Events, Exhibits, Human Rights Archive

Opening Reception for Farmworkers and Food Exhibits

Date: Sept. 20, 2012
Time: 5:00 p.m.
Place: Rare Book Room, Perkins Library
Contact: Patrick Stawski, patrick.stawski(at)duke.edu

Three new library exhibitions at Duke explore the human experience of farmworkers and the history of a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving their lives.

For twenty years, Student Action with Farmworkers (SAF) has worked to bring together students, community members, and farmworkers in the Southeast to work for justice in the agricultural system. What began as a small group of Duke Public Policy students documenting farmworker conditions has since grown to an independent nonprofit with a national impact. The organization’s papers are held by Duke’s Human Rights Archive in the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

The first of the exhibits, Student Action with Farmworkers: 20 Years of Growing Farmworker Activists, is located in the Perkins Library Gallery and features documentary photos, protest signs, campaign materials, and more items from SAF’s history. An adjacent exhibit on The Art of SAF demonstrates the organization’s use of creative arts in education and outreach. And in the nearby Rubenstein Library Photography Gallery, Documenting the Politics of Food features photographs of American agriculture and agricultural labor from the Rubenstein Library’s documentary photography collections.

All three exhibits reflect historical and contemporary concerns with student activism, access to safe and healthy food, organized labor, and immigration. The exhibits run through December 9, 2012.

An opening reception for the exhibits will be held at 5:00 p.m. on Thursday, September 20, in the Rare Book Room of Duke’s Perkins Library on Duke’s West Campus. The reception, which will feature Latin American food and live music, is free and open to the public.

“Contrary to the perception of some, Duke students have a rich and impressive legacy of progressive activism,” said Robin Kirk, co-director of the Duke Human Rights Center. “No group symbolizes this more effectively than Student Action with Farmworkers. This feisty group has made a real difference in the lives of farmworkers, normally invisible and largely forgotten by all of us who benefit from their backbreaking work. The partnership between the Human Rights Archive and SAF brings this history into view at a time when the issues involved—fair wages, immigration, and safety for these important workers—are at the forefront of a presidential campaign.”

The exhibits are co-sponsored by SAF, the Duke University Libraries, the Center for Documentary Studies, the Franklin Humanities Institute BorderWorks Lab, the Duke University Service Learning Program, and the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation.

These exhibits are part of a larger series of events around the state celebrating the 20th anniversary of Student Action with Farmworkers, including a portable mural display and oral history interviews with National Public Radio’s StoryCorps. More information can be found at www.saf-unite.org or http://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/human-rights.

Events, Franklin Research Center, New at the Rubenstein Library

Celebrating the John Hope Franklin Papers

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John Hope Franklin and Alfred Moss edit from Slavery to Freedom
John Hope Franklin and Alfred Moss edit a new edition of From Slavery to Freedom in 1986.

We are pleased to announce a major addition to the John Hope Franklin Papers.  This gift includes over 300 boxes of papers and other materials belonging to late historian and Duke professor John Hope Franklin.

Franklin is widely credited with transforming the study of American history through his scholarship, while helping to transform American society through his activism. He is best known for his ground-breaking history From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African-Americans (1947) and for his leadership on President Clinton’s 1997 National Advisory Board on Race.

Franklin donated a small collection of his personal papers to Duke in 2003. This large addition, donated by Franklin’s son and daughter-in-law John Whittington Franklin and Karen Roberts Franklin, completes the archive of one of the twentieth century’s most distinguished public scholars.

After receiving a doctorate from Harvard in 1941, John Hope Franklin taught at St. Augustine’s University, North Carolina Central University, Howard University, Brooklyn College, University of Chicago, and Duke University—breaking many racial barriers along the way. Deeply involved in the Civil Rights movement, he worked with Thurgood Marshall on the Brown v. Board of Education case and joined protestors in the march led by Martin Luther King, Jr., from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. He was the recipient of more than 100 honorary degrees, and President Clinton awarded him the Medal of Freedom in 1995. He died in Durham, North Carolina, in 2009.

The Franklin Papers include a selection of photographs of John Hope Franklin and his family.

The donation of papers includes diaries, correspondence, manuscripts of writings and speeches, awards and honors, extensive research files, photographs, and video recordings. The collection also includes materials that trace the Franklin family’s personal history, including their long involvement with the civil rights struggle in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Two letters from Thurgood Marshall and Terry Sanford from the John Hope Franklin Papers.

