Category Archives: Franklin Research Center

Bingham Center, Franklin Research Center, Hartman Center, History of Medicine, Travel Grants

Congratulations to our 2014-2015 grant recipients!

The Rubenstein Library’s three research center annually award travel grants to undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and independent scholars through a competitive application process. Congratulations to this year’s recipients, we look forward to working with all of you!

Courtney Thompson will use materials related to phrenology such as this small ivory bust in her research.
Courtney Thompson will use materials related to phrenology such as this small ivory bust in her research.

History of Medicine

Cali Buckley, Pennsylvania State University, Department of Art History, for dissertation work on, “Women of Substance: The Materiality of Anatomical Models and the Control of Women’s Medicine in Early Modern Europe.”

Alicia Puglionesi, Johns Hopkins University, Institute of the History of Medicine, for dissertation work on “The Astonishment of Experience: Americans and Psychical Research, 1885-1935.”

Courtney Thompson, Yale University, Department of the History of Science and Medicine, for dissertation work on “Criminal Minds: Medicine, Law, and the Phrenological Impulse in America, 1830-1890.”

 

John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History

FOARE Fellowship for Outdoor Advertising Research

Craig Lee, Department of Art History, University of Delaware, “Letter Building: Signage, Supergraphics, and the Rise of Semiotic Structure in Modern American Architecture”

Daniel Towns, Department of History, Stanford University, “The View and the Value: Historical Geography of Signs in San Francisco”

 

John Furr Fellowships for JWT Research

Lisa Haushofer, Department of History, Harvard University, “Edible Health: ‘Health Foods’ in Science, Industry, Culture in Britain and the United States, 1884-1950

 

Alvin A. Achenbaum Travel Grants

Dr. Cynthia Meyers, Department of Communications, College of Mount Saint Vincent, “Advertising Agencies and the Decline of Sponsorship in the Network Era of Television”

Dr. Cristina Ziliani: Economics, University of Parma, Italy, “Premium Sales Promotions: A History of Practice and Research, 1890-1990”

Cara Fallon, Department of History, Harvard University, “The Emerging Concept of Healthy Aging in the United States, 1920-1990”

Catherine Hennessey Wolter, Musicology, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, “Sound Conversions in Print: A Cultural History of the Player Piano and Early Radio in America Through the Lens of Print Media”

Kelly Jones, History of Medicine, State University of New York – Stony Brook, “’New Hope for Headache Sufferers’: Pain and its Control in Advertisements for Headache Remedies, 1950s-1970s

Daniel McKay, Independent Scholar, “Trading Fears: Marketing the ‘Japan Brand’ to American Tourists and Consumers”

 

John Hope Franklin Research Center 2014-15 Travel Grant Awardees

Emilye Crosby, State University of New York-Geneseo Topic: “Anything I Was Big Enough To Do: Women and Gender in SNCC”

Paul Grant, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Topic: “Unimagining the Christian Nation: Alienation, Memory, and German-African Reciprocity in Akropong, Ghana 1835-1938”

Nicole Maurantonio, University of Richmond, Topic: “Ombudsman for Humanity: Chuck Stone, Mediation, and the Graterford Prison Hostage Crisis”

Gilet Rosenblith, University of Virginia, Topic: “Low Income African American Women in the South and the Carceral State”

Nicholas Syrett, University of Northern Colorado, Topic: “American Child Bride: A History of Minors and Marriage in the United States”

Adam Wolkoff, Rutgers University-New Brunswick, Topic: “Possession and Power: A comparative social and legal history of capitalist social relations in the late nineteenth-century United States”

 

Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture Mary Lily Travel Grants

Dr. Georgina Colby, linguistics and cultural studies, University of Westminster, for a book on Kathy Acker combining philosophical analysis with literary and critical theory, exploring connections between feminist theory, Acker’s use of philosophy, and her experimental writing practices.

From the Kathy Acker Papers

Dr. Donna Drucker, civil and environmental engineering, Technische Universität Darmstadt, for a journal article on sexual behavior and the science of contraceptive testing in the mid-twentieth century United States.

Sara Mameni, Ph.D. candidate, visual arts, University of California, San Diego, for dissertation research on Iran-US relations in the 1960s and 1970s—leading up to Iran’s Islamic Revolution of 1979—through the lens of queer theory, feminist theory, and postcolonial studies.

Ivy McIntyre, Ph.D. candidate, history, St. Louis University, for dissertation research on South Carolina families in times of personal crisis in the early Republic.

Andrew Pope, Ph.D. candidate, history, Harvard University, for dissertation research on radical social movements and the New South in Georgia from 1968-1996.

Dr. Jason Scott, Dr. Annalisa Castaldo, and Jennifer Lynn Pollitt, for an edited collection of essays looking at how kink identities, behaviors, and lifestyles are represented in popular and cultural studies.

Mairead Sullivan, Ph.D. candidate, women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, Emory University, for dissertation research on questions of breastedness in feminist and queer theory.

Hope Tucker, independent scholar, for an artist’s video on the fragility of reproductive rights in the American South, as seen through the work of those who documented and labored for these rights in the second half of the twentieth century.

Archive of Documentary Arts, Bingham Center, Franklin Research Center, Hartman Center, History of Medicine, Human Rights Archive, News and Features, University Archives

@rubensteinlib Joins Twitter!

Our first tweet!
Our first tweet!

Dearest readers, do you ever feel that there’s not enough Rubenstein Library in your social media day? True, we’re on Facebook, and we have this wonderful blog, and many of our collecting centers also have extensive social media presences (check out the list in the right-hand column) . . . but what if you could follow our every rare-book-and-manuscript action on Twitter?

Well, do we have good news for you! We’ve joined the twitterverse! Come follow us @rubensteinlib, let us know about your research projects and your latest special collections discoveries, and get a behind-the-scenes look at how we spend our working days (and sometimes our non-working days).

See you in 140 characters or less!

Franklin Research Center, From Our Collections

In Memoriam: Charles Stone, Jr. (1924-2014)

Chuck Stone. From the Chuck Stone Papers.
From the Chuck Stone Papers.

Charles “Chuck” Stone Jr. died on April 6 at the age of 89. Stone was a pioneering journalist, a long-time columnist with the Philadelphia Daily News, and co-founder and first president of the National Association of Black Journalists.

Among his notable career accomplishments, Stone was a Tuskegee Airmen during World War II, served as special assistant to Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. from 1965-67, and was a key mediator between alleged criminals and the Philadelphia Police Department. Stone served as Walter Spearman Professor of Journalism at the University of Carolina-Chapel Hill from 1991-2005.

The Chuck Stone Papers were donated to the John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture in 2004.

Post contributed by John Gartrell, Director of the John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture.

Audiovisual Materials, Digital Collections, Franklin Research Center, From Our Collections, University Archives

An Interview About a Duke University Pioneer

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Nathaniel White, Jr was among the first five black students to attend Duke University in 1963. He was not, however, the first person in his family to attend college. His father, Nathaniel White, Sr., had attended Hampton Institute prior to founding his own printing business in Durham. In a newly-digitized interview, White, Sr. discusses his life, his memories, and his experience as a black man living in Virginia and North Carolina during the 20th century.

White’s interview is part of the Behind the Veil digital project, which has just added over 300 new interviews with North Carolinians, including many from Durham. The interviews capture details of what life was like in the Jim Crow South for African Americans. In White’s interview, he shares the story of his childhood, the black business community in Durham, and the influence of scouting on his life. Of particular interest to local researchers, he describes individuals and businesses in the Durham black community in the mid-20th century, providing deep insight into Durham’s history.

Nathaniel White, Jr., center, was a native of Durham and one of the first three African-American students to graduate in 1967.
Nathaniel White, Jr., center, was a native of Durham and one of the first three African-American students to graduate in 1967.

He also briefly discusses his son’s pioneering role at Duke. He mentions that White, Jr., had considered Hampton Institute himself, but then had the opportunity to attend Duke. His father candidly remarks in the interview, “There’s one thing about a situation like that, it’s more like the real world than some other places that you might go and everything seems like it’s alright but it’s not training you for what you’re going to meet when you get outside. It’s a real struggle out there. The sooner you learn that, the better off you might be. . . . In other words, every day he had what it’s like to be an African American citizen in this country. So he didn’t have to learn that after he graduated. He learned it every day at Duke.”

Learn more about the fascinating Behind the Veil project on Bitstreams, the blog of the digital collections department of Duke University Libraries.

Post contributed by Val Gillispie, Duke University Archivist.

Digital Collections, Franklin Research Center, From Our Collections, TRLN CCC Project

North Carolina Interviews added to Behind the Veil Digital Collections

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The John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture is pleased to announce the addition of 310 oral history interviews to the Behind the Veil Digital Collection. The addition to the collection documents the lives of African Americans from the state of North Carolina who lived through the era of Jim Crow in the Charlotte, Durham, Endfield, New Bern and Wilmington areas. The digitization efforts were made possible by the Triangle Research Libraries Network’s Content, Context and Capacity grant project to document the Long Civil Rights Movement in the state. Researchers now have access over 400 digitized interviews from the collection from states throughout the American South.

behindtheveil

To listen to the digitized interviews please visit – http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/behindtheveil/

To view the entire collection, please visit – http://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/findingaids/btv/

To learn more about the making of digital collection, please visit the Digital Collections blog: http://blogs.library.duke.edu/bitstreams/2014/02/07/announcing-310-new-behind-the-veil-interviews-and-a-new-blog/

For more information, contact, John B. Gartrell, Director, Franklin Research Center.

Do Your Research, Franklin Research Center, From Our Collections, RL Scholars, Travel Grants

Researching Black Health in the South

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It was a great pleasure to conduct research at the Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke. As a recipient of the John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture travel grant, I looked forward to exploring the Library’s holdings that would advance my understanding of black women’s history.

National Negro Health News. From the Alliance for Guidance of Rural Youth Records.
National Negro Health News, Vol. 6, no. 3. From the Alliance for Guidance of Rural Youth Records.

My dissertation project, “Mind, Soul, Body, and Race: Black Women’s Physical Culture, 1900-1939,” investigates the structural barriers to health and fitness for black women and the ways in which they circumvented those barriers and engaged in the physical culture movement. I examine how black women used purposeful exercise to create a new, fit vision of black womanhood that had implications for public health, recreation, and ideas of beauty, citizenship, and racial uplift. As a national project, I want to capture how Southern women, who had even less resources and access to physical culture, participated in the movement.

A significant portion of my dissertation discusses the state of black health and the Library proved to be a valuable repository for exploring the public health aspects of black southern history. The archivists were informed and genuinely interested in assisting researchers and with their help; I consulted about a half a dozen collections in all including the African American Photo Collection, the Alliance for Guidance of Rural Youth records, and the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company archives.

One of the most useful collections was the Alliance for Guidance of Rural Youth. Although the Alliance was primarily a vocational guidance service organization, it sought to address several issues affecting poor, rural young people in the first half of the twentieth century including health issues. I found several documents from the collection related to health campaigns and the barriers to health for black people in the South. For example, a note in the 1934 National Conference on Negro Education proceedings indicated that “environmental rather than racial factors” compromised black health including low income, insufficient housing, and limited access to hospitals, preventive care, and recreational facilities. As it relates to black women’s health, the collection describes some of the difficulties black women had in accessing health information and clinics for their obstetric needs. The collection also contains sources on black unemployment, the black nursing profession, diet and malnutrition, and leisure during the New Deal era.

Additional records at the Library on black health in the twentieth century include William J. Covington’s physician account books and the thesis, Black Health in Segregated Durham.

Post contributed by Ava Purkiss, PhD candidate, University of Texas at Austin and 2012-2013 Franklin Travel Grant recipient.

Audiovisual Materials, Franklin Research Center, From Our Collections, New Finding Aids, Technical Stuff

“No car, no money, no food…just me.”

In the mid 1980s, Duke history student Joseph Sinsheimer interviewed veterans of the fight for voting rights in early-1960s Mississippi. The generational distance between the interviews and the subject worked in Sinsheimer’s favor: his narrators had gained the perspective of years but many still had their youth, with memory intact, and were ready to talk at length of their experiences. The collection guide to these remarkable interviews is a roll call of Civil Rights Movement leadership in the deep South:  C.C. Bryant, Robert Moses, Lawrence Guyot, Willie Peacock, Hollis Watkins and others detail Mississippi’s struggle through stories of their involvement.

Andrew Young in Mississippi, 1963
Andrew Young during Mississippi’s Freedom Summer, 1963. From the Joseph Sinsheimer Papers.

As we digitize the audiocassettes that Sinsheimer used to record the interviews, one story immediately stands out. Activist Sam Block’s retelling of how he came to be involved in the movement is a coming-of-age story informed by the death of Emmett Till and galvanized by a confrontation with a white customer at his uncle’s service station. His subsequent recruitment into the Movement via the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and his training at Highlander Folk School, were prologue to the courage Block demonstrated when he asked Robert Moses to drop him in Greenwood, Mississippi, with “no car, no money, no food…just me.”

Listen here: Sam Block interviewed by Joseph Sinsheimer

BlockTape_Sinsheimer

Post contributed by Craig Breaden, Audiovisual Archivist in the Technical Services Dept.

Franklin Research Center, From Our Collections

In Memoriam: Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, 1918-2013

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Perhaps no world leader in recent time has served as a symbol for his country and cause than Nelson Mandela. We honor his life and legacy by sharing some of our materials related to his impact on the world.

“I have done my duty to my People and South Africa,” pamphlet by Nelson Mandela, 1962, Leroy T. Walker Africa News Service Archive
“I have done my duty to my People and South Africa,” pamphlet by Nelson Mandela, 1962. Leroy T. Walker Africa News Service Archive

 

South African provincial election ballots, 1994, Nelson Mandela is listed as the candidate for the African National Congress
South African provincial election ballots, 1994. Nelson Mandela is listed as the candidate for the African National Congress.

 

“Nelson Mandela’s Address to the US Congress,” article June 1990, Leroy T. Walker Africa News Service Archive
“Nelson Mandela’s Address to the US Congress,” article June 1990. Leroy T. Walker Africa News Service Archive.

 

“Mandela Comes Home,” Time Magazine, Feb. 1990, Leroy T. Walker Africa News Service Archive
“Mandela Comes Home,” Time Magazine, Feb. 1990. Leroy T. Walker Africa News Service Archive.

Post contributed by John Gartrell, director of the John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture.

Franklin Research Center, From Our Collections

The African Americans: Rubenstein Recap #6

Each Tuesday, PBS is showing the next installment of a six-part series, The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross. Written and narrated by Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the documentary traces African American history from the shores of West Africa to the election of Barack Obama. Join us each week as we feature documents from the John Hope Franklin Research Center that resonate with the previous week’s episode.

The final episode of The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross, “A More Perfect Union (1968 – 2013),” explored African Americans’ strides in the wake of the civil rights movement against the backdrop of deeply rooted inequalities that persist into the present. The extraordinary civil rights gains of the 1960s did little to undo the economic barriers facing black Americans. Black power – the dream to empower African Americans political and economically – became the rallying cry of the 1970s. During that decade, the Black Panther Party for Self Defense started community programs in Oakland, CA, while cultural nationalists embraced African heritage and art to spread the message that black was beautiful.

The Gwen Lewis Afro-American Company, a dance company in Oakland, was part of a flourishing black arts movement in the 1970s that saw reclaiming African heritage as part of the liberation struggle.
The Gwen Lewis Afro-American Company, a dance company in Oakland, was part of a flourishing black arts movement in the 1970s that saw reclaiming African heritage as part of the liberation struggle. Walter J. Taylor Papers, 1934 – 2000.

Affirmative action programs gave some African Americans the chance to attend elite colleges and climb corporate ladders and helped fuel a growing black middle class.

The Black Student Alliance at Duke was formed in 1969 and continued to provide support and represent the interest of African American students throughout the following decades. This 1981 newsletter, called The Grapevine, reminding black students that they are part of a community and urging them to reach out to both black faculty and black workers on Duke’s Campus.
The Black Student Alliance at Duke was formed in 1969 and continued to provide support and represent the interest of African American students throughout the following decades. This 1981 newsletter, called The Grapevine, reminding black students that they are part of a community and urging them to reach out to both black faculty and black workers on Duke’s Campus. Black Student Alliance records, 1969 – 2006.

But throughout the 1980s, the majority of black Americans found no escape from the poverty and unemployment that confined them to abandoned inner cities and rural areas.

 

This list of observations drawn up by the Black Caucus, a labor group focused on African American workers, in 1984 laid out the tremendous barriers facing black workers twenty years after the civil rights movement.
This list of observations drawn up by the Black Caucus, a labor group focused on African American workers, in 1984 laid out the tremendous barriers facing black workers twenty years after the civil rights movement. Theresa El-Amin Papers, 1960s – 2010.

 

This 1987 calendar, published by the Black Seed organization, maps out the progression of the black liberation struggle. After the rising poverty and drug wars of the 1980s, the arms of the clock read that it’s revolution time.
This 1987 calendar, published by the Black Seed organization, maps out the progression of the black liberation struggle. After the rising poverty and drug wars of the 1980s, the arms of the clock read that it’s revolution time. Theresa El-Amin Papers, 1960s – 2010.

Ronald Reagan’s War on Drugs then targeted poor black neighborhoods and sent hundreds of thousands of black men to prison with harsh sentencing laws, a reality that lead to numerous legal battles in the last thirty years. Yet when Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, he fulfilled the dreams of centuries of African Americans. But as the effects of the disaster of Hurricane Katrina (2005) and controversy over the death of Trayvon Martin (2013) made clear, continuing racial inequality run deeper than one black president could solve.

Post contributed by Karlyn Forner, John Hope Franklin Research Center Graduate Intern.

Franklin Research Center, From Our Collections

The African Americans: Rubenstein Recap #5

Each Tuesday, PBS is showing the next installment of a six-part series, The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross. Written and narrated by Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the documentary traces African American history from the shores of West Africa to the election of Barack Obama. Join us each week as we feature documents from the John Hope Franklin Research Center that resonate with the previous week’s episode.

From the outbreak of war in Europe to the chants of black power in Mississippi, Episode 5: Rise! (1940 – 1968), told the story of how African Americans came together in a mass movement for freedom. During World War II, black citizens used the rallying cry of patriotism to demand both victory abroad and victory at home over racism. However, Jim Crow followed black soldiers overseas, while the South’s commitment to white supremacy only grew deeper.

In 1940, Claudia Jones, a black woman and a member of the communist party, wrote about the United States’ history of racial discrimination and its influence on the war in Jim Crow in Uniform. Claudia Jones. Jim Crow in Uniform. New York: New Age Publishers, 1940.
In 1940, Claudia Jones, a black woman and a member of the communist party, wrote about the United States’ history of racial discrimination and its influence on the war in Jim Crow in Uniform. Claudia Jones. Jim Crow in Uniform. New York: New Age Publishers, 1940.

But the mobilization of black veterans and activists fueled new possibilities. Shortly after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision struck down segregation, black men and women in Montgomery took to the streets, demanding an end to racial discrimination on the city’s buses.

Brown v. Board decision marked the culmination of nearly two decades of effort by the NAACP to legally dismantle segregation. In this June 1954 letter to historian John Hope Franklin, the assistant counsel of the NAACP expresses his thanks to Franklin as one of the many who contributed to the landmark decision. John Hope Franklin papers.
Brown v. Board decision marked the culmination of nearly two decades of effort by the NAACP to legally dismantle segregation. In this June 1954 letter to historian John Hope Franklin, the assistant counsel of the NAACP expresses his thanks to Franklin as one of the many who contributed to the landmark decision. John Hope Franklin Papers. Click to Enlarge.

With Martin Luther King Jr. and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) serving key leadership roles, nonviolent protests and voter registration drives spread across the South.

AAMR, 5, FranklinJohnHope002
Faith Holsaert, a white SNCC member, was an organizer in Southwest Georgia during the early 1960s. In this letter to a friend, she describes the multitude of difficulties – personal, physical, and political – that movement activists faced in the rural South. Faith Holsaert Papers. Click to Enlarge.

The brutal retaliation against protesters was broadcast into America’s living rooms. For the first time since Reconstruction, the federal government stood to protect the civil rights of black Americans. As nonviolence and federal action failed to uproot black poverty and exclusion, a rising consciousness of black power in the late sixties pushed the freedom struggle in new directions.

AAMR, 5, HolsaertFaith001
In The Angry Children of Malcolm X (1966), Julius Lester discusses the failure of nonviolence and argues that black power, or self-sufficiency and self-government for black people, was the only direction for African Americans to turn. Faith Holsaert papers.

Post contributed by Karlyn Forner, John Hope Franklin Research Center, Graduate Intern