Category Archives: From Our Collections

Archive of Documentary Arts, Bingham Center, Featured, Franklin Research Center, From Our Collections, New at the Rubenstein Library

Healing and Truth-Telling: Aishah Shahidah Simmons papers

July 30, 2026 Kate Collins Leave a comment

Post contributed by Ren Bickel, Technical Services Archivist for the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture

The Rubenstein Library is pleased to announce that the Aishah Shahidah Simmons papers are now open for research. Simmons is a Black feminist lesbian Buddhist practitioner, dharma teacher, and award-winning writer-filmmaker. Through three decades of cultural work, Simmons has created films which address Black lesbian identity, and sexual violence in Black communities, including her feature-length, award-winning NO! The Rape Documentary (2006). National Book and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker, says of NO!, “If the Black community in the Americas and in the world would heal itself, it must complete the work this film begins.”

Simmons’s Lambda Literary Award-winning anthology, love WITH accountability: Digging Up the Roots of Child Sexual Abuse, brings together diasporic Black child sexual abuse survivors and advocates who, through first-person transformative storytelling, explore child sexual abuse within Black families and communities. Feminist activist and author Gloria Steinem says of love WITH accountability: “With this brave and healing anthology of truth-telling about sexual abuse within Black families, Aishah Shahidah Simmons sets an example for all families.”

The daughter of Civil Rights activists and scholars Michael Simmons and Dr. Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons, and the sister of Grammy Award-winning DJ and record executive Tyree Cinque Simmons (DJ Drama), Simmons grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She is married to Black lesbian trailblazer Sheila Alexander-Reid, founder of Women in the Life. Simmons founded the multi-media company AfroLez ® Productions in 1992 while participating in a scriptwriting workshop at Scribe Video Center taught by her mentor, the late award-winning author and filmmaker Toni Cade Bambara. During the workshop, she wrote Silence…Broken, which she developed into a short film in 1993. The company later produced In My Father’s House (1996), among other films. NO! The Rape Documentary was funded by individual donors, community-based funders, and granting agencies such as the Ford Foundation, Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, and the Valentine Foundation. The film had its world premiere at the 2006 Pan African Film & Arts Festival in Los Angeles, CA. Simmons’s films have been included in film festivals around the world and have been screened by many educational and activist organizations.

Simmons’s writings have been published in media such as USA Today, The Root, Ms. Magazine, The Feminist Wire, The New York Times, Lion’s Roar, Black Perspectives, and Left of Black, as well as in newspapers in Philadelphia and Chicago, among other cities. She has held artist-in-residence and guest faculty appointments at universities such as Williams College, Temple University, Scripps College, Spelman College, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Chicago. Since 1995, she has led over 400 workshops and dialogues in the U.S., Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. She is an Insight Meditation (vipassanā) teacher, including as Resident Teacher at Delaware Valley Insight.

The Aishah Shahidah Simmons papers were acquired as part of the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture, the John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture, and the Archive of Documentary Arts. The collection is comprised of 39 linear feet of materials that document Simmons’s professional career, filmmaking endeavors, and personal life. Researchers will be able to explore Simmons’s writings, correspondence, working files, and an extensive collection of audiovisual materials documenting her life and work. The materials will provide insight into independent filmmaking in the 1990s and 2000s through an intersectional Black feminist lesbian lens and preserve the personal stories of many Black women survivors of sexual violence who courageously chose to speak their truth.

Technical Services Archivist Ren Bickel prepared the collection for research use. Reflecting on Simmons’ papers, she notes, “This collection documents Simmons’s deep commitment to a Black feminist approach to survivor-centered cultural work, especially in her years-long quest to make NO! The Rape Documentary. Researchers will find an array of information about the practical aspects of creating independent documentary films, from securing funding and managing logistics, to writing, filming, and editing. The stories Simmons gathered of Black women survivors’ experiences are powerful and affecting. I’m so excited to see what researchers will discover and how they’ll incorporate the materials into their own writings and projects.”