The papers will be held in the John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture, part of the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke.  The papers will open for research after conservation review and archival processing are complete. The opening will be announced on the Rubenstein Library’s website.

“John Hope Franklin always wanted his papers to have an academic home where they would get into the hands of students and scholars quickly,” noted John W. Franklin.  “He wanted to make sure that they would be used.  We found such a home for his papers in the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library of the Duke Libraries with a dedicated staff to care for the collection.”

The Duke University Libraries will celebrate the John Hope Franklin papers with a reception on September 14, 2012, at 5:30 p.m. in the Gothic Reading Room of the Rubenstein Library. The event is free and open to the public.

From Our Collections, Students and Interns, University Archives

Three Collection Favorites

In my last blog post, I shared how I was assisting the Duke University Archives in developing record groups for the Duke’s institutional records. You can read that post here.

In the end, we created 32 record groups to represent the history, the administrative departments, and the schools of Duke University. Each group speaks to the breadth of material that tells the story of Duke University and its distinguished alums. While going through each record, and carefully determining its placement in the records groups, I uncovered some fascinating collections. Here are some of my favorites:

1. Sarah P. Duke Gardens Records, 1932-2002. The Duke Gardens is a horticulturist’s sanctuary. As a garden hobbyist, I have enjoyed spending time marveling over its beautiful design of plant life and winding paths. This collection shows the vision of the gardens from the beginning when Mary Duke Biddle donated the land in 1932. Included are blueprints and planting plans that any gardener would relish viewing first hand.

2. Randall Frattini Papers, 1974. University Archives has a copy of Frattini’s eyewitness account of students streaking on campus on the nights of February 28 and March 1, 1974. Albeit comical, this collection also suggests the wide variety of records that document student life at Duke in the Duke University Archives’ collections.

Elizabeth Hatcher Conner on an Explorers Club Outing, ca. late 1930s
Elizabeth Hatcher Conner on an Explorers Club Outing, ca. late 1930s

3. Elizabeth Hatcher Conner Photograph Collection. Elizabeth Hatcher Conner attended the Woman’s College during the late 1930s. During that time, she was an active photographer and she often documented the outdoor adventures of the Explorer’s Club. The Explorer’s Club was a group of faculty and students who use to go hiking throughout North Carolina. Her photos give a glimpse into the lives of students at Duke during this time period. Check out some of her photographs on our Flickr site!

These three collections only scratch the surface of the hundreds of records documenting the institutional memory of the University. If you are interested in learning more about the University’s history including a particular school, student life, or athletics; contact University Archives and they can help you uncover your own record gems.

Post contributed by Ashley Brown, William E. King intern at the Duke University Archives.

Bingham Center, Events, News and Features, Readings and Talks

Make Your Own History Reading, Sept. 19th

Date: Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Time: 3:30 PM
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Laura Micham, 919-660-5828 or laura.m@duke.edu

Cover of Make Your Own HistoryJoin the staff of the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture for a reading from the new anthology Make Your Own History: Documenting Feminist and Queer Activism in the 21st Century (Litwin Books, 2012) with co-editor Kelly Wooten, research services librarian with the Sallie Bingham Center, and contributor Alexis Gumbs, founder of the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind multimedia community school and long-time Bingham Center collaborator.

Light refreshments will be served!

Several other contributors to this volume have Bingham Center connections, including co-editor Lyz Bly, Alison Piepmeier, and Kate Eichhorn, all Mary Lily Research Grant recipients; Sarah Dyer, donor of the ground-breaking Sarah Dyer Zine Collection; and Angela DiVeglia,  former intern.

Make Your Own History has chapters about colleting zines; documenting the LGBT community: the future of collecting electronic and online records; and a look at how the Second Wave continues to contribute to the feminist movement. Read more about this book or buy a copy online from Litwin Books.

Post contributed by Laura Micham, Merle Hoffman Director of the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture.h

Bingham Center, Do Your Research, From Our Collections, Instruction, New at the Rubenstein Library, New Finding Aids, Students and Interns, Technical Stuff

Dwayne Dixon Zine Collection Expands

Cover of Smash Action, no. 3Dwayne Dixon, a graduate student in cultural anthropology at Duke,  recently donated a treasure trove of new titles to the his zine collection, part of the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture.

Dixon wrote in an email to Bingham Center archivists:

While DJing a party last night at a professor’s house, I was told by a faculty member in the Music Dept that my zine collection was being used by a grad instructor teaching a course on punk history. I was so thrilled, as you can imagine, and it inspired me to unbox the last treasured horde of zines. I must confess I held the best in reserve in my initial donation. I have approx. 68 zines that are aesthetically, politically, and creatively rich.  Hand-screened covers, some of the best zine writing ever, and incendiary politics that changed my life.  I want others to be moved, too—by Mimi Nguyen’s Slander zine, by [anonymous’] Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars zine, by the dense tangle of punk and race and gender and a changing America of the last 2 decades.

As Dixon mentions in his note, classes frequently use zines as a resource for learning. As with any other historical manuscript or artifact, zines help illuminate specific aspects of culture through their method of creation and their content. Zine authors use the freedom of the medium to confront important cultural issues as well as to divulge their own reflections and emotions. The handmade nature of zines also allows for more artistic presentations of information, creating visually engaging objects that also serve as reading material.

Cover of A Renegade's Handbook to Love & Sabotage, issue 1While zine culture still exists in a variety of vibrant formats, the movement was at its most powerful from the late 1980’s to the mid-1990’s. During that time, Dixon snapped up a great number of these publications and eventually gifted them to the Bingham Center in 2001 with an initial donation of over a hundred zines. Including the latest addition, the Dixon collection now contains almost two hundred zines chronicling topics such as body image, depression, politics, racial inequality, history, and personal exploration.

The new addition has been added to the finding aid and is now available for research.  Come take a look!

Post contributed by Rosemary K. J. Davis,  Bingham Center volunteer.

From Our Collections, Rare Books, Renovation

Renovation Round-Up

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It has been a busy summer here at Rubenstein Renovation HQ. With the help of the entire Rubenstein staff, we have prepared over 50,000 rare books for the move! These are books that have been reviewed and loaded into acid-free cardboard trays for safe transport to and storage at the Library Service Center.

We have made progress on the archival and manuscript collections front as well, and these collections are now almost 100% ready to move to our swing space and the LSC. Below, please find some highlights of some of the work being done:

  • Oversize Materials: 670 linear feet of oversize materials and flat files have been reviewed and re-packaged for long term storage.

    Archivists Meghan Lyon and Mary Samouelian prepare oversize folders for the move.
  • Ledger-mania: Our Conservation Lab has been working wonders on our extensive collection of ledgers. The bulk of this work has been completed. Our ledgers have never looked better! Read more about the ledgers project on the preservation department’s blog Preservation Underground.
  • Extra Extra!The Rubenstein Newspaper collection is getting enhanced catalog records, better housing and some much needed TLC in preparation for its journey and new life over at the LSC. This has been a multi-team undertaking led by the Rubenstein Print Materials Coordinator, her holdings management team, our colleagues at Perkins Technical Services, and of course the Perkins conservation team.

    Newspapers in new boxes, ready fto ship to the LSC
    Newspapers in new boxes, ready to ship to the LSC
  • Manuscript Box Stabilization: Many of our manuscript collections are housed in flat boxes. To keep things from needlessly shifting during transport we have padded boxes with what will forever be affectionately referred to as “burritos.” These are pieces of folder stock rolled into tubes and wrapped in tissue paper so they stay rolled. Here are the burritos in action.

    Flat manuscript box, padded and ready to move.
  • A new Rubenstein Renovation website is in the works! Stay tuned for an announcement about this site, it will be a one-stop shop for all your renovation news needs.

What’s Next?

We are beginning the home stretch of our move preparation efforts. Materials are starting to be shipped over to the Library Service Center in small but consistent batches now that the Center’s 3rd module is nearly online.

The bulk of our materials will be moving in January and early February 2013. This will be a very busy time at the Rubenstein, so if you are planning on visiting us during this time, please contact us so we can plan ahead for your visit. Don’t forget that the reading room will actually be closed December 17, 2012 – January 6, 2013 so we can move the reading room and our offices over to our temporary location on the 3rd floor of Perkins library. We look forward to welcoming you to swing space on January 7, 2013!

Post contributed by Molly Bragg, Collections Move Coordinator in the Rubenstein Technical Services Dept.

From Our Collections, New Finding Aids, Technical Stuff, University Archives

A Family Affair

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In the University Archives, it is not unusual to interact with students and alumni who have familial ties to Duke. It is not often, however, that we obtain collections with such steep ties to the university like the Dorothy Newsom Rankin Papers. Rankin has the distinction of being the daughter of a Trinity College graduate (Class of 1899), an alumna herself (Class of 1933), a faculty wife, and the mother and grandmother of Dukies.

As I processed the collection, it quickly became obvious that Rankin was an archivist at heart. There were handwritten notes throughout which said “give to the Archives.” She understood and realized the value of what she had accumulated and its significance to preserving and sharing pieces of Duke’s history. The bulk of her collection centers on her father’s time at Trinity and her life as an active and engaged alum.

Her father, D. W. (Dallas Walton) Newsom, edited The Trinity Archive, was elected Phi Beta Kappa, and was a member of 9019, Kappa Alpha, and Sigma Upsilon. He was also a successful orator. Prior to entering Trinity College, he learned a form of shorthand, a skill which provided him the opportunity to work as personal secretary to President John C. Kilgo. Newsom kept a student diary, written in shorthand, which describes his daily activities and provides insight into the life of a Trinity student during the last years of the 19th century. The diary and its typescript translation are part of his papers within this collection, in addition to several of his Trinity College textbooks.

Newsom's diary, in bottom left, with Trinity textbooks from the 1890s.
Newsom’s diary, in bottom left, with Trinity textbooks from the 1890s.

Rankin was elected Phi Beta Kappa, served as senior class president of the Woman’s College as well as May Day Queen her senior year, and was a member of Kappa Delta and the White Duchy.  After graduation, she married Professor Robert Rankin. She was actively involved in university life until her death in 2002. The Woman’s College Class of 1933 gift to the university was the tower which holds “Marse Jack,” the bell on East Campus given by Ben Duke in honor of President Kilgo in 1911. In the early 1980s, some faculty and students lobbied to have the bell moved to West Campus. Rankin argued against this and led an effort to keep the bell at its original location because of its relationship to the history of Trinity College. She was successful in this endeavor. The bell is now housed in Bell Tower Residence Hall on East Campus.

Dorothy Rankin underneath the Marse Jack belltower on East Campus.
Dorothy Rankin underneath the Marse Jack bell tower on East Campus.

We also received as part of the Rankin papers, the Kappa Delta sorority rush jumper, worn by Rankin’s daughter Battle Rankin Robinson (Class of 1959), in circa 1956.

Technical Services Archivist Kim Sims poses with a Kappa Delta sorority jumper from the 1950s.

The Dorothy Newsom Rankin papers are available for use in the University Archives within the Rubenstein Library.  For more information, visit the finding aid.

Post contributed by Kimberly Sims, Technical Services Archivist for University Archives.

Hartman Center, New at the Rubenstein Library, Technical Stuff

Coke in the Jumbo Size, Sir?

The John W. Hartman Center recently acquired the papers of Adrienne Cohen, an advertising copy writer and creative director who worked for several agencies from the 1960s to the 1990s, including Young & Rubicam, McCann-Erickson and a number of agencies in the Atlanta, Ga. area. Ms. Cohen was the recipient of numerous advertising industry awards and was highly regarded in her field.

Adrienne Cohen
Adrienne Cohen in 1974.

She worked on the Coca-Cola account during the early 1960s, and her papers include several pamphlets produced for the food and beverage industry intended to provide sales and comportment training to waitresses. The pamphlets sought to show restaurant and café managers how the wait staff could boost sales through a program called “Plusmanship” that emphasized the waitress’s power of suggestion to guide diners’ menu item selection.  The title quote and image below come from two of the pamphlets.

These materials add to the Hartman Center’s growing collection of sales and sales training literature, and especially materials pertaining to Coca-Cola retailing.

Post contributed by Rick Collier, Technical Services Archivist for the Hartman Center.

From Our Collections, History of Medicine, Students and Interns

Controversy vs. Benefits: Vivisection Items in the History of Medicine Collections

As a volunteer for the History of Medicine (HOM) Collections, one of my projects was to create subject guides for several of the Collections’ strengths. I focused on collection strengths in areas of anesthesia, human sexuality, materia medica, pediatrics, psychiatry, vivisection, and yellow fever. I spent the past few weeks gathering sources and images to highlight the HOM’s interesting collection of vivisection materials, many of which come from the large vivisection pamphlet collection.

