidity, insects, and rodents, among other threats. Political instability can cut off money used to maintain archives and institutional neglect can transform precious records into moldy rubbish. </p>
<p>Working closely with colleagues from around the world, I build digital archives and specialized tools that help us learn from those records, which trace the lives of free and enslaved people of African descent in the Americas from the 1500s to the 1800s. Our effort, the <a href="https://www.slavesocieties.org/">Slave Societies Digital Archive</a>, is one of many humanities projects that have accumulated substantial collections of digital images of paper documents.</p>
<p>The goal is to ensure this information – including some from documents that no longer exist physically – is accessible to future generations. </p>
<p>But preserving history by taking high-resolution photographs of centuries-old documents is only the beginning. Technological advances help scholars and archivists like me do a better job of preserving these records and learning from them, but don’t always make it easy.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308377/original/file-20200102-11900-1w5q2na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308377/original/file-20200102-11900-1w5q2na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308377/original/file-20200102-11900-1w5q2na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308377/original/file-20200102-11900-1w5q2na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308377/original/file-20200102-11900-1w5q2na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308377/original/file-20200102-11900-1w5q2na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308377/original/file-20200102-11900-1w5q2na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308377/original/file-20200102-11900-1w5q2na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An archive in Cuba contains paper treasures that are hard to use and study – even in person.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Slave Societies Digital Archive</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Collecting documents</h2>
<p>Since 2003, the Slave Societies Digital Archive has collected more than 700,000 digitized images of historical records documenting the lives of millions of Africans and people of African descent in North and South America.</p>
<p>Members of the core team, from universities in the U.S., Canada, and Brazil, travel to project sites throughout Latin America, where they train local students and archivists to digitize ecclesiastical and government records from their communities. We give these communities the cameras, computers and other hardware they need to digitally preserve documents piled in the corners of 18th-century church basements, or about to be discarded by space-crunched municipal archives.</p>
<p>We also teach them a crucial skill for archiving and retrieval: how to create <a href="https://www.loc.gov/standards/metadata.html">metadata</a>, the descriptive information to help people find what interests them – like whether a document is a marriage certificate or a baptism record, and what year and town it’s from. Good metadata allows visitors to the project website to, for example, search for all baptism records from 17th-century Colombia.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308379/original/file-20200102-11919-ikrdx7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308379/original/file-20200102-11919-ikrdx7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308379/original/file-20200102-11919-ikrdx7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308379/original/file-20200102-11919-ikrdx7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308379/original/file-20200102-11919-ikrdx7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308379/original/file-20200102-11919-ikrdx7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308379/original/file-20200102-11919-ikrdx7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308379/original/file-20200102-11919-ikrdx7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A lot of people get involved, both teaching and learning how to properly photograph documents.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Slave Societies Digital Archive</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>From digitization to preservation</h2>
<p>Over time, we’ve gotten much better at digitizing documents. In older images, it’s not uncommon to see the photographer’s finger straying in from the side of the frame. Some of those older images are stored as relatively low-resolution JPEG files, a format that compresses the image file size by deleting some data when it’s saved. Most of those files are still completely legible even when a viewer zooms in, but some are not and will need to be digitized again in the future.</p>
<p>Our more recent preservation adheres to the rigorous standards of <a href="https://www.bl.uk/">the British Library</a>, which funds much of our work. Those images are taken in very high resolutions and stored in multiple file formats including <a href="https://www.archives.gov/preservation/products/definitions/tif.html">TIFF</a>, which remains the archival standard.</p>
<p>Transforming a collection of digitized images into a true digital archive is a time-consuming and detail-oriented effort. Early in this process, we ran into a curious problem involving photographs taken during our first few digitization efforts. Modern software frequently misinterpreted the orientation of these images, giving us pages rotated 90 degrees to the right or left or even completely upside down. In cases where an entire volume was rotated in the same incorrect way, it could be fixed automatically, but others with a range of errors had to be corrected by hand to let researchers work more easily with the material.</p>
<p>We’ve also found that data file names can cause problems. Many cameras assign images default names – like DSCN9126.jpg – that aren’t useful for figuring out what the pictures are. We have to rename each image in a standard way that indicates how it fits into our collection. </p>
<p>For the time being we’ve chosen simply to number images sequentially within each volume; another reasonable option would be to prefix each of these numbers with an ID referring to the volume the image comes from.</p>
<p>These aren’t major hurdles, but they and others along similar lines take some time to figure out and address properly. But this effort pays off when people hoping to explore the collection have an easier time finding and using our images.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308380/original/file-20200102-11919-1qwimqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308380/original/file-20200102-11919-1qwimqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308380/original/file-20200102-11919-1qwimqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308380/original/file-20200102-11919-1qwimqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308380/original/file-20200102-11919-1qwimqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308380/original/file-20200102-11919-1qwimqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308380/original/file-20200102-11919-1qwimqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308380/original/file-20200102-11919-1qwimqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">With care, digital preservation can bring new life to crumbling documents.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Slave Societies Digital Archive</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Where to store them?</h2>
<p>Once we’ve captured the images, we need to save them somewhere. </p>
<p>At present, the Slave Societies Digital Archive collection is close to 20 terabytes – <a href="https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=20+terabytes">roughly the space needed to store all the text</a> in the Library of Congress.</p>
<p>Few institutions have the resources, personnel or expertise needed to store humanities data at such large scales. Data storage isn’t exorbitantly expensive, but it’s also not cheap – especially when the data needs to be accessed regularly, as opposed to being stored in a static backup or archival copy.</p>
<p>For many years, the Vanderbilt University Library hosted the data, but we outgrew what that organization could afford. We had been backing up many of our most important records on the Digital Preservation Network, a consortium of universities that pooled resources to fund a reliable digital storage system for scholarly production. But that organization <a href="https://duraspace.org/the-digital-preservation-network-dpn-to-cease-operations/">shut down in late 2018</a> after consulting with each member organization to ensure that no data would be lost.</p>
<p>Our path has led to <a href="https://gizmodo.com/what-is-the-cloud-and-where-is-it-1682276210">the cloud</a>, computers in technology companies’ massive server-warehouse buildings that we access remotely to store and retrieve information. At the moment, multiple copies of our entire dataset are stored on servers on opposite sides of North America. As a result, we’re far less likely to lose our data than at any previous point in the project’s history.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306439/original/file-20191211-95130-167zdxs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306439/original/file-20191211-95130-167zdxs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306439/original/file-20191211-95130-167zdxs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=320&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306439/original/file-20191211-95130-167zdxs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=320&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306439/original/file-20191211-95130-167zdxs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=320&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306439/original/file-20191211-95130-167zdxs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306439/original/file-20191211-95130-167zdxs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306439/original/file-20191211-95130-167zdxs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">If you can read this, you’re very highly trained.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://essss.library.vanderbilt.edu/islandora/object/essss%3A6554">The Conversation screenshot of Slave Societies Digital Archive file</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Opening access</h2>
<p>Storing these records in secure systems is another part of the equation, but we also need to make sure that they’re accessible to the people who want to see them. </p>
<p>Our documents, typically written in archaic Spanish or Portuguese, are <a href="https://essss.library.vanderbilt.edu/islandora/object/essss%3A6554">very hard to read</a>. Even native speakers need special training to decipher what they say.</p>
<p>For several years, we’ve been producing manual transcriptions of some of our most noteworthy records, such as a volume of baptisms from late 16th-century Havana. But that takes 10 to 15 minutes per page – meaning that transcribing our entire collection would take more than 100,000 hours. </p>
<p>Other projects have <a href="http://www.discoverfreedmen.org">used volunteers to do similar work</a>, but that approach is less likely to be the solution for our archive because of the linguistic skills required to read our documents.</p>
<p>We are exploring automating the transcription process using handwriting recognition technology. Those systems need more work, particularly when dealing with centuries-old handwriting styles, but <a href="https://transkribus.eu/Transkribus">some researchers are already making progress</a>. </p>
<p>We are also looking at ways to identify the people and places mentioned in our records, making them searchable and connecting them to <a href="http://enslaved.org">other similar datasets</a>. </p>
<p>As we and other researchers connect our work, the stories contained in these old documents will come to life and bring new insight to modern scholars.</p>
<p>[ <em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/127684/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Genkins has received funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.</span></em></p>
Centuries’ worth of important information is stored on paper – which can decay, burn or get eaten by pests. Peek inside the process of making all that data digital.