We are excited to make this singular collection available to students, scholars, and other researchers.

“Placing my papers at Duke marks an important moment in my life and work. As a Black feminist lesbian survivor-healer whose cultural works, writings, and images are survivor-centered and rooted in non-carceral accountability, reaching communities globally, I am grateful that this work will be held with intention across the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture, the John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture, and the Archive of Documentary Arts, accessible to generations who can learn from this work as ground to stand on and build beyond what I could imagine.” – Aishah Shahidah Simmons

Header image: Portrait of Aishah Shahidah Simmons by Studio TSHAY

Featured, From Our Collections, Hartman Center

A History of French Marketing with Draeger Frères

June 4, 2026 Leah Tams

Post contributed by Brandee Newkirk, Processing Intern for the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History.

During my time as an intern for the Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History at Duke University’s Rubenstein Library, I had the opportunity to process the Draeger Frères printing collection. While at first glance this collection seemed distant from my dissertation research that focuses on diet and fitness culture among Black women between the 1920s and the 2000s, I was pleasantly surprised by the collection’s breadth and depth. The collection includes hundreds of items that reflect an almost century-long span of French’s marketing history, and it touches upon so many research interests that even some of its items contributed to my own research.

Draeger Frères was one of the leading, high-end publishing companies in France for close to 100 years. Founded in 1866 by Charles Draeger as Draeger & Lesieur, the company began expanding its clientele through participation in the 1889 International Exposition, which featured several of its specialty self-promotional color catalogs.[1] After the death of Charles Draeger in 1899, Draeger’s wife, Amélie Bagdassard Draeger, took over the company with their sons Georges, Maurice, and Robert, keeping Draeger Frères a family business.[2] By the interwar era, Draeger Frères had reached its peak and was known as one of the pioneers of marketing and advertising in France. This success led many companies to work with Draeger Frères; among them are Coty, Hermès, Renault, Printemps, and Ford.[3] This success also drew many artists to begin their careers with Draeger Frères, including René Vincent, Charles Martin, Man Ray, and R. Ernst, among countless others.[4]

Draeger Frères achieved success through its innovative color printing techniques, established by Charles Draeger’s early work. The printing company became known for its half-color and two-color printing processes and, by the 1930s, invented Procédé 301 (Process 301), which combined methods of three-shot color photography, color correction, and photogravure printing to create bright, colorful photographs and illustrations in its printed catalogs.[5] This patented technique quickly propelled the printing company, as many companies desired brochures and catalogs that best captured their products. Printing for the Draeger Frères company ended in the 1970s, as large-scale print advertising began to dwindle, yet the Draeger brand remains active in France today.[6]

The collection of industries, companies, artists, and governments, including the Vichy regime, featured in Draeger Frères’ printed brochures, catalogs, and art books displays the topical reach of advertising and marketing. For my own research, which focuses on diet and weight culture among Black women in the early 20th century, Draeger Frères’ extensive work producing catalogs for many fashion stores and clothing companies in France gave me deeper insights into French beauty and clothing trends. Many elite Black figures began to travel to France in the 1920s due to the country’s more accommodating attitudes toward Black Americans, including artists such as Laura Wheeler Waring and W.E.B. Du Bois, and French beauty ideals regarding a woman’s figure began influencing Black culture. Draeger Frères’s collection of catalogs for the High Life Tailor company, a large-scale French clothing store, became a primary resource for my research.

The Draeger Frères printing collection at the Hartman Center demonstrates the vast intellectual range found in advertising and marketing materials. From fascist regimes to 20th-century automobile marketing, researchers can use this collection and pull at the historical threads that linger within the oeuvre of Draeger Frères’ printed works, which present a distinctive narrative to French and even global consumer histories. This collection is already available to researchers at the Rubenstein Library.