A significant amount of the collection features philosophical debates between those who regard surgery on live animals for experimental purposes as cruelty and those who support vivisection for benefits stemming from progress and advancements in medical science (e.g., creation of immunizations and vaccines).

Many photographs and drawings in the vivisection pamphlet collection show how dogs were used as test subjects for medical experiments. In one photograph, it is evident from its posture that a dog that had its pituitary gland removed is undergoing discomfort; the image was taken hours before its death. In another drawing, a dog appears to have had its hind legs bound and one of its forelegs sealed. The caption underneath reads, “They who know the pain of a limb even a short time in a cramped position can imagine the sufferings of this dog.”

 

On the other hand, animal experimentation has played a crucial role in helping to develop immunizations against infectious diseases, such as polio and diphtheria. The photographs below feature children whose lives were saved by antitoxin discovered through medical research using animals. In an attempt to appeal to people’s emotions and gain acceptance for animal experimentation, one of the captions contains a suggestion for others to imagine their own child as one of the pictured victims of infantile paralysis. The question is asked, “Would you hesitate to sacrifice under ether one or more animals if through the knowledge gained the disease could have been prevented, or your child could have recovered without being crippled?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The vivisection controversy brings up other provocative questions: Is animal experimentation justifiable if it results in the possibility of a cure/immunization/vaccine for a disease (e.g., cancer, HIV/AIDS)? Do the benefits of eradicating diseases for humans outweigh the suffering and pain caused to animals in medical research? Does the use of anesthesia make vivisection more acceptable? Are there parallels between animal vivisection and human vivisection as historically conducted by the Nazi and Imperial Japanese armies? Come examine the materials in the History of Medicine Collections and develop your own conclusions.

Post contributed by Christine Cheng, former volunteer for the History of Medicine Collections. Christine is now the Research Services Coordinator for George Mason University Libraries Special Collections & Archives.

Digital Collections, From Our Collections, Students and Interns, TRLN CCC Project, University Archives

Digitizing the LCRM: Duke’s Dept. of African & African-American Studies

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In this month’s update of the CCC Project at Duke University, we are happy to announce the publication online of the records of Duke’s Department of African and African-American Studies.  The items included in this collection document the beginnings of the department, the research and teaching of its faculty members, and the various social and cultural movements occurring within the African-American community during the 1970s and later.  We encourage researchers to peruse the digitized documents, accessible from the collection inventory, to find a host of items sure to add to the scholarship of the long civil rights movement.

Our document spotlight for the month highlights the struggles that the African and African-American Studies Department, then known as the Black Studies Program, experienced in its earliest days.  From its inception in 1969, the Black Studies Program had been offering several courses through adjunct faculty.  Still, the Program lacked a director and its course slate remained minimal, although the Program did offer a major.

In addition, members of the African-American community at Duke contended that the university’s administration did not implement programs to encourage “black cultural representation.”  The document shown below is a draft petition from late 1979 written by members of the African-American community at Duke asking the administration to ameliorate both the academic and cultural issues that hampered the growth of the African-American community at the university.

Draft Petition to Duke Administration Regarding Cultural Representation of the Black Community, 1979
Draft Petition to Duke Administration Regarding Cultural Representation of the Black Community. Department of African and African-American Studies Records, Box 1, folder 30 (File ID daams01030169)

Although we do not have a completed petition in the Department’s records, the goals of the document did eventually become Duke’s policy.  University administration would create new standards to recruit more African-American faculty members.  In addition, the Program would soon become a fully-staffed Department.  In terms of cultural engagement, the establishment of the Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture in 1983 helped to fulfill the demands listed in the petition.  Researchers will now have the opportunity to learn even more about the beginnings of African-American Studies at Duke and how struggles for recognition led to a strong academic and cultural presence on campus.

The grant-funded CCC Project is designed to digitize selected manuscripts and photographs relating to the long civil rights movement. For more about Rubenstein Library materials being digitized through the CCC Project, check out previous progress updates posted here at The Devil’s Tale! 

Post contributed by Josh Hager, CCC Graduate Assistant.

Dispatches from the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Duke University