Daniel Genkins, Postdoctoral Fellow in History, Vanderbilt University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/126431
2019-12-06T13:04:36Z
2019-12-06T13:04:36Z
From their balloons, the first aeronauts transformed our view of the world
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304704/original/file-20191202-66986-najwru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C28%2C3180%2C2074&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A lithograph from Gaston Tissandier's balloon travels depicts falling stars.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://archive.org/details/travelsinair00glaigoog/page/n328">Archive.org</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Near the beginning of the film “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6141246/">The Aeronauts</a>,” a giant gas-filled balloon called the “Mammoth” departs from London’s Vauxhall Gardens and ascends into the clouds, revealing a bird’s eye view of London.</p>
<p>To some moviegoers, these breathtaking views might seem like nothing special: Modern air travel has made many of us take for granted what we can see from the sky. But during the 19th century, the vast “<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/363624-it-is-a-common-belief-that-we-breathe-with-our">ocean of air</a>” above our heads was a mystery.</p>
<p>These first balloon trips changed all that.</p>
<p>Directed by Tom Harper, the movie is inspired by the true story of Victorian scientist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/James-Glaisher">James Glaisher</a> and the aeronaut <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19526221-900-histories-the-accidental-aeronaut/">Henry Coxwell</a>. (In the film, Coxwell is replaced by a fictional aeronaut named Amelia Wren.) </p>
<p>In 1862, <a href="https://digitalcollections.wesleyan.edu/object/histfp-13?solr_nav%5Bid%5D=7963dfb378b0ac8229b6&solr_nav%5Bpage%5D=0&solr_nav%5Boffset%5D=0">Glaisher and Coxwell</a> ascended to <a href="https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160419-the-victorians-who-flew-as-high-as-jets">37,000 feet</a> in a balloon – 8,000 feet higher than the summit of Mount Everest, and, at the time, the highest point in the atmosphere humans had ever reached. </p>
<p><a href="https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/nature-exposed">As a historian of science and visual communication</a>, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/301930?seq=1">I’ve studied</a> the balloon trips of Glaisher, Coxwell and others. Their voyages inspired art and philosophy, introduced new ways of seeing the world and transformed our understanding of the air we breathe.</p>
<h2>The first balloon flights</h2>
<p>Before the invention of the balloon, the atmosphere was like a blank slate on which fantasies and fears were projected. Philosophers speculated that the skies went on forever, while <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=jKk4rtfxMgEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor:%22Christopher+Hatton+Turnor%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwib1qz9l5_mAhXtlOAKHWRgAwUQ6AEwAHoECAIQAg#v=onepage&q&f=false">there were medieval tales</a> of birds that were so large they could whisk human passengers into the clouds.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305483/original/file-20191205-39009-1kbhfs3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305483/original/file-20191205-39009-1kbhfs3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305483/original/file-20191205-39009-1kbhfs3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=722&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305483/original/file-20191205-39009-1kbhfs3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=722&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305483/original/file-20191205-39009-1kbhfs3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=722&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305483/original/file-20191205-39009-1kbhfs3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305483/original/file-20191205-39009-1kbhfs3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305483/original/file-20191205-39009-1kbhfs3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A drawing from ‘Astra Castra’ depicts mythic birds that can transport people up into the skies.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Archive.org</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The atmosphere <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=I3UMAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=flammarion+the+atmosphere&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjO3oeimJ_mAhUKnOAKHQW8BwsQ6AEwAHoECAEQAg#v=onepage&q=flammarion%20the%20atmosphere&f=false">was sometimes thought of</a> as a “factory of death” – a place where disease-causing vapors lingered. People <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=xPsJAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA233&dq=henry+coxwell+my+life+and+balloon+experiences&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjjrpTxmJ_mAhXqYN8KHR6_C3IQ6AEwAHoECAEQAg#v=onepage&q=henry%20coxwell%20my%20life%20and%20balloon%20experiences&f=false">also feared</a> that if they were to ascend into the clouds, they’d die from oxygen deprivation. </p>
<p>The dream of traveling skyward became a reality in 1783, when two French brothers, Joseph-Michel Montgolfier and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Montgolfier-brothers">launched the first piloted hot-air balloon</a>.</p>
<p>Early balloon flights were difficult to pull off and dangerous. Aeronauts and passengers <a href="https://www.ancient-origins.net/history-famous-people/sophie-blanchard-0011546">fell to their deaths</a> when balloons unexpectedly deflated, caught fire or drifted out to sea. Partly due to this inherent danger, untethered balloon flight <a href="https://airandspace.si.edu/sites/default/files/styles/slideshow_xlg/public/images/collection-objects/record-images/NASM-DD09F8D80B3E2_01.jpg?itok=4yCNVHxc">became forms of public entertainment</a>, titillating crowds who wanted to see if something would go wrong. The novelist Charles Dickens, horrified by balloon ascents, <a href="http://www.djo.org.uk/indexes/articles/lying-awake.html">wrote</a> that these “dangerous exhibitions” were no different from public hangings.</p>
<p>Over time, aeronauts became more skilled, the technology improved and trips became safe enough to bring along passengers – <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=Gw9LAAAAYAAJ&pg=PR105&lpg=PR105&dq=british+association+for+advancement+of+science+balloon+committee&source=bl&ots=L3vaMcZiBq&sig=ACfU3U3zLidfa_wUsX2D0E3dIsjyZUd4ig&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjRpqTWnJ_mAhUhc98KHQKxAKgQ6AEwAHoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=british%20association%20for%20advancement%20of%20science%20balloon%20committee&f=false">provided they could afford the trip</a>. At the time of Glaisher’s ascents, it cost <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Aeronauts.html?id=nfFHPgAACAAJ">about 600 pounds</a> – roughly US$90,000 today – to construct a balloon. Scientists who wanted to make a solo ascent needed to shell out about 50 pounds to hire an aeronaut, balloon and enough gas for a single trip.</p>
<h2>The view of angels</h2>
<p>Some of the first Europeans who ascended for amusement returned with tales of new sights and sensations, composed poems about what they had seen and circulated sketches.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305481/original/file-20191205-39001-1uz21d4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305481/original/file-20191205-39001-1uz21d4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305481/original/file-20191205-39001-1uz21d4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305481/original/file-20191205-39001-1uz21d4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305481/original/file-20191205-39001-1uz21d4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305481/original/file-20191205-39001-1uz21d4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=649&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305481/original/file-20191205-39001-1uz21d4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=649&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305481/original/file-20191205-39001-1uz21d4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=649&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A glass lantern slide of a print titled ‘The View of Versailles.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Private collection, used with permission.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Common themes emerged: the sensation of being in a dream, a feeling of tranquility and a sense of solitude and isolation. </p>
<p>“We were lost in an opaque ocean of ivory and alabaster,” the balloon travelers Wilfrid de Fonvielle and Gaston Tissandier <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=wx5NAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor:%22JAMES+GLAISHER+%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwie78DynJ_mAhUrZN8KHWGUBggQ6AEwAHoECAQQAg#v=onepage&q&f=false">recalled</a> in 1868 upon returning from one of their voyages.</p>
<p>In an 1838 book, one of the most prolific writers on the topic, professional flutist Monck Mason, <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Aeronautica_or_Sketches_illustrative_of/spMJAAAAIAAJ?hl=en">described</a> ascending into the atmosphere as “distinct in all its bearings from every other process with which we are acquainted.” Once aloft, the traveler is forced to consider the “world without him.” </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305479/original/file-20191205-39028-u5yc8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305479/original/file-20191205-39028-u5yc8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305479/original/file-20191205-39028-u5yc8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305479/original/file-20191205-39028-u5yc8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305479/original/file-20191205-39028-u5yc8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305479/original/file-20191205-39028-u5yc8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305479/original/file-20191205-39028-u5yc8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305479/original/file-20191205-39028-u5yc8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A drawing of dreamlike clouds from the travels of Wilfrid de Fonvielle and Gaston Tissandier.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">'Travels in the Air'</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>French astronomer Camille Flammarion <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=I3UMAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor:%22Camille+Flammarion%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwimg6eVnZ_mAhXQwFkKHT5pD-QQ6AEwB3oECAgQAg#v=onepage&q&f=false">wrote</a> that the atmosphere was “an ethereal sea reaching over the whole world; its waves wash the mountains and the valleys, and we live beneath it and are penetrated by it.” </p>
<p>Travelers were also awestruck by the diffusion of light, the intensity of colors and the effects of atmospheric illumination.</p>
<p>One scientific observer in 1873 <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=quWJXJ_dHI8C&pg=PA23&lpg=PA23&dq=flammarion+the+atmospheric+envelope+atmosphere&source=bl&ots=j7YKKNW6wM&sig=ACfU3U3XO1MjY2bklwkA7DeTfmYFclNdoQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjU2N7O6J_mAhWnct8KHa9gD-kQ6AEwAHoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=flammarion%20the%20atmospheric%20envelope%20atmosphere&f=false">described the atmosphere</a> as a “splendid world of colors which brightens the surface of our planet,” noting the “lovely azure tint” and “changing harmonies” of hues that “lighten up the world.”</p>
<p>And then there were the birds-eye views of the cities, farms and towns below. In 1852, the social reformer Henry Mayhew <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=YKhPAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA224&lpg=PA224&dq=henry+mayhew++balloon+flight+over+london+illustrated+london+news&source=bl&ots=zYhicBsooH&sig=ACfU3U2iss84hrwzgk0U_cf2o0kNphdE4g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjZz4m0nZ_mAhXMzlkKHdyYDCQQ6AEwBnoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=henry%20mayhew%20%20balloon%20flight%20over%20london%20illustrated%20london%20news&f=false">recalled his views of London</a> from the perch of “an angel:” “tiny people, looking like so many black pins on a cushion,” swarmed through “the strange, incongruous clump of palaces and workhouses.”</p>
<p>To Mayhew, the sights of farmlands were “the most exquisite delight I ever experienced.” The houses looked “like the tiny wooden things out of a child’s box of toys, and the streets like ruts.” </p>
<p>So deep was the dusk in the distance that it “was difficult to tell where the earth ended and the sky began.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305477/original/file-20191205-39018-cqsp7a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305477/original/file-20191205-39018-cqsp7a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305477/original/file-20191205-39018-cqsp7a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305477/original/file-20191205-39018-cqsp7a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305477/original/file-20191205-39018-cqsp7a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305477/original/file-20191205-39018-cqsp7a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305477/original/file-20191205-39018-cqsp7a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305477/original/file-20191205-39018-cqsp7a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A thunderstorm above Fontainebleau, France, from Camille Flammarion’s travels.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">'Travels in the Air.'</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A laboratory for discovery</h2>
<p>The atmosphere was not just a vantage point for picturesque views. It was also a laboratory for discovery, and balloons were a boon to scientists.</p>
<p>At the time, <a href="https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo3534836.html">different theories prevailed</a> over how and why rain formed. <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Air_and_Rain.html?id=AuhxAAAAMAAJ">Scientists debated</a> the role of trade winds and the chemical composition of the atmosphere. People wondered what caused lightning and what would happen to the human body as it ascended higher.</p>
<p><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=I3UMAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor:%22Camille+Flammarion%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiFp62Wn5_mAhWJq1kKHaHXCTcQ6AEwB3oECAkQAg#v=onepage&q&f=false">To scientists like Flammarion</a>, the study of the atmosphere was the era’s key scientific challenge. The hope was that the balloon would give scientists some answers – or, at the very least, provide more clues.</p>
<p>James Glaisher, a British astronomer and meteorologist, was already an established scientist by the time he made his famous balloon ascents. During his trips, he brought along delicate instruments to measure the temperature, barometric pressure and chemical composition of the air. He even recorded his own pulse at various altitudes. </p>
<p>In 1871 he published “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=iPQOAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor:%22JAMES+GLAISHER+%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj6g7asn5_mAhUqvlkKHfXWACYQ6AEwAHoECAEQAg#v=onepage&q&f=false">Travels in the Air</a>,” a collection of reports from his experiments. He didn’t want to simply write about his findings for other scientists; he wanted the public to learn about his trips. So he fashioned his book to make the reports appealing to middle-class readers by including detailed drawings and maps, colorful accounts of his adventures and vivid descriptions of his precise observations. </p>
<p>Glaisher’s books also featured innovative visual portrayals of meteorological data; the lithographs depicted temperatures and barometric pressure levels at different elevations, superimposed over picturesque views.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305480/original/file-20191205-39001-fstsd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305480/original/file-20191205-39001-fstsd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305480/original/file-20191205-39001-fstsd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305480/original/file-20191205-39001-fstsd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305480/original/file-20191205-39001-fstsd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305480/original/file-20191205-39001-fstsd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305480/original/file-20191205-39001-fstsd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305480/original/file-20191205-39001-fstsd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">James Glaisher charted his balloon’s path from Wolverhampton to Solihull, England.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">'Travels in the Air.'</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>He gave a series of popular lectures, during which he relayed findings from his trips to riveted audiences. Two years later, he published <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/3041470">an English translation</a> of Flammarion’s account of his balloon travels.</p>
<p>The trips of Glaisher and others gave scientists <a href="https://wellcomecollection.org/articles/XZtGFBAAACEAaiNB">new insights</a> into meteors; the relationship between altitude and temperature; the formation of rain, hail and snow; and the forces behind thunder. </p>
<p>And for members of the public, the atmosphere was transformed from an airy concept into a physical reality.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Rm4VnwCtQO8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The trailer for ‘The Aeronauts.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>[ <em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklysmart">You can get our highlights each weekend</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126431/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Tucker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Not so long ago, people had no idea what would happen to them – and what they would see – once they ascended into the clouds.
Jennifer Tucker, Associate Professor of History and Science in Society, Wesleyan University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/123301
2019-11-08T12:14:58Z
2019-11-08T12:14:58Z
The forgotten mass destruction of Jewish homes during ‘Kristallnacht’
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300727/original/file-20191107-10930-1sb2wy2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C62%2C571%2C465&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A looted Jewish shop in Aachen, Germany on the day after Kristallnacht, Nov. 10, 1938.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wolf Gruner and Armin Nolzen (eds.). 'Bürokratien: Initiative und Effizienz,' Berlin, 2001.</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Every November, communities around the world <a href="http://www.mbartsandculture.org/event/observance-of-the-81st-anniversary-of-kristallnacht-the-night-of-broken-glass/">hold remembrances</a> on the anniversary of the Nazis’ brutal assault on the Jews during “Kristallnacht.” </p>
<p>Also known as “the Night of Broken Glass,” it’s one of the most closely scrutinized events in the history of Nazi Germany. <a href="https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&q=Kristallnacht">Dozens of books</a> have been published about the hours between Nov. 9 and 10, 1938, when Adolf Hitler and his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, decided to unleash violence against Jews across Germany and the annexed territory of Austria with the aim of driving them out of the Third Reich. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/holocaust-kristallnacht">Most accounts</a> tend to emphasize the attacks on synagogues and shops, along with the mass arrests of 30,000 men. A few note the destruction of Jewish schools and <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/background-and-overview-of-kristallnacht">cemeteries</a>. </p>
<p>Attacks on Jewish homes, however, <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/kristallnacht">are barely mentioned</a>. </p>
<p>It’s an aspect of the story that has rarely been researched and written about – <a href="http://www.thepress.purdue.edu/titles/format/9781557538703">until now</a>.</p>
<h2>A pattern emerges in survivor accounts</h2>
<p>In 2008, when I arrived at the University of Southern California from Germany, I had been researching Nazi persecution of the German Jews for 20 years. I had published more than six books on the topic and thought I knew just about everything there was to know about Kristallnacht. </p>
<p>The university happened to be the new home of the Shoah Foundation and its <a href="https://sfi.usc.edu/vha">Visual History Archive</a>, which today includes over 55,000 survivor testimonies. When I started to watch interviews with German-Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, I was surprised to hear many of them talk about the destruction of their homes during Kristallnacht. </p>
<p>Details from their recollections sounded eerily similar: When Nazi paramilitary troops broke the doors of their homes, it sounded as though a bomb had gone off; then the men cut into the featherbeds, hacked the furniture into pieces and smashed everything inside.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9Hd8wk7DbuI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">In an interview recorded by USC’s Shoah Foundation that’s now in their Visual History Archive, Kaethe Wells explains how her family home was attacked by stormtroopers wielding axes during Kristallnacht.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet none of these stories appeared in traditional accounts of Kristallnacht. </p>
<p>I was perplexed by this disconnect. Some years later, I found a document from Schneidemühl, a small district in eastern Germany, that listed the destruction of a dozen synagogues, over 60 shops – and 231 homes. </p>
<p>These surprising numbers piqued my interest further. After digging into unpublished and published materials, I unearthed an abundance of evidence in administrative reports, diaries, letters and postwar testimonies. </p>
<p>A fuller picture of the brutal destruction of Jewish homes and apartments soon emerged. </p>
<p>For example, a Jewish merchant named Martin Fröhlich wrote to his daughter that when he arrived home the afternoon of that fateful November day, he noticed his door had been broken down. A tipped-over wardrobe blocked the entrance. Inside, everything had been hacked into pieces with axes: glass, china, clocks, the piano, furniture, chairs, lamps and paintings. Realizing that his home was now uninhabitable, he broke down and – as he confessed in the letter – started sobbing like a child.</p>
<h2>A systematic campaign of destruction</h2>
<p>The more I discovered, the more astonished I was by the scale and intensity of the attacks. </p>
<p>Using address lists provided by either local party officers or city officials, paramilitary SA and SS squads and Hitler Youth, armed with axes and pistols, attacked apartments with Jewish tenants in big cities like Berlin, as well as private Jewish homes in small villages. In Nuremberg, for example, attackers destroyed 236 Jewish flats. In Düsseldorf, over 400 were vandalized.</p>
<p>In the cities of Rostock and Mannheim, the attackers demolished virtually all Jewish apartments. </p>
<p>Documents point to Goebbels as the one who ordered the destruction of home furnishings. Due to the systematic nature of the attacks, the number of vandalized Jewish homes across <a href="https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199211869.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199211869-e-20">Greater Germany</a> must have been in the thousands, if not tens of thousands.</p>
<p>Then there are devastating details about the intensity of the destruction that emerge from letters and testimonies from postwar trials.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euskirchen">Euskirchen</a>, a house was burned to the ground.</p>
<p>In the village of Kamp, near the Rhineland town of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boppard">Boppard</a>, attackers broke into the house of the Kaufmann family, destroyed furniture and lamps, ripped out stove pipes, and broke doors and walls. When parts of the ceiling collapsed, the family escaped to a nearby monastery. </p>
<p>In the small town of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gro%C3%9Fauheim">Großauheim</a>, located in the state of Hesse, troops used sledgehammers to destroy everything in two Jewish homes, including lamps, radios, clocks and furniture. Even after the war, shards of glass and china were found impressed in the wooden floor.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2Zs_L1gFGUQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">In an interview recorded by USC’s Shoah Foundation that’s now in their Visual History Archive, Ruth Winick recalls how men in green uniforms burst into her family’s home, destroying just about everything inside.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘Everything ravaged and shattered’</h2>
<p>The documents I found and interviews I listened to revealed how sexual abuse, beatings and murder were commonplace. Much of it happened during the home intrusions. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linz">Linz</a>, two SA men sexually assaulted a Jewish woman. In <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bremen">Bremen</a>, the SA shot and killed Selma Zwienicki in her own bedroom. In Cologne, as Moritz Spiro tried to stop two men from destroying his furniture, one of the intruders beat him and fractured his skull. Spiro died days later in the Jewish hospital.</p>
<p>In a letter dated Nov. 20, 1938, a Viennese woman described her family’s injuries to a relative: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“You can’t imagine, how it looked like at home. Papa with a head injury, bandaged, I with severe attacks in bed, everything ravaged and shattered… When the doctor arrived to patch up Papa, Herta and Rosa, who all bled horribly from their heads, we could not even provide him with a towel.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The brutality of the attacks didn’t go unnoticed. On Nov. 15, the U.S. consul general in Stuttgart, Samuel Honaker, <a href="http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/English_33.pdf">wrote to his ambassador in Berlin</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Of all the places in this section of Germany, the Jews in Rastatt, which is situated near Baden-Baden, have apparently been subjected to the most ruthless treatment. Many Jews in this section were cruelly attacked and beaten and the furnishings of their homes almost totally destroyed.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>These findings make clear: The demolition of Jewish homes was an overlooked aspect of the November 1938 pogrom. </p>
<p>Why did it stay in the shadows for so long?</p>
<p>In the immediate aftermath of Kristallnacht, most newspaper articles and photographs of the violent event exclusively focused on the destroyed synagogues and stores – selective coverage that probably influenced our understanding.</p>
<p>Yet, it was the destruction of the home – the last refuge for the German Jewish families who found themselves facing heightened public discrimination <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nuremberg-laws">in the years leading up to the pogrom</a> – that likely extracted the greatest toll on the Jewish population. The brutal attacks rendered thousands homeless and hundreds beaten, sexually assaulted or murdered.</p>
<p>The brutal assaults also likely played a big role in the spate of <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-the-heartbreaking-suicide-notes-jews-left-after-kristallnacht-1.6635959">Jewish suicides</a> that took place in the days and weeks after Kristallnacht, along with the decision that tens of thousands of Jews made to flee Nazi Germany.</p>
<p>While this story speaks to decades of scholarly neglect, it is, at the same time, a testament to the power of survivor accounts, which continue to change the way we understand the Holocaust.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/123301/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Wolf Gruner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Most histories highlight the shattered storefronts and synagogues set aflame. But it was the systematic ransacking of Jewish homes that extracted the greatest toll.
Wolf Gruner, Shapell-Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies and Professor of History; Founding Director, USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/123672
2019-09-19T11:19:38Z
2019-09-19T11:19:38Z
A digital archaeologist helps inaccessible collections be seen
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292889/original/file-20190917-19072-kxldh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Davide Tanasi scans an artifact from the Farid Karam collection.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Davide Tanasi</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287050/original/file-20190806-84240-i26yzq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287050/original/file-20190806-84240-i26yzq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=171&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287050/original/file-20190806-84240-i26yzq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=171&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287050/original/file-20190806-84240-i26yzq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=171&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287050/original/file-20190806-84240-i26yzq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=215&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287050/original/file-20190806-84240-i26yzq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=215&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287050/original/file-20190806-84240-i26yzq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=215&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em>The Abstract features interesting research and the people behind it.</em></p>
<p>Davide Tanasi is a digital archaeologist at the University of South Florida. He creates highly detailed 3D scans of archaeological artifacts that can be viewed online or used to create 3D printed replicas.</p>
<hr>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/p0L3C8iVEXc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p><strong>Why is it important to digitize these artifacts as 3D objects?</strong> </p>
<p>It helps spread knowledge about them and guarantees that they will be passed to future generations. For example, the USF Libraries <a href="https://digital.lib.usf.edu/karam">Farid Karam M.D. Lebanon Antiquities Collection</a> is one of the largest collection of Lebanese archaeological artifacts in the U.S. Some of the objects are 3,500 years old. Due to space and personnel restrictions, it was never exhibited and made fully available to the general public. Being unpublished, hardly accessible and poorly visible online, it basically does not exist. Our project to recreate the collection in 3D is called the <a href="http://virtualkaram.com">Virtual Karam Project</a>. It allows us to share those objects around the world, hopefully triggering interest to curate and display the collection. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/293077/original/file-20190918-187957-d5bdfx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/293077/original/file-20190918-187957-d5bdfx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293077/original/file-20190918-187957-d5bdfx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293077/original/file-20190918-187957-d5bdfx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293077/original/file-20190918-187957-d5bdfx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293077/original/file-20190918-187957-d5bdfx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293077/original/file-20190918-187957-d5bdfx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Davide Tanasi.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>How do you scan them?</strong></p>
<p>The 3D models of archaeological artifacts must be geometrically accurate to satisfy interested scholars but also realistic enough to engage the public. The “body” of the artifacts is captured with an ultra-precision 3D scanner integrated into a measuring robotic arm. The multicolored “skin” is acquired via a set of high quality digital photographs. From the combination of the two features comes the actual 3D model. </p>
<p><strong>How common is it for museums to create 3D images of their collections?</strong></p>
<p>The fire which recently destroyed the National Museum of Brazil was a global wake up call for curators to start plans for the 3D digitization of historical and archaeological collections. Plans not just for simple archiving and dissemination purposes but also to create a sister digital collection, which can be 3D printed and function as a “surrogate” in case the originals are destroyed. With the <a href="https://sketchfab.com/britishmuseum">British Museum</a> and the <a href="https://3d.si.edu/">Smithsonian Institution</a> leading the charge, it is becoming more common even for small museums to start virtualization projects for their collections.</p>
<p><strong>What other kinds of collections are you digitizing in this way?</strong></p>
<p>I’m working on the <a href="https://sketchfab.com/cvast/collections/tampa-museum-of-art">Joseph Veach Noble Collection</a> at the Tampa Museum of Art, a group of 150 artifacts, mostly high quality Greek black and red-figure pottery from Athens, Attica and South Italy. Another one of my projects involves the <a href="https://sketchfab.com/cvast/collections/di-cesnola-collection-ringling-museum">Luigi Palma di Cesnola Collection of Cypriot Antiquities</a>, which includes exquisite examples of ancient pottery and statues ranging between 2,500 B.C. to 400 A.D. Both collections are largely unpublished, only partly accessible to the local public, with poor digital representation. </p>
<p><strong>How do you hope people will use these digital collections?</strong></p>
<p>They are an advanced archival record for the museum. But the 3D models can also be built in Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality experiences for the public. Digital replicas can also be used by scholars in every part of the world or to popularize archaeology or trigger interest towards a certain museum or site. Digital collections can also be integrated in the teaching curriculum at K-12 and university level for history, art history and anthropology.</p>
<p>[ <em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/123672/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Davide Tanasi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Davide Tanasi, a digital archaeologist, thinks it’s a pity when historical artifacts are locked away in storage. He’s working to fix this by sharing them as 3D models.
Davide Tanasi, Associate Professor of Digital Humanities, Department of History, University of South Florida
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/119131
2019-06-25T17:54:35Z
2019-06-25T17:54:35Z
Thousands of recently discovered photographs document life in Uganda during Idi Amin’s reign
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280314/original/file-20190619-171245-aoouoi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Idi Amin at a press conference in Jjaja Marina, Uganda in July 1975.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of the Uganda Broadcasting Corporation</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 2015, researchers working in the storeroom at the Uganda Broadcasting Corporation forced open the lock on an unremarkable filing cabinet. </p>
<p>Inside were thousands of small wax envelopes, neatly arranged in rows, each containing a number of medium-format photographic negatives. In all there were 70,000 images. The vast majority of them date to the 1970s and the presidency of Idi Amin. </p>
<p>Amin is one of the 20th century’s most notorious dictators. In a <a href="https://www.pbs.org/tpt/dictators-playbook/">recent PBS television series</a>, he features alongside Kim Il Sung, Mussolini and other “Profiles in Tyranny.” In Uganda, the memory of the Amin years has been <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17531055.2016.1272297">suppressed by a government keen to promote political amnesia</a>. There are no memorials to the dead; neither are there monuments or other institutions that encourage deliberation over the Amin years. </p>
<p>These photographs offer one of the first opportunities for public reflection, and a small selection of them – about 150 images – are now on display at the Uganda Museum in Kampala. The exhibition, which we helped curate, is titled “The Unseen Archive of Idi Amin” and will be open until the end of 2019. For Ugandans and other visitors it is a place where a traumatic and divisive history can be assessed. </p>
<h2>Amin’s aggressive populism</h2>
<p>Idi Amin came to power in 1971 <a href="https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2018/01/today-in-history-idi-amin-overthrows-president-milton-obote-in-uganda/">after overthrowing the government of Milton Obote</a>, the president who had presided over Uganda’s independence from British colonial rule. </p>
<p>Obote had relied on state-run media to amplify his political power, and Amin inherited a powerful network of radio stations. The extensive reach of official media encouraged Amin and his officials to think of themselves as spokesmen for Ugandan commoners. Issues that had formerly been decided behind closed doors were discussed openly; matters that had once been determined by experts were made subject to the popular will. For some people it was hugely empowering. For others – especially for civil servants and other professionals – the Amin government’s aggressive populism was a mortal threat. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281007/original/file-20190624-97777-1kpu2fv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281007/original/file-20190624-97777-1kpu2fv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281007/original/file-20190624-97777-1kpu2fv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281007/original/file-20190624-97777-1kpu2fv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281007/original/file-20190624-97777-1kpu2fv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281007/original/file-20190624-97777-1kpu2fv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281007/original/file-20190624-97777-1kpu2fv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281007/original/file-20190624-97777-1kpu2fv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Idi Amin playing an accordion on Buvuma Island in October 1971.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of the Uganda Broadcasting Corporation</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Photographers were a constant presence on the occasions when Amin and his officials addressed the public. For the whole period of his presidency, a dedicated team of photographers from Uganda’s <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1472586X.2018.1424989">Ministry of Information</a> followed Amin around the country, snapping photos at press conferences, rallies, parties and other events. </p>
<p>As far as we know, very few of the photos they took were ever printed or published. The film was developed, and then the negatives were placed in envelopes, labeled and placed in a cabinet. </p>
<p>This had been, until now, an unseen archive.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281040/original/file-20190624-97789-1ebreuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281040/original/file-20190624-97789-1ebreuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281040/original/file-20190624-97789-1ebreuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281040/original/file-20190624-97789-1ebreuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281040/original/file-20190624-97789-1ebreuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281040/original/file-20190624-97789-1ebreuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281040/original/file-20190624-97789-1ebreuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281040/original/file-20190624-97789-1ebreuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ministry of Information photographers take a smoke break in January 1978.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of the Uganda Broadcasting Corporation</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Making a show of criminality</h2>
<p>So why were these photos taken? </p>
<p>It seems that they served, primarily, as documentation. </p>
<p>Amin’s administration governed Uganda with the fervor and energy of a military campaign. It targeted otherwise obscure social issues – smuggling, overcharging consumers, the dominance of Asian business interests in the economy, the cleanliness of city streets – and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17531055.2012.755314">transformed them into urgent political problems that demanded action</a>. </p>
<p>For example, in 1972, tens of thousands of South Asians were obliged, <a href="https://youtu.be/M2OAdq2h8eU?t=21">by presidential decree</a>, to leave Uganda. The Amin government labeled them as usurpers of black Ugandans’ economic power, a foreign minority whose usurious self-interest ran against the majority. </p>
<p>The cameras made the evils of usury, stealing and smuggling visible. People accused of criminal acts were paraded before the cameras, with crowds often gathered to witness the occasion. There, the evidence was laid out for all to see. Here are jerrycans full of smuggled paraffin, arranged in long rows; there are neat piles of hoarded cash, signifying the evil of South Asians’ dominance of the economy; there are bottles of gin, stacked up around an accused smuggler. </p>
<p><iframe id="tc-infographic-418" class="tc-infographic" height="400px" src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/infographics/418/0380a6b007d9ac684f40d5a9f12727ca7f2f1eab/site/index.html" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>The camera brought the judgment of the Ugandan commonwealth to bear in specific times and in specific places. In the presence of photographers, campaigners could show themselves to be acting in the interest of the majority. In the presence of a camera, the struggles and exertions of the decade could be seen as historically consequential. </p>
<p>The Amin government’s photographers were part of a media ensemble that helped craft a narrative of meaning, direction and national purpose to the age. That’s why so many Ugandans found reason to support the Amin government. The presence of cameras at public events transformed mundane and forgettable occasions into moments in a chronicle of national struggle. Many people felt as if they were acting in the light of history.</p>
<h2>What the cameras didn’t capture</h2>
<p>While there’s a richness to the documentary nature of the photographs, there are very few that capture the harsh realities of daily life in Uganda in the 1970s, such as <a href="https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=9071306814">unaccountable violence</a>, a collapsing infrastructure and shortages of the most basic commodities.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/204000/afr590071978en.pdf">As many as 300,000 people died</a> at the hands of men serving Amin’s government. This violence – the torture and murder of dissidents, criminals and others who fell afoul of the state – largely took place out of public view, and there’s no trace of it the Uganda Broadcasting Corporation archive. </p>
<p>In 1979, the Amin regime was overthrown by a force of Ugandan exiles and Tanzanian troops. Since then, there have been scant opportunities for Ugandans to learn about Amin’s presidency. After a decades-long exile in Saudi Arabia, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/17/world/idi-amin-murderous-and-erratic-ruler-of-uganda-in-the-70-s-dies-in-exile.html">Amin died in 2003</a>. His remains are still buried there, awaiting repatriation to Uganda. </p>
<p>Debate around his legacy is only now finding a place in Uganda’s public life. So the thousands of recently discovered negatives – which were digitized as part of a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pi-r7t1DuSc">preservation project</a> organized by the Uganda Broadcasting Corporation, the University of Michigan and the University of Western Australia – are significant historical documents. </p>
<p>But when designing the Uganda Museum exhibition, we agonized over the absence of images that reveal suffering and death as facts of life in the 1970s. So we made an effort to present the photos in a way that acknowledges their status as instruments of Amin’s political self-interest. </p>
<p>In one part of the exhibition, we juxtaposed photos of the momentous events of public life with portraits of deceased people. In another part of the show, we highlighted particular episodes – the expulsion of the Asian community, the Economic Crimes Tribunal, the crackdown on smuggling – during which innocent people became victims of the regime. At the end of the exhibition, we put on display images of government torture chambers. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280322/original/file-20190619-171245-cauf8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280322/original/file-20190619-171245-cauf8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280322/original/file-20190619-171245-cauf8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280322/original/file-20190619-171245-cauf8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280322/original/file-20190619-171245-cauf8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280322/original/file-20190619-171245-cauf8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280322/original/file-20190619-171245-cauf8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A panel discussion with former Amin cabinet ministers Henry Kyemba and Edward Rugumayo at the Uganda Museum in May.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The exhibition <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YcZEzR_V7s">opened in mid-May this year</a> with a series of panels featuring people whose lives were intertwined with the Amin regime. The opening panel featured <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tNPJtcW-_Q">politicians who served in Amin’s cabinet</a>; on another night, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCx5ogXOQaI">journalists who covered his government</a> discussed their work; on a third evening, we heard from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLbNCTIgMwM">people who had lost loved ones in the hands of his thugs</a>. </p>
<p>We had intended to convene a fourth panel where Idi Amin’s family members would discuss their memories of their father. But 15 minutes before we were to go on the air, they announced that they would no longer participate. They thought the exhibition didn’t adequately acknowledge their father’s achievements. </p>
<p>Their reluctance to speak highlights the tensions that undergird public discussion around the Amin regime today. </p>
<p>[ <em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/119131/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Derek R. Peterson has received funding from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Vokes has received funding from the Australian Research Council, The European Union, The British Institute in Eastern Africa and the Australia-Africa Universities Network.</span></em></p>
Hidden for decades in a vault at the Uganda Broadcasting Corporation, the photographs depict a regime fixated on establishing order, meting out punishment and stoking nationalism.
Derek R. Peterson, Professor of History and African Studies, University of Michigan
Richard Vokes, Associate Professor of Anthroplogy, The University of Western Australia
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/113243
2019-05-22T19:16:41Z
2019-05-22T19:16:41Z
The American GI in WWII, uncensored
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263045/original/file-20190310-86710-4irdfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Pfc Elias Friedensohn in June 1945 at the Special Services Distributing Point, Seine Section, Paris, France. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Archives</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>I can still recall the exhilaration I felt in the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/college-park">reading room of the National Archives in College Park, Maryland</a>. </p>
<p>It was mid-April 2009. I was scrolling through roll after microfilm roll of the War Department’s “<a href="https://catalog.archives.gov/id/2521127">Opinion Surveys Relating to the Morale of U.S. Army Personnel</a>.” </p>
<p>What I had discovered were tens of thousands of statements written by World War II American soldiers about their military experiences. Not only were they uncensored, but they were also composed during the conflict – not afterward, from re-created memories.</p>
<p>A postdoctoral fellow at the time in modern U.S. history, I felt confident that no other collection of WWII records compared to what had been saved on these unreproduced 44 microfilm rolls. Neither had I ever seen these documents used in any history of WWII. </p>
<p>I had just discovered a historian’s gold mine.</p>
<p>If only the public had access to these, I thought to myself.</p>
<h2>Collecting opinions and measuring morale</h2>
<p>The Army scheduled its first, benignly titled “Planning Survey” for early December in 1941. <a href="https://items.ssrc.org/studies-in-social-psychology-in-world-war-ii-the-work-of-the-war-departments-research-branch-information-and-education-division/">The survey was created by an internal Army research branch</a> staffed and advised by some of the country’s leading social and behavioral scientists. </p>
<p>The objective of this and other subsequent surveys was to collect information that would help improve the Army’s organizational efficiency and effectiveness and shore up the adjustment of “citizen-soldiers” to their military service. </p>
<p>The research team started with some 1,900 soldiers from the Ninth Division stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The first group of roughly 50 men ordered to report to the camp theater that Monday morning in 1941 had no idea why they had been selected. </p>
<h2>Unprecedented opportunity</h2>
<p>Once inside, the assembled GIs were told by the private responsible for administering the survey that the military was doing something that had “never been done in this Army, or in any other Army in the world.” The researchers described this scene and reprinted the survey instructions in a February 1942 Army report.</p>
<p>The survey asked troops about their pre-enlistment civilian occupations and job skills; their Army pay, classification and assignment satisfaction; their training, unit coherence and pride; leadership, Army command and fitness for war – as well as about food, uniforms, medical care, entertainment and athletics. </p>
<p>The novel idea of surveying GIs reflected the growing prestige of opinion polling and social surveying. Yet, as a global war was being fought against authoritarianism, it also demonstrated an important democratic virtue. Citizens of a democracy ought to “have a say” in how things are run.</p>
<p>At locations around the globe, from Alaska to Panama to the Persian Gulf and the far Pacific, over half a million WWII service members eventually filled out surveys or were interviewed by this research branch. </p>
<p>As the war progressed, the number, range and specificity of questions increased. Did GIs like stew or eggs in their rations? Did they use condoms and understand the risks of venereal diseases? What did they think of America’s allies? </p>
<h2>Fair play, a square deal</h2>
<p>Soldiers were also given open-ended prompts to write about whatever they wanted. </p>
<p>These “free comment” statements were later preserved on microfilm. The photographed statements – handwritten, all – were what I discovered in 2009 at the National Archives. </p>
<p>Respondents wrote often and at length about democracy. </p>
<p>To them it seemed that a country defending democracy abroad would want to set an example at home, especially on behalf of those willing to serve and die for the cause. From the War Department, the de facto largest employer in the country, they expected a “square deal.”</p>
<p>“Entirely too much boot-licking going on,” one soldier wrote. “Some sort of a merit system should be instituted. Closer supervision by officers. And stricter discipline enforced where the rights of others are concerned.… No patronage. Ability should be rewarded. Equality for all.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263028/original/file-20190310-86713-qbp8ln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263028/original/file-20190310-86713-qbp8ln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=739&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263028/original/file-20190310-86713-qbp8ln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=739&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263028/original/file-20190310-86713-qbp8ln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=739&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263028/original/file-20190310-86713-qbp8ln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=929&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263028/original/file-20190310-86713-qbp8ln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=929&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263028/original/file-20190310-86713-qbp8ln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=929&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Anonymous soldier’s response, ‘Planning Survey V,’ Q. 65-66 [Roll 4], Nov.-Dec. 1944.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">NARA, College Park, MD</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The War Department’s top brass wanted the Army to be a more efficient and effective organization, yet as these commentaries reveal, so, too, did the rank and file. </p>
<p>The war effort, then, was teaching milk farmers, longshoremen, cooks, surveyors, machinists and nurses about more than civic duty. By inculcating the principles and values of “fair play,” equity, teamwork and merit, it was also teaching them how to be a part of a large, modern, bureaucratic organization. </p>
<h2>Victory at home</h2>
<p>Histories of the U.S. civil rights movement draw <a href="https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/civil-rights-act/world-war-ii-and-post-war.html">a bright, bold line from</a> the military service of African Americans and the wartime persistence of Jim Crow practices to the broad movement for racial equality after the war.</p>
<p>Black GIs in their open-ended survey responses wrote passionately against the injustice of their forced military service as “citizen-soldiers” in a war to defend democracy while being denied basic civil rights at home. Anonymity provided them an exceptional opportunity to speak their mind without fear of retribution. </p>
<p>While reading these commentaries I was struck by their frankness. Yet I also took note of how similarly black GIs wrote about the Army as a modern organization and about how, in their thinking, it should be run. That is, they were equally insistent as their white comrades that the rule of equity and merit should prevail, irrespective of race – theirs especially.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263029/original/file-20190310-86703-rt5a0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263029/original/file-20190310-86703-rt5a0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263029/original/file-20190310-86703-rt5a0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=785&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263029/original/file-20190310-86703-rt5a0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=785&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263029/original/file-20190310-86703-rt5a0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=785&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263029/original/file-20190310-86703-rt5a0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=986&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263029/original/file-20190310-86703-rt5a0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=986&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263029/original/file-20190310-86703-rt5a0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=986&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Anonymous soldier’s response, ‘Attitudes of and toward Negroes,’ S-32, Q.78 [Roll 11], March 1943.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">NARA, College Park, MD</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“The men should be selected for their merrit and not by favour because you cant defeat the enemy by favour,” wrote one black soldier in a survey of race relations in the Army. “Some men arn’t doing the type of jobs they can produce more of and are working at a disadvantage. Too much dissatisfaction and friction, otherwise ok. but good leaders necessary.” </p>
<p>Another black respondent said, “The negro soldier would easily be one of the best and loyalist men in the army if given a half way chance. But the way this army is working you have no chance.” </p>
<p>He had been a wing assembler on B-17s, and now he was a hospital porter doing “a job that a 70 year old man or woman could do…Do you think I feel as if I was doing anything in this war. Hell No.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263026/original/file-20190310-86699-13id55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263026/original/file-20190310-86699-13id55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263026/original/file-20190310-86699-13id55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263026/original/file-20190310-86699-13id55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263026/original/file-20190310-86699-13id55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=958&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263026/original/file-20190310-86699-13id55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=958&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263026/original/file-20190310-86699-13id55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=958&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Anonymous soldier’s response, ‘Attitudes of and toward Negroes,’ S-32, Q.78 [Roll 11], March 1943.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">NARA, College Park, MD</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Personal sacrifices and national ideals</h2>
<p>The handwritten commentaries the researchers preserved – photographed in 1947, and amounting to some 65,000 pages – capture for posterity converging and diverging plotlines that ran through the same organization. </p>
<p>It has taken a decade, but with the <a href="https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/tkotwim/the-american-soldier">indispensable help of volunteer citizen-archivists</a> on the 1.7 million member <a href="https://www.zooniverse.org/">Zooniverse crowdsourcing platform</a>, the entire collection of now-digitized commentaries are being transcribed, so the public can finally access and read them. The commentaries will not be available – as a complete collection – until the project is complete. </p>
<p>The collection, above all, will showcase the essential humanity of the individual soldier. </p>
<p>It will provide the public with the most comprehensive portrait of the largest citizen-soldier Army in U.S. history. </p>
<p>It will capture, too, the collective making of many of the social motifs, conflicts and movements that came to define American culture after war – from the so-called “Organization Man” and second-wave feminism to the organized fight for racial equality.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/113243/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Edward Gitre has received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. </span></em></p>
An unprecedented survey of US GIs that began in 1941, preserved on microfilm, provides a raw and uncensored story of average Americans grappling with both national ideals and practical necessities.
Edward Gitre, Assistant Professor of History, Virginia Tech
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/117299
2019-05-16T20:45:51Z
2019-05-16T20:45:51Z
The Brown v. Board of Education case didn’t start how you think it did
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/275017/original/file-20190516-69195-1vodby7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Thurgood Marshall outside the Supreme Court in Washington in 1958. Marshall, the head of the NAACP's legal arm who argued part of the case, went on to become the Supreme Court's first African-American justice.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/School-Segregation-5-Things/5e2ed88ec9dd4de1a59dc35bf757dc33/178/0">AP</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As the nation celebrates the 65th anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case, the case is often recalled as one that “<a href="https://www.cjonline.com/opinion/20190515/nicolas-shump-with-all-deliberate-speed">forever changed the course of American history</a>.”</p>
<p>But the story behind the historic Supreme Court case, as I plan to show in my forthcoming book, “Blacks Against Brown: The Black Anti-Integration Movement in Topeka, Kansas, 1941-1954,” is much more complex than the highly inaccurate but often-repeated <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/26/597154953/linda-brown-who-was-at-center-of-brown-v-board-of-education-dies">tale</a> about how the lawsuit began. The story that often gets told is that – as recounted in <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/26/597154953/linda-brown-who-was-at-center-of-brown-v-board-of-education-dies">this news story</a> – the case began with Oliver Brown, who tried to enroll his daughter, Linda, at the Sumner School, an all-white elementary school in Topeka near the Browns’ home. Or that Oliver Brown was a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/03/27/the-determined-black-dad-who-took-linda-brown-by-the-hand-and-stepped-into-history/?utm_term=.a1c02f541f8d">“determined father who took Linda Brown by the hand and made history.”</a></p>
<p>As my research shows, that tale is at odds with two great historical ironies of Brown v. Board. The first irony is that Oliver Brown was actually a reluctant participant in the Supreme Court case that would come to be named after him. In fact, Oliver Brown, a reserved man, had to be convinced to sign on to the lawsuit because he was a new pastor at church that did not want to get involved in Topeka NAACP’s desegregation lawsuit, according to various Topekans whose recollections are recorded in the Brown Oral History Collection at the <a href="https://www.kshs.org/p/brown-v-board-of-education-oral-history/13996">Kansas State Historical Society</a>.</p>
<p>The second irony is that, of the five local desegregation cases brought before the Supreme Court by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in 1953, Brown’s case – formally known as <a href="https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=87&page=transcript">Oliver Brown et al., v. Board of Education of Topeka, et al.</a> – ended up bringing widespread attention to a city where many blacks actually resisted school integration. That not-so-small detail has been overshadowed by the way the case is presented in history.</p>
<h2>Black resistance to integration</h2>
<p>While school desegregation may have symbolized racial progress for many blacks throughout the country, that simply was not the case in Topeka. In fact, most of the resistance to the NAACP’s school desegregation efforts in Topeka came from Topeka’s black citizens, not whites.</p>
<p>“I didn’t get anything from white folks,” Leola Brown Montgomery, wife of Oliver and mother of Linda, recalled. “I tell you here in Topeka, unlike the other places where they brought these cases we didn’t have any threats” from whites.</p>
<p>Prior to the Brown case, black Topekans had been embroiled in a decade-long conflict over segregated schools that began with a lawsuit involving Topeka’s junior high schools. When the Topeka School Board commissioned a poll to determine black support for integrated junior high schools in 1941, 65 percent of black parents with junior high school students indicated that they preferred all-black schools, <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/westhistquar.42.4.0481">according to school board minutes</a>.</p>
<h2>Separate but equal</h2>
<p>Another wrinkle to the story is that the city’s four all-black elementary schools – Buchanan, McKinley, Monroe and Washington – had resources, facilities and curricula that were comparable to that of Topeka’s white schools. The Topeka school board actually adhered to the “separate-but-equal” standard established by the 1896 <a href="https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=52&page=transcript">Plessy v. Ferguson</a> case.</p>
<p>Even Linda Brown recalled the all-black Monroe Elementary School that she attended as a <a href="http://digital.wustl.edu/e/eop/eopweb/smi0015.0647.098lindabrownsmith.html">“very nice facility, being very well-kept.”</a></p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212532/original/file-20180328-109175-1ltjf8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212532/original/file-20180328-109175-1ltjf8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212532/original/file-20180328-109175-1ltjf8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=862&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212532/original/file-20180328-109175-1ltjf8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=862&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212532/original/file-20180328-109175-1ltjf8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=862&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212532/original/file-20180328-109175-1ltjf8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1083&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212532/original/file-20180328-109175-1ltjf8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1083&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212532/original/file-20180328-109175-1ltjf8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1083&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Linda Brown Smith, shown at age 9 in 1952.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-Domestic-News-United-States-LI-/daad13dbe4e6da11af9f0014c2589dfb/9/0">AP</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“I remember the materials that we used being of good quality,” Linda Brown <a href="http://digital.wustl.edu/e/eop/eopweb/smi0015.0647.098lindabrownsmith.html">stated</a> in a 1985 interview. </p>
<p>That made the Topeka lawsuit unique among the cases the NAACP Legal Defense Fund combined and argued before the Supreme Court in 1953. Black schoolchildren in Topeka did not experience overcrowded classrooms like those in Washington, D.C., nor were they subjected to dilapidated school buildings like those in Delaware or Virginia.</p>
<p>While black parents in Delaware and South Carolina petitioned their local school boards for bus service, the Topeka School Board voluntarily provided buses for black children. Topeka’s school buses became central to the local NAACP’s equal access complaint due to <a href="http://cache2.asset-cache.net/gc/50359858-rear-view-of-linda-brown-10-yr-old-african-gettyimages.jpg?v=1&c=IWSAsset&k=2&d=yDBvXkFZSD8CXY2A11A8jtLimoAtZnu8nbiCsIQLNqA%3d">weather and travel conditions</a>. </p>
<p>Quality education was “not the issue at that time,” Linda Brown <a href="http://digital.wustl.edu/e/eop/eopweb/smi0015.0647.098lindabrownsmith.html">recalled</a>, “but it was the distance that I had to go to acquire that education.”</p>
<p>Another unique characteristic of Topeka public schools was that black students went to both all-black elementary and predominantly white junior high and high schools. This fact presented another challenge for the Topeka NAACP’s desegregation crusade. The transition from segregated elementary schools to integrated junior and senior high schools was a harsh and alienating one. Many black Topekans recalled the overt and covert racism of white teachers and administrators. “It wasn’t the grade schools that sunk me,” Richard Ridley, a black resident and Topeka High School alumnus who graduated in 1947, told interviewers for the Brown Oral History Collection at the Kansas State Historical Society. “It was the high school.”</p>
<h2>Black teachers cherished</h2>
<p>A primary reason that black Topekans fought the local NAACP’s desegregation efforts is because they appreciated black educators’ dedication to their students. Black residents who opposed school integration often spoke of the familial environment in all-black schools.</p>
<p>Linda Brown herself praised the teachers at her alma mater, Monroe Elementary, for having high expectations and setting “<a href="http://digital.wustl.edu/e/eop/eopweb/smi0015.0647.098lindabrownsmith.html">very good examples for their students</a>.</p>
<p>Black teachers proved to be a formidable force against the local NAACP. "We have a situation here in Topeka in which the Negro Teachers are violently opposed to our efforts to integrate the public schools,” NAACP branch Secretary Lucinda Todd <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/westhistquar.42.4.0481">wrote in a letter</a> to the national NAACP in 1953.</p>
<p>Black supporters of all-black schools used a number of overt and covert tactics to undermine NAACP members’ efforts. Those tactics included lobbying, networking, social ostracism, verbal threats, vandalism, sending harassing mail, making intimidating phone calls, the Brown Oral History Collection reveals.</p>
<p>But the national office of the NAACP never appreciated the unique challenges that its local chapter faced. The Topeka NAACP struggled to recruit plaintiffs, despite their door-to-door canvassing.</p>
<p>Fundraising was also a major problem. The group could not afford the legal services of their attorneys and raised only $100 of the <a href="http://www.kansasmemory.org/item/213401/page/1">$5,000 needed to bring the case</a> before the U.S. Supreme Court.</p>
<h2>Unheralded legacy</h2>
<p>History ultimately would not be on the side of the majority of Topeka’s black community. A small cohort of local NAACP members kept pushing for desegregation, even as they stood at odds with most black Topekans.</p>
<p>Linda Brown and her father may be remembered as the faces of Brown v. Board of Education. But without the resilience and resourcefulness of three local NAACP members – namely, Daniel Sawyer, McKinley Burnett and Lucinda Todd – there would have been no Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.</p>
<p>The real story of Brown v. Board may not capture the public imagination like that of a 9-year-old girl who “brought a case that ended segregation in public schools in America.” Nevertheless, it is the truth behind the myth. And it deserves to be told.</p>
<p><em>Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story appeared in The Conversation on <a href="https://theconversation.com/much-of-what-you-think-you-know-about-linda-brown-a-central-figure-in-brown-v-board-of-education-is-wrong-94082">March 30, 2018</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/117299/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Charise Cheney does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
While the Brown vs. Board of Education case is often celebrated for ordering school desegregation, history shows many black people in the city where the case began opposed integrated schools.
Charise Cheney, Associate Professsor of Ethnic Studies, University of Oregon
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/110562
2019-04-23T10:43:12Z
2019-04-23T10:43:12Z
A quest to reconstruct Baltimore’s American Indian ‘reservation’
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268647/original/file-20190410-2898-a5njk6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Members of East Baltimore Church of God, which was founded by Lumbee Indians, and was once located in the heart of 'the reservation,' in the 1700 block of E. Baltimore Street.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo courtesy of Rev. Robert E. Dodson Jr., Pastor, East Baltimore Church of God</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A few years ago, I invited a group of students to go on a short walking tour of the Lumbee Indian community of East Baltimore. </p>
<p>Lumbee are indigenous to North Carolina but have been present in Baltimore since at least as early as the 1930s. My grandparents moved here in 1963 with their three children, one of whom was my mother. I was born here, and that makes me a first-generation Baltimore Lumbee. I grew up to be a <a href="http://ashleyminnerart.com/">community-based visual artist</a> and a folklorist. I’m currently a doctoral candidate at <a href="http://amst.umd.edu/">University of Maryland College Park</a>, where I’m finishing my dissertation on the changing relationship of Lumbee people to the neighborhood in Baltimore where they settled.</p>
<p>I had given such tours informally many times before, and had developed a familiar route and narrative along the way: <a href="http://srt-wwwburnt-primary.hgsitebuilder.com/south-broadway">South Broadway Baptist Church</a>, the <a href="https://baltimoreamericanindiancenter.org/">Baltimore American Indian Center</a>, the Vera Shank Daycare and Native American Senior Citizens building. </p>
<p>This particular time, an elder of the community had come along with us. Naturally, I ceded the responsibility of leading the tour to her. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268867/original/file-20190411-44790-ovpdqq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268867/original/file-20190411-44790-ovpdqq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268867/original/file-20190411-44790-ovpdqq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=835&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268867/original/file-20190411-44790-ovpdqq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=835&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268867/original/file-20190411-44790-ovpdqq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=835&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268867/original/file-20190411-44790-ovpdqq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1049&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268867/original/file-20190411-44790-ovpdqq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1049&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268867/original/file-20190411-44790-ovpdqq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1049&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Baltimore American Indian Center, 113 S. Broadway, is the hub of cultural activities for area Indians.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by John Davis, The News American, October 24, 1985. Baltimore News American Photo Archive, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Maryland College Park. Permission granted by the Hearst Corporation</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We started out on my usual route, but, to my surprise, she stopped us just outside <a href="http://srt-wwwburnt-primary.hgsitebuilder.com/south-broadway">South Broadway Baptist Church</a> to talk about an Indian jewelry store that used to be next door. This was news to me. I didn’t remember the store because it was gone before my time. </p>
<p>I started to wonder: How much more don’t I know about the places and spaces Lumbee people once had here?</p>
<p>Drawing on the memories of our elders, the annals of local newspapers and other archival materials, I am now mapping and reconstructing East Baltimore’s historic Lumbee Indian community. </p>
<p>With the neighborhood being redeveloped and the Lumbee population shifting, I see this as an urgent project of reclamation – of history, of space and of belonging.</p>
<h2>The birth of Baltimore’s ‘reservation’</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.lumbeetribe.com/">The Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina</a> is the largest tribe east of the Mississippi River, and the ninth-largest in the United States. </p>
<p>Our homeland is in southeastern North Carolina, with members residing primarily in Robeson, Hoke, Cumberland and Scotland counties. We take our name from the Lumbee River that winds through tribal territory, which is mostly rural and otherwise characterized by pines, farmland and swamps.</p>
<p>Following World War II, thousands of Lumbee Indians migrated from North Carolina to Baltimore seeking jobs and a better quality of life. They settled on the east side of town, in an area that bridges the neighborhoods of Upper Fells Point and Washington Hill, <a href="http://lumbee.library.appstate.edu/bibliography/futc002">64 blocks</a> mostly comprising brick row houses with marble steps. </p>
<p>To many Lumbee newcomers, the buildings all looked identical. It was a world apart from the farm houses, tobacco barns, fields and swamps of home.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/BwFvt6tjn6K","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<p>In this urban landscape, Lumbee people stood out – neither looking like the Indians on TV, nor neatly fitting into any of the races or ethnicities already living in Baltimore. </p>
<p>Today, most Baltimoreans would be surprised to learn that the area was once so densely populated by Indians that it was known as “the reservation.” An anthropologist who did fieldwork in the community during its heyday <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3318154">wrote</a> that it was “perhaps the single largest grouping of Indians from the same tribe in an American urban area.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268646/original/file-20190410-2901-1dcghwi.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268646/original/file-20190410-2901-1dcghwi.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268646/original/file-20190410-2901-1dcghwi.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268646/original/file-20190410-2901-1dcghwi.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268646/original/file-20190410-2901-1dcghwi.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268646/original/file-20190410-2901-1dcghwi.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268646/original/file-20190410-2901-1dcghwi.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268646/original/file-20190410-2901-1dcghwi.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Inter-Tribal Restaurant was owned and operated by the Baltimore American Indian Center in the unit block of South Broadway.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo courtesy of the Baltimore American Indian Center</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Lumbee community has gradually spread out in years since, so my own generation never experienced “the reservation” as such. But even within our own lifetimes – and especially over the last 15 years – we’ve seen the Lumbee population in the city sharply decline. The majority of our people have moved out to Baltimore County and beyond. Others have returned to North Carolina. </p>
<p>The old neighborhood is now being rapidly redeveloped. Historic buildings have been retrofitted. New luxury apartments abound. With the closure and sale of the former Vera Shank Daycare and Native American Senior Citizens building, the sole real estate that the Baltimore Indian Center owns is the building it occupies. The remaining elders are now in their 70s and 80s. </p>
<p>I know that I have arrived at this work in a crucial moment.</p>
<h2>The neighborhood as it once was</h2>
<p>In order to learn more about the historic community, I went to the elders first. </p>
<p>I was completely floored by what I learned. I had known about the places I already mentioned, along with a couple of much-fabled bars. But they talked about other restaurants, shops, more churches, more bars, investment properties and even a dance hall that were all Lumbee community-owned or frequented.</p>
<p>Nearly all of the sites described to me by the elders have been repurposed several times since the 1950s, if not demolished and utterly wiped from the landscape. Entire city blocks have disappeared. </p>
<p>How, then, could I even begin to pinpoint where things used to be? </p>
<p>This question prompted a spree of digging and plundering through many local institutional archives in search of clues that would help me reconstruct “the reservation.”</p>
<p>At the downtown branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library, I was able to leaf through many historic newspaper clippings about the community and the early endeavors of the Baltimore American Indian Center, founded in 1968 as the “American Indian Study Center.” I even held original copies of the American Indian Study Center’s first newsletters, mailed directly from the center to the library.</p>
<p>I got a cartography lesson at the Johns Hopkins University’s Eisenhower Library, which led me to visit the Baltimore City Archives, where I was able to handle original <a href="https://baltimorecityhistory.net/research-at-the-baltimore-city-archives/the-geography-of-baltimore-city-sources/">Sanborn maps</a>. These maps provide extremely detailed aerial views of the neighborhood, including footprints of buildings that no longer exist. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268651/original/file-20190410-2914-k2zjxx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268651/original/file-20190410-2914-k2zjxx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268651/original/file-20190410-2914-k2zjxx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268651/original/file-20190410-2914-k2zjxx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268651/original/file-20190410-2914-k2zjxx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268651/original/file-20190410-2914-k2zjxx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268651/original/file-20190410-2914-k2zjxx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268651/original/file-20190410-2914-k2zjxx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Sanborn Map Company published detailed maps of U.S. cities and towns in the 19th and 20th centuries for fire insurance companies. Since they contain so much detailed information, they’re invaluable resources that show how American cities have changed over many decades.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by the author, Baltimore City Archives</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Later, at the <a href="https://chap.baltimorecity.gov/">Baltimore City Department of Planning’s Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation</a>, I was thrilled to find actual street-level photographs of many of the buildings, which, ironically, were documented as a result of urban renewal.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268657/original/file-20190410-2918-63r3jc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268657/original/file-20190410-2918-63r3jc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268657/original/file-20190410-2918-63r3jc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268657/original/file-20190410-2918-63r3jc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268657/original/file-20190410-2918-63r3jc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268657/original/file-20190410-2918-63r3jc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268657/original/file-20190410-2918-63r3jc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In his youth, Clyde Oxendine was a boxer and the bouncer at The Volcano, a bar frequented by Lumbee Indians.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by C. Cullison, The News American, September 30, 1963. Baltimore News American Photo Archive, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Maryland College Park. Permission granted by the Hearst Corporation</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the Hornbake Library at University of Maryland College Park, I was able to consult several volumes of <a href="https://lib.guides.umd.edu/c.php?g=327119&p=2197762">Polk Baltimore City Directories</a>. I had presumed these were no more than old phone books. Instead, these volumes detail the individuals and businesses that occupied every building in Baltimore, street by street, block by block, in a given year. Not only was I able to confirm addresses of the community sites the elders had described, but in many instances, I was also able to see where they, themselves, had lived.</p>
<p>The Hornbake Library also houses the <a href="https://hornbakelibrary.wordpress.com/2017/05/18/students-at-work-the-baltimore-news-american-photo-archives/">Baltimore News American photo archive</a>, where I found portraits of community legends. There were Elizabeth Locklear, Herbert Locklear and Rosie Hunt – all founders of the Center. There was Clyde Oxendine, a boxer and the bouncer of the infamous Volcano, the meanest of mean Indian bars. And in the first folder of unprocessed photos I opened, I found, of all people, Alme Jones, the maternal grandmother of my fiance.</p>
<h2>Preserving the past for future generations</h2>
<p>So far, <a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Qn0-0XpRKaE4VMGkVBxHB-5FGe8EHa8l&usp=sharing">we have mapped 27 Lumbee-owned or frequented sites</a> in and around the neighborhood.</p>
<iframe src="https://www.google.com/maps/d/embed?mid=1Qn0-0XpRKaE4VMGkVBxHB-5FGe8EHa8l" width="100%" height="480"></iframe>
<p>After identifying materials from these many far-flung institutional archives, it seems imperative to establish a new collection so that these treasures can live together, alongside personal archival materials that would never have been accessible to an outside researcher. Our community needs easy access to its history.</p>
<p>Naturally, the Baltimore American Indian Center is the prime repository for this new collection. <a href="https://library.umbc.edu/speccoll/">The Special Collections of the Albin O. Kuhn Library at UMBC</a> is another. This amazing, publicly accessible resource already houses the <a href="https://library.umbc.edu/speccoll/archives.php#c6">Maryland Folklife Archives</a> and the research of several Maryland folklorists. It will one day house my research as well.</p>
<p>Younger generations of Lumbee people should be able to see and know that our people’s history in Baltimore runs much deeper and wider than it seems. </p>
<p>All cities are steeped in stories. Whether we realize it or not, we are always walking in the footsteps of those who came before. </p>
<p>As Baltimore’s neighborhoods continue to change, its residents would do well to realize that Lumbee people have been here for a long time – and we’re still here.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/110562/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ashley Minner works for University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) and is a doctoral candidate at University of Maryland College Park. She is affiliated with the Maryland Folklife Network and the Baltimore American Indian Center. She is an enrolled member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. </span></em></p>
A folklorist is working to preserve the history of a unique, urban community of Lumbee Indians.
Ashley Minner, Lecturer, Folklorist, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/111901
2019-03-18T10:47:00Z
2019-03-18T10:47:00Z
From ‘Wild Horses’ to ‘Wild Things,’ a window into Maurice Sendak’s creative process
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262482/original/file-20190306-100805-xnhs5l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Preliminary drawing of title page for 'Where the Wild Things Are' (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 26:7, The Maurice Sendak Collection.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Library. © The Maurice Sendak Foundation.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Fans of “Where the Wild Things Are,” Maurice Sendak’s most famous book, might know every page by heart. </p>
<p>But few know the winding path it took from idea to published book – a gestation process that involved experimentation, playfulness and persistence.</p>
<p>As professors of <a href="https://english.uconn.edu/katharine-capshaw/">children’s literature</a> and <a href="https://art.uconn.edu/person/cora-lynn-deibler/">illustration</a>, we have been thrilled to witness the arrival of The Maurice Sendak Collection at the University of Connecticut’s Archives and Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Center. The collection – which contains Sendak’s original sketches, book dummies, artwork and final drafts of his work, amounting to nearly 10,000 items – allows us to begin to trace the trajectory of Sendak’s creative process.</p>
<p>It contains evidence of Sendak’s prodigious imagination and lifelong intellectual curiosity, and offers insight into how Sendak developed his ideas over time.</p>
<p>The making of “Where the Wild Things Are” was a journey, and the vivid materials in Sendak’s archive illuminate the level of investment that was required to complete it.</p>
<h2>A years-long process</h2>
<p>One of the items in the collection is a small, horizontal book dummy dated Nov. 17, 1955, titled “Where the Wild Horses Are.” As one of the earliest forms of what would become “Where the Wild Things Are,” the book dummy contains many of the elements that would appear in the final version, including a boy who takes a journey, gets chased by monsters and sails a boat to an island. </p>
<p>But what’s with the horses? </p>
<p>This earliest version includes images of the child pulling the animals’ tails. In response, they kick him into the air – and out of his clothes.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262251/original/file-20190305-48441-1vw5b1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262251/original/file-20190305-48441-1vw5b1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262251/original/file-20190305-48441-1vw5b1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=83&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262251/original/file-20190305-48441-1vw5b1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=83&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262251/original/file-20190305-48441-1vw5b1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=83&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262251/original/file-20190305-48441-1vw5b1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=104&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262251/original/file-20190305-48441-1vw5b1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=104&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262251/original/file-20190305-48441-1vw5b1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=104&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dummy for ‘Where the Wild Horses Are’ (1955), 26:9, The Maurice Sendak Collection.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Library. © The Maurice Sendak Foundation.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In interviews, Sendak claimed that, when revising the story, he gave up on horses because he couldn’t draw them. But Sendak spent his life immersing himself in a variety of art styles, from romantic painters <a href="https://artuk.org/discover/stories/william-blake-the-romantic-visionary">William Blake</a> and <a href="https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/artists/giovanni-domenico-tiepolo">Domenico Tiepolo</a> to American cartoonist <a href="https://www.illustrationhistory.org/artists/winsor-mccay">Winsor McCay</a>. Sendak possessed immense skill. </p>
<p>So if he wanted to illustrate horses, he probably would have. In fact, in 1955 he handily illustrated “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=JuDHxk8R1jwC&lpg=PP1&dq=charlotte%20and%20the%20white%20horse&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false">Charlotte and The White Horse</a>,” a children’s book authored by Ruth Krauss, with whom he had a longstanding collaborative relationship. </p>
<p>But Sendak must have decided horses weren’t right for this story, and he took time to let his ideas percolate.</p>
<p>The wild things do appear in his other surviving book dummy, which is entirely recognizable as an early stage of the finished book we now know. Appearing eight years after the first dummy, this one, square and slightly larger than the first, shows the evolution of the book’s characters and visual rhythm. The changing borders – think of the page in which the trees take over Max’s bedroom – compel the reader to turn the pages.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261983/original/file-20190304-92301-1av0xu3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261983/original/file-20190304-92301-1av0xu3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261983/original/file-20190304-92301-1av0xu3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261983/original/file-20190304-92301-1av0xu3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261983/original/file-20190304-92301-1av0xu3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261983/original/file-20190304-92301-1av0xu3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=653&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261983/original/file-20190304-92301-1av0xu3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=653&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261983/original/file-20190304-92301-1av0xu3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=653&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dummy for Where the Wild Things Are (1963), 26:9, The Maurice Sendak Collection.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Library. © The Maurice Sendak Foundation.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“I had never seen fantasy depicted in American children’s books in illustrations that were so powerfully in motion,” <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1966/01/22/among-the-wild-things">critic Nat Hentoff wrote in the New Yorker</a> in 1966, a few years after the book’s publication. </p>
<h2>Curiosity and creation</h2>
<p>But what happened during the preceding eight years?</p>
<p>Much of the time was spent focusing on other projects. Sendak illustrated other picture books for his publisher, Harper and Row, and collaborated with Else Holmelund Minarik on her “Little Bear” series and with Ruth Krauss on books like “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=-0oPfoSK_U0C&lpg=PP1&dq=I%20Want%20to%20Paint%20my%20Bathroom%20Blue&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false">I Want to Paint my Bathroom Blue</a>.” </p>
<p>He also published his own picture books during this period, from “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=JYbWzxN7hSgC&lpg=PP1&dq=%22Kenny's%20Window%22&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false">Kenny’s Window</a>” in 1956 to “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=3EI5YYS_BEMC&lpg=PP1&dq=%22The%20Sign%20on%20Rosie%E2%80%99s%20Door%22&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false">The Sign on Rosie’s Door</a>” in 1960. </p>
<p>Yet most picture book authors and illustrators work diligently and juggle multiple projects. How was Sendak different? </p>
<p>Unlike illustrators who use a singular style that appears throughout their work, Sendak developed a unique visual approach for each project. He was always seeking out inspiration from other artists whom he admired.</p>
<p>“Wild Things,” for example, owes a great deal to the influence of French post-impressionist painter <a href="https://www.nga.gov/features/slideshows/henri-rousseau.html">Henri Rousseau</a>. You can see the influence of Swiss painter <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/henry-fuseli-198">Henry Fuseli</a> on “<a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Outside_Over_There.html?id=rWm3amQiulwC">Outside Over There</a>” and the influences of British caricaturist <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/thomas-rowlandson-463">Thomas Rowlandson</a> and Czech painter <a href="https://www.joseflada.cz/en/josef-lada/work/">Josef Lada</a> on the recently published “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/whats-surprising--and-familiar--in-maurice-sendaks-newly-discovered-book/2018/09/04/b88b6ad6-b04e-11e8-9a6a-565d92a3585d_story.html?utm_term=.073c1740efe8">Presto and Zesto in Limboland</a>,” which Sendak created with friend and collaborator Arthur Yorinks. </p>
<p>He also read widely – he especially loved Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson and John Keats – and as he worked he played music in the background, choosing songs and albums that reflected his creative moods.</p>
<p>“Sketching to music is a marvelous stimulant to my imagination,” he said during his <a href="http://static1.1.sqspcdn.com/static/f/132778/8931276/1286899495900/caldecott_medal_acceptance.pdf?token=fKLvcZYIBINetOSi0UC2vE4oCr4%3D">Caldecott award speech</a> in 1964.</p>
<p>And he was always trying to become a better artist; he was, as Yorinks explained in an interview, “constantly teaching himself.” In the long gestation period between the dummy and the publication of “Where the Wild Things Are,” Sendak was able to learn a range of new styles, including <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatching">the crosshatching technique</a> that would appear in “Wild Things.” </p>
<p>As Jonathan Weinberg, curator and director of research at The Maurice Sendak Foundation, told us, “I can think of no other artist – illustrator or otherwise – who has employed so many different forms of expression, not only over time but often on projects that were in production simultaneously.” </p>
<h2>The wild things emerge</h2>
<p>During the period in which “Wild Horses” became “Wild Things,” Sendak enlarged the interpretive possibilities of his subject. </p>
<p>Just as Sendak fertilized his imagination with a range of artists and sensory experiences, from Mozart to Melville, the wild things themselves are hybrid creatures that possess qualities that are both human-like and animal-like. They roar but speak English, walk upright but have horns sprouting from their heads.</p>
<p>By drawing and redrawing the creatures, Sendak could play with their expressions and postures, toying with the ways they might move and engage the reader. </p>
<p>The Sendak Collection contains multiple versions of what would become the book’s jacket. Many of them focused on a particular wild thing wearing a striped sweater. In one version, he looks to the side as he waves to the reader.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262484/original/file-20190306-100802-1o8wu82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262484/original/file-20190306-100802-1o8wu82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262484/original/file-20190306-100802-1o8wu82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262484/original/file-20190306-100802-1o8wu82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262484/original/file-20190306-100802-1o8wu82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262484/original/file-20190306-100802-1o8wu82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262484/original/file-20190306-100802-1o8wu82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262484/original/file-20190306-100802-1o8wu82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Preliminary drawing of dust jacket for ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 26:2, The Maurice Sendak Collection.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Library. © The Maurice Sendak Foundation.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In another, he creeps out from the underbrush, hands and foot raised in motion.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262485/original/file-20190306-100790-1prqf6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262485/original/file-20190306-100790-1prqf6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262485/original/file-20190306-100790-1prqf6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262485/original/file-20190306-100790-1prqf6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262485/original/file-20190306-100790-1prqf6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262485/original/file-20190306-100790-1prqf6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262485/original/file-20190306-100790-1prqf6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262485/original/file-20190306-100790-1prqf6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Preliminary drawing of dust jacket for ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 26:1, The Maurice Sendak Collection.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Library. © The Maurice Sendak Foundation.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In a third, he seems to dance, arms locked with another creature, a smile on his face. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262487/original/file-20190306-100799-1auznpx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262487/original/file-20190306-100799-1auznpx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262487/original/file-20190306-100799-1auznpx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262487/original/file-20190306-100799-1auznpx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262487/original/file-20190306-100799-1auznpx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262487/original/file-20190306-100799-1auznpx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262487/original/file-20190306-100799-1auznpx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262487/original/file-20190306-100799-1auznpx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Preliminary drawing of dust jacket for ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 26:1, The Maurice Sendak Collection.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Library. © The Maurice Sendak Foundation.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Even though these drafts don’t appear in the final version, they offer a window into Sendak’s imagination. Yes, attempting multiple drafts is a form of diligence. But it’s also creative play – a fusion of discipline with dynamism.</p>
<p>According to Lynn Caponera, president of The Maurice Sendak Foundation, the artist couldn’t have known that this book would eventually become his most significant work. But she can see why kids are so drawn to the book’s characters. The wild things, she noted – with their large heads, stumbling gait and round bodies – “have the proportions of toddlers, of King Kong, of Mickey Mouse.” </p>
<p>Perhaps that is why the wild things seem so fully to capture the humanity of the young – their longings and rage, their imagination and joy.</p>
<p>Picture books, Yorinks explained, are a medium that the “world doesn’t take seriously.” Yet Sendak decided to make them because they’re “the simplest form to express the most complicated thoughts and feelings.”</p>
<p>The materials at the University of Connecticut show how the work of writing and illustrating a book is a kind of journey, not unlike Max’s, into the deepest recesses of the imagination.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/111901/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katharine Capshaw is President of the Children's Literature Association.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cora Lynn Deibler is a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, the Society of Illustrators, and the Low Illustration Committee at the New Britain Museum of American Art.</span></em></p>
The book took eight years from conception to publication. In the earliest dummy, the monsters that millions have grown to love actually started out as horses.
Katharine Capshaw, Professor of English, University of Connecticut
Cora Lynn Deibler, Professor of Illustration, University of Connecticut
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/109709
2019-02-27T11:42:05Z
2019-02-27T11:42:05Z
What Catholic Church records tell us about America’s earliest black history
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260032/original/file-20190220-148533-1tvovv2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"> St Augustine Catholic Church Archive.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">David LaFevor</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For most Americans, black history <a href="https://www.nps.gov/jame/learn/historyculture/african-americans-at-jamestown.htm">begins in 1619</a>,
when a Dutch ship brought some “20 and odd Negroes” as slaves to the English colony of Jamestown, in Virginia. </p>
<p>Many are not aware that black history in the United States <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Black_Society_in_Spanish_Florida.html?id=6KByoQgXZEcC">goes back at least a century before this date</a>.</p>
<p>In 1513, a free and literate African named Juan Garrido explored Florida with a Spanish conquistador, Juan Ponce de León. In the following decades, Africans, free and enslaved, were part of all the Spanish expeditions exploring the southern region of the United States. In 1565, Africans helped establish the first permanent European settlement in what is St. Augustine, Florida today.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://slavesocieties.org/">Slave Societies Digital Archive</a> which I direct <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Black_Society_in_Spanish_Florida.html?id=6KByoQgXZEcC">as a historian</a> at Vanderbilt University includes Catholic Church records from St. Augustine. </p>
<p>These records date back to the 1590s and document some of the earliest black history of the U.S. </p>
<h2>Catholicism and runaway slaves</h2>
<p>These Catholic Church records show that everyone was treated in theory as <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674062047">“brothers in Christ”</a> and that the Church helped incorporate Africans into Spanish communities. It also helped free some slaves. </p>
<p>St. Augustine’s Catholic records show that after English Protestants established a settlement in what became South Carolina in 1670, their African slaves began to flee southward <a href="https://essss.library.vanderbilt.edu/islandora/object/essss%3A246118">seeking admission into the “True Faith”</a> – which to the Spaniards meant Catholicism.</p>
<p>Florida’s Spanish governors sheltered them and saw to their religious conversion, seeking royal approval of their actions. After some deliberation, in 1693, Spain’s monarch ruled that all slaves fleeing Protestant lands to seek conversion in Catholic colonies should be freed. Word of the fugitives’ reception in St. Augustine spread quickly through South Carolina, generating bitter complaints among planters and encouraging additional southward escapes by their slaves. </p>
<p>By 1738, the number of slave runaways reaching Florida had <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Black_Society_in_Spanish_Florida.html?id=6KByoQgXZEcC">grown to approximately 100</a>. Based on Spain’s religious sanctuary policy, Florida’s Spanish governor freed the runaways and established them in a town of their own called <a href="https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/histarch/research/st-augustine/fort-mose/">Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose</a>, two miles north of the Spanish city of St. Augustine. Mose was modeled after the nearby Indian towns where Catholic priests were also assigned to teach the “new Christians” the principles of the Catholic faith. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260034/original/file-20190220-148513-2sly8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260034/original/file-20190220-148513-2sly8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260034/original/file-20190220-148513-2sly8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260034/original/file-20190220-148513-2sly8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260034/original/file-20190220-148513-2sly8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260034/original/file-20190220-148513-2sly8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260034/original/file-20190220-148513-2sly8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A museum presents the stories of Mose’s people.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jane Landers</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The site is now a National Historic Landmark, listed on the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/underground/fl2.htm">National Park Service Underground Railroad Route</a>, and has been nominated for a UNESCO Slave Route designation. A museum based on both archaeological and historical studies <a href="https://www.floridastateparks.org/parks-and-trails/fort-mose-historic-state-park">presents the stories of the Mose townspeople</a>. </p>
<h2>African heritage in church records</h2>
<p>The records in St. Augustine’s church <a href="https://essss.library.vanderbilt.edu/islandora/object/essss%3A246118">reveal the multi-ethnic and multi-lingual nature of Mose</a>. </p>
<p>Its leader and captain of the town’s militia, Francisco Menéndez, was of Mandinga ethnicity and came from the Senegambian region of West Africa in modern-day Senegal. He probably spoke a variety of languages but learned Spanish as well and wrote petitions to the Spanish King. Others at Mose came from the Congo nation, that is today in West Central Africa. </p>
<p>Pedro Graxales, the Congo man who was sergeant of the Mose militia was married to a slave woman of the Carabalí nation, from what is today southeastern Nigeria. The couple chose godparents from Congo for their children. </p>
<p>Florida’s priests noted that some people from Congo had undergone previous Catholic baptisms in Africa and that even as they learned Spanish, some of them still prayed and blessed themselves in their native language of Kikongo, a Bantu language spoken throughout large areas of West Central Africa.</p>
<h2>Creating a black Catholic family</h2>
<p>Baptism into the Catholic faith was important because it cleansed black converts of the “stigma of original sin.” It also brought them into the “Christian brotherhood” of the church. Baptism also served an important social function. Families were linked in a <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Slavery-and-Abolition-in-the-Atlantic-World-New-Sources-and-New-Findings/Landers/p/book/9781138633810">system of reciprocal obligations</a> between the baptized and his or her godparents, as also between the parents and godparents. </p>
<p>For example, <a href="http://fxsanchez.blogspot.com/">Francisco Felipe Edimboro</a> and his wife, Filis, were African-born slaves of Florida’s wealthiest planter, Don Francisco Sánchez. The couple had their three-year-old son baptized on the same day that their master and his mulatto consort baptized their natural son. Edimboro and Filis eventually had 10 more children baptized in St. Augustine’s church. On July 15, 1794, they were themselves baptized and married. </p>
<p>Their Catholic baptism and marriage coincided with their suit to buy their freedom and likely contributed to the successful outcome of that litigation. </p>
<p>As a free man, Felipe Edimboro became a landowner and sergeant of St. Augustine’s free black militia. He also served as godfather to 21 black children born in St. Augustine whose baptisms were recorded in its Catholic Church.</p>
<h2>What these records say about families</h2>
<p>These and other records allow scholars to track the history of several generations of the large Edimboro family to the present day. </p>
<p>One of Edimboro and Filis’s free daughters, Eusebia, had a child with an enslaved man named Antonio Proctor, described in the records as “the best translator of the Indian languages in the province.”</p>
<p>Edimboro and Proctor served on the Spanish frontier together and Proctor’s valuable military service earned him his freedom.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260035/original/file-20190220-148517-fp0onf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260035/original/file-20190220-148517-fp0onf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260035/original/file-20190220-148517-fp0onf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260035/original/file-20190220-148517-fp0onf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260035/original/file-20190220-148517-fp0onf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260035/original/file-20190220-148517-fp0onf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260035/original/file-20190220-148517-fp0onf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Proctor Memorial signage.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jane Landers</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Eusebia and Antonio’s freeborn son, George Proctor, became a master carpenter and builder in territorial Florida and George’s son, John Proctor, served in the Florida House of Representatives in the 1870s and in the Florida Senate from 1883 to 1886.</p>
<p>More than 100 descendants recently commemorated <a href="https://www.tallahassee.com/story/life/home-garden/2018/11/01/hidden-history-reveals-new-marker/1835915002/">their family’s rich heritage</a> in a public ceremony in Tallahassee, Florida where they mounted a memorial plaque in the Old City Cemetery.</p>
<p>These records show that black history in United States begins much earlier than previously thought. They also show that men, women, and children once thought forgotten left rich histories in these little explored sources.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/109709/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jane Landers receives funding from
National Endowment for the Humanities
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
American Council of Learned Societies
John Simon Guggenheim Foundation
Historic S. Augustine Research Institute</span></em></p>
Catholic Church records document the earliest black history in the US, going back to the 1590s. These records tell the histories of Africans, free and enslaved, who were part of Spanish expeditions.
Jane Landers, Professor of History, Vanderbilt University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.