Footnotes:

[1] Kim Timby, “Draeger Frères: Tradition and Innovation in the Printing of Art and Advertising,” in Factory Photobooks. The Self-Representation of the Factory in Photographic Publications, ed. Bart Sorgedrager (nai010, 2023), https://hal.science/hal-04308687. Background information on Draeger Frères can also be found on their company website: https://fr.checkout.draegerparis.com/pages/notre-histoire.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Draeger Frѐres printing collection, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.

[4] Ibid.

[5] See Box 14, Item # 4, For a more detailed description and finding aid see: https://archives.lib.duke.edu/catalog/draegerfreres

[6] See boxes 7,8,9, and 12, Item #s 170-213

From Our Collections

Palatable Poisons: The Dark History of Patent Medicine

May 13, 2026 Kate Collins

Post contributed by Jennifer Dai, Josiah Charles Trent History of Medicine Intern 2025-2026

Patent Medicines, also known as proprietary medicines, nostrums, cure-alls, or snake oils, were popular medications that took advantage of the lack of federal regulations in the 1800s and early 1900s. The name, originating from the “Royal Letters Patent” in England, is a misnomer in modern American language, as no patent was given to these medicines. Instead, they were proprietary, meaning their ingredients were kept secret. The creators of these medicines were not doctors or pharmacists, but businessmen with often no medical training.

The perfect storm of a lack of regulation, low income, and the high cost to see physicians led to patent medicine’s rise during the second half of the 19^th century and early 20^th century. A large quantity of the Rubenstein Library’s examples of patent medicine materials sits around the turn of the century, specifically before the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was created and the Pure Food and Drug Act was passed in 1906. Prior to these regulations (don’t worry we will talk about them shortly), a hallmark of these medications is that they often had outrageous claims, for example we have Dr. Sibly’s Re-Animating Solar Tincture which claimed to cure death. Some other claims were to cure cancer, consumption (tuberculosis), epilepsy, and ever the popular “cure-all”.

Seven different "Hazeltine's Pocket Book Almanac" from varioys years in the 1880s and 1890s, all with colorful illustrated covers — Piso’s Cure for Consumption: Hazeltine’s Pocket Almanacs

Another unfortunate hallmark was dangerous ingredients. The lack of regulation around narcotics lead to Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup, a syrup meant to soothe babies, containing morphine and alcohol. Other examples of these dangers include Coca-Cola, which was originally advertised as a brain tonic and contained cocaine and Piso’s Cure for Consumption which contained chloroform, cannabis, opium, and alcohol

Cover of Dr. John Bull's Illustrated Annual for the year 1883 — Dr. John Bull’s Almanac

(although they did dispute the cannabis claim). This unregulated and unlabeled use of narcotics was especially dangerous for children. Around the turn of the century, 2 children died after drinking bottles of Dr. Bull’s Cough Syrup that was left within their reach.

With the publication of The Jungle by Upton Sinclair in 1905, numerous deaths, and consistent articles shedding light on the dangers of patent medicine in Collier’s Weekly by Samuel Hopkins Adams, it was clear that changes needed to be made. In 1906 the FDA was created, and the Pure Food and Drug Act was passed. This did not regulate ingredients but required that medicines be accurately labeled and show accurate therapeutic claims.

Although it was a great start, the act was an imperfect solution to a complex problem. This became glaringly apparent in 1937 when around 107 people died after using Elixir of Sulfanilamide, a medication that contained diethylene glycol (used today as an industrial solvent). Because of this, the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act was passed in 1938 which tightened restrictions and increased oversight. Some notable additions in this act were that drugs had to prove they were safe before advertising could begin, and the FDA had more power to prosecute manufacturers for wrongdoing.

Book opening with an illustration using bottles to compare the amount of alcohol in liquors and in patent medicines. — The Great American Fraud by Samuel Hopkins Adams

These regulations, resulting from the dark history of patent medicine, are what allow us to have safe prescription and over the counter medications today. I urge everyone to consider the past when looking to the future; we must learn from our mistakes, or we are doomed to repeat them.

Come see the exhibit:
May 5, 2026 – October 2026
Josiah Charles Trent History of Medicine Room
Duke University Libraries
Durham, North Carolina

Further Reading:

Weill Cornell Samuel J. Wood Library

“Nervine” and Knavery: The Life and Times of Dr. Miles Medical Company by Rudolph J.R. Peritz

The Great American Fraud: Articles on the Nostrum Evil and Quackery by Samuel Hopkins Adams

The New York Historical

John Hooper’s Female Pills

Native American Imagery Reinforcing Colonial Stereotypes

Featured, From Our Collections, New Finding Aids

Marginalized, but Not Marginal: Accounting for Enslaved Lives in the Ledgers of a New Orleans Merchant

May 6, 2026 Leah Tams

Post contributed by Reina Henderson, PhD, Eleanor Jantz Processing and Cataloging Intern

At first glance, the accounting books of E.L. Bernard look like any other set of nineteenth-century commercial records. The pages are filled with the looping script of professional clerks and the endless columns of numbers that drove the economy of antebellum New Orleans. They list shipments of French wine and invoices for mahogany furniture. They track the price of cotton and the arrival of ships from Bordeaux. It is a picture of sophisticated international trade. However, if you look closer at the columns of debits and credits, a much darker reality begins to emerge. These books do not just record the movement of goods. They record the systematic commodification of human beings.

Account books like these have long carried an aura of authority. Ledgers are presented as neutral instruments of fact where emotion falls away, and truth is reduced to figures that can be verified and balanced. We’re inclined to trust them precisely because they appear unadorned. Numbers seem to tell us what happened without interpretation. However, this promise of neutrality is itself fiction. Ledgers do not simply record economic life. In a place like New Orleans, one of the most profitable ports of the nineteenth century, they actively shaped it. They organized human activity into categories of value and loss. What they choose to name, how they name it, and what they render interchangeable all reveal the moral architecture of the world they helped sustain.

Accounting for Human Lives

The most chilling aspect of the Bernard ledgers is how mundane the entries are. In a General Ledger dating from 1815 to 1826, the merchant tracks his financial assets. On one page he lists his shares in the State Bank. On the very same spread, he lists an account titled “Nègres de Compte à 1/3.”

This was a joint-venture investment account. E.L. Bernard was not just buying enslaved people for his own use. He was speculating on them and trading them. The ledger shows that he held a one-third financial interest in a partnership designed to buy and sell human beings for profit. The debits represent the purchase price of men and women. The credits represent their sale. To the merchant and his accountant, these individuals were indistinguishable from the bales of cotton or barrels of sugar listed on the subsequent pages. They were simply inventory.

“Armantine, Her Child”

While the earlier ledgers show the cold mathematics of the slave trade, the later volumes reveal the daily reality of labor and control. In an account book from the 1850s, we find the name Armantine. She was an enslaved woman hired by Bernard from her owner for temporary work. The entry is brief but devastating. It records a payment for “Armantine, son enfant,” or Armantine and her child.

This single line item exposes the total dehumanization of the system. Bernard paid for the pair as a single unit. The child is listed not as a person but as an appendage to their mother. The age of Armantine’s child is impossible to determine from the record. Like so many children born into slavery, the child appears only fleetingly in the archive, visible only insofar as their dependency affected the price of their mother’s labor. The line does, however, imply the child was too young to be separated from her and so the business simply absorbed the cost of the child’s presence as a necessary expense attached to Armantine. Other entries show Bernard paying for “robes and souliers” or dresses and shoes for Armantine. These were not gifts. They were maintenance costs for a rented asset. In other words, supplies.

The Hidden Labor of the Port

The ledgers also challenge our image of slavery as a purely agricultural institution. E.L. Bernard was a city merchant and his books show that urban slavery was the engine of the New Orleans port. We see payments for enslaved men named Hilaire and Edouard. They were hired for “armement” or the outfitting of ships. These men were the ones loading the cargo and repairing the rigging and preparing the vessels that connected New Orleans to New York and France. They were skilled laborers whose time was rented out by the day or week.

When we read the manifests of the ships Mohawk or Neptune in the 1830s journals, we see lists of “Colonial Goods” like coffee and indigo arriving from the Caribbean and bales of cotton leaving for New York. It is easy to see these merely as commodities, but the names in the ledger remind us that every pound of sugar and every bale of cotton was the product of enslaved labor. The “Maison de Noir” or slave quarters mentioned in the expense accounts was just as essential to Bernard’s business as his warehouse or his counting house.

Recovering the Names

Documents like Bernard’s ledgers are difficult to read. They reduce complex human lives to prices and dates. However, they are also vital. They provide proof of the individuals who built the wealth of the Atlantic world. Armantine and her child. Marthe. Hilaire. Edouard. Nicaise. The names of enslaved people often appear in spaces such as these, in the margins of a white merchant’s account book. Whole lives, thoughts, and actions caught in a line or two of text from which entire stories can and should be brought into view. Recovering such names from documents like these is an act that insists that accounting records be read not only for what they quantify but for whom they erase. The ledgers of merchants like Bernard remind us that modern systems of finance and record keeping were built alongside and through human commodification, a legacy that continues to shape how institutions measure value, responsibility, and loss today. By studying these ledgers and telling the stories of the people trapped within their columns, we can begin to acknowledge the human cost buried in the archives of western economies.

Events, Exhibits, Featured, From Our Collections

5th Annual Black Lives in Archives Day – April 10, 2026

April 3, 2026 John Gartrell

Post contributed by John B. Gartrell, Director, John Hope Franklin Research Center

Black Lives in Archives Day

Friday, April 10, 2026

11am-3pm

Gothic Reading Room, Rubenstein Library 2nd Floor

Please join us for the Rubenstein Library’s 5th annual Black Lives in Archives Day on Friday, April 10. This one-day immersive, “please touch” exhibition will spotlight collections from the Rubenstein Library’s rare and special items that document Black life and culture. This event is free and open to the public.

Archive of Documentary Arts, Featured, From Our Collections, Human Rights Archive

“Her Fight, His Name: The Story of Gwen Carr and Eric Garner” Wins 2026 Rubenstein Library Human Rights Digital Storytelling Award

March 27, 2026 Kate Collins

The 2026 Human Rights Digital Storytelling Award, presented by the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University, has been awarded to Her Fight, His Name: The Story of Gwen Carr and Eric Garner, directed by Brad Bailey in association with Gwen Carr and the Mothers of the Movement.

The short documentary centers on Gwen Carr’s enduring fight for justice following the 2014 death of her son, Eric Garner, after being pinned to the ground in a chokehold by a police officer in Staten Island. The New York City medical examiner stated the cause of death as a homicide. Garner’s final words, “I can’t breathe,” became a rallying cry in protests against police violence and systemic racism across the United States. Filmed over several years, the documentary places Carr’s voice at its core, tracing her transformation from grieving mother to nationally recognized advocate for accountability and human rights.

Through intimate, long-term engagement with Carr and her family, Her Fight, His Name documents her evolution from private citizen to public advocate. The film follows her testimony, organizing, and national advocacy work, offering viewers rare access to the sustained emotional and political labor required to pursue accountability. By foregrounding Carr’s perspective, the documentary restores depth and humanity to a story often reduced to viral footage.

The film traces a complex history of love, loss, family, and community. As Carr continues her fight for accountability, she endures the loss of her daughter and later her husband, revealing how private grief and public struggle unfold side by side. Yet the documentary also shows how activism generates new forms of care and solidarity. Through the communities she builds and joins, Carr finds strength, connection, and joy. In honoring this multifaceted portrait, the award recognizes the power of documentary storytelling to sustain moral witness over time.

Director Brad Bailey

Director Brad Bailey said, “Documentary filmmaking is, at its core, an act of preserving memory. Through years of listening and filming with Gwen Carr, this project sought to create a lasting record of family, community, and lived experience. My hope is that the film helps carry these stories forward so they remain part of how we understand our recent past.”

Patrick Stawski, Human Rights Archivist at Duke, said, “While the film presents a powerful portrait of Gwen Carr’s advocacy, only a small portion of the interviews appear on screen. Through this award, the full interviews will be preserved at the Rubenstein Library and made available to students and researchers, ensuring that the deeper record of lived experience and testimony remains accessible for generations.”

Caitlin Margaret Kelly, Curator for the Archive of Documentary Arts, added, “We are excited to add this body of work and interviews to the archive at Duke University, where new generations of students and researchers can learn first-hand from the interviews with Gwen Carr and follow the unfolding of the film Her Fight, His Name through Brad Bailey’s work.”

The Rubenstein Library will be inviting Brad Bailey to Duke and Durham for a community screening and conversation of the film in fall semester 2026. Exact date and location will be announced later this year.

The Rubenstein Library’s Human Rights Digital Storytelling Award is co-sponsored by the Human Rights Archive and the Archive of Documentary Arts. It supports outstanding documentary artists and activists exploring themes of human rights and social justice. The award aims to expand the library’s digital documentary holdings while ensuring long-term preservation and access.

The award honors projects that transcend simple information sharing. It celebrates digital storytellers who create deeply contextualized, multi-sensory works that may include still images, moving images, oral histories, soundscapes, and documentary writing.

Winners receive $3,500 and are invited to present their work at Duke University, where they collaborate with archivists to preserve their materials.

The David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library has a longstanding commitment to human rights and the documentary arts. Its collections represent the work of global creators and document the power of documentary to inspire action and transform the world.

From Our Collections

2026 Juan E. Méndez Book Award for Human Rights in Latin America

March 24, 2026 John Gartrell

Post contributed by Patrick A. Stawski, Human Rights Archivist

A Flower Traveled in My Blood: The Incredible True Story of the Grandmothers Who Fought to Find a Stolen Generation of Children by Haley Cohen Gilliland is the winner of the 2026 Juan E. Méndez Book Award for Human Rights in Latin America.

Gilliland will accept the award and talk about her work on April 7, 2026, from 5:00pm-6:30pm at the Ahmadieh Family Lecture Hall, Smith Warehouse, Bay 4. More information about the event can be found on the DHRC@FHI website.

2026 Juan E. Mendez Book Award for Human Rights in Latin America Winner, Cohen Gilliland

This is the seventeenth year of this prestigious award. The award is supported by the Duke Human Rights Center@the Franklin Humanities Institute, Duke’s Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and the Human Rights Archive at the Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

In A Flower Traveled in My Blood, Gilliland documents how the Argentine Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo set out to find their grandchildren, abducted by the military junta in the 1970s and 80s. With determination and creativity, the abuelas marched, confronted the authorities, allied with local and international human rights groups, and pioneered the use of genetic testing to find their loved ones. This is despite the intense grief of losing their adult children, “disappeared” by the security forces.

Deborah Jakubs, a judge and University Librarian Emerita at Duke University and historian of Latin America, wrote that the book is “exceptional.”

Flower Traveled book cover — Book cover for A Flower Traveled in My Blood

“Meticulously researched and beautifully written, Gilliland’s book traces the rise of the Abuelas’ activism by focusing on the life and death of one young woman, Patricia Roisinblit, the only child of Rosa and Benjamín… A Flower Traveled in My Blood reads like a mystery novel, as Patricia’s story and those of other desaparecidos unfold against the backdrop of military repression and societal unrest. One of the book’s many strengths is the author’s careful attention to the complex ethical, legal, and emotional aspects of attempting to return lost children to families that are completely new to them.”

Christine Folch, also a judge and the Bacca Foundation Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University, wrote, “Ultimately, ‘who am I?’ is the fundamental question of the book. I particularly appreciated that the author does not sugar coat or hide the dilemmas faced by adult grandchildren who now have to grapple with whether to accuse the only parents they have known.

The other judges included Prof. James Chappel, a member of the DHRC@FHI executive committee and the Gilhuly Family Associate Professor in the History Department at Duke; and Robin Kirk, a former co-director of the DHRC@FHI and Professor of the Practice in the Cultural Anthropology Department at Duke.

When notified of the award, Gilland stated, “I am deeply honored to receive the Juan E. Méndez prize, and to be associated with Professor Méndez and his enduring legacy of human rights advocacy. It is especially meaningful to receive this recognition from Duke, whose library holdings on human rights in Latin America are unparalleled, and which I frequently and gratefully consulted for this project. I would like to dedicate this award to the grandmothers and grandchildren who trusted me with their stories and who have remained relentless in their fight for truth, justice, and the preservation of memory.”

First awarded in 2008, the Méndez Human Rights Book Award honors the best current non-fiction book published in English on human rights, democracy, and social justice in contemporary Latin America. The books are evaluated by a panel of judges drawn from academia, journalism, human rights, and public policy circles.

For more information on the award, event, and previous winners, see https://humanrights.fhi.duke.edu/current-programs/juan-e-mendez-book-award/.

For more information about A Flower Traveled in My Blood, see https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/A-Flower-Traveled-in-My-Blood/Haley-Cohen-Gilliland/9781668017142

Featured, From Our Collections, History of Medicine, Travel Grants

Sterilization and the State

March 19, 2026 Kate Collins

Post contributed by Jessica Brabble, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, College of William & Mary . Jessica was a recipient of an Elon Clark History of Medicine Travel Grant.

Excerpt from a pamphlet under the heading "Human Sterilization" discussing eugenicist ideas including "race degeneration." The font and design seem from the early 20th century — A pamphlet, published by the Human Betterment Foundation, explaining why human sterilization is “needed”. Found in the John S. Bradway Papers.

Shortly after the end of World War II, some of North Carolina’s most powerful businessmen and physicians felt the state was facing a major problem. The state’s young men faced a high rate of rejection by Selective Service during the War for physical disabilities or “mental causes,” leading to worries that Carolinian men were inferior (Herbert Clarence Bradshaw Papers). In response, Winston-Salem native James G. Hanes and Procter & Gamble heir, Clarence Gamble, joined forces to create the Human Betterment League of North Carolina.

Thanks to the very generous History of Medicine travel grant, I recently traveled to Durham to consult collections on eugenics and public health at the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library for my dissertation, “’Her Best Crop’: Eugenics, Agricultural Programming, and Child Welfare in North Carolina, 1900-1964.” My research analyzes the connection between agriculture and eugenics in the first half of the twentieth century. I’m particularly interested in how organizations like the Better Babies Bureau and 4-H integrated ideas about eugenics into programming offered to rural youth. Many of the individuals in charge of such programming were involved in the Human Betterment League, leading me to these documents in the Rubenstein Library.

Founded in 1947, The Human Betterment League of North Carolina was created to address the “concern for disturbing conditions already prevalent [among North Carolina’s men] but brought to public knowledge and attention” by World War II. The organization quickly got to work in studying North Carolina’s population to determine why men were being rejected from the draft at such high rates. According to their studies, there was a “disturbing incidence of mental disabilities” among North Carolina’s children, leading the League to throw their full support behind North Carolina’s sterilization laws (Herbert Clarence Bradshaw Papers). These laws, first passed in 1929 and updated in 1937, allowed the state to sterilize individuals considered “defective” or a “burden” on the state. This intentionally broad definition meant that a wide array of people—including non-white, poor, or disabled people—were targeted.

The Human Betterment League went on to publish a wide variety of pamphlets and advertisements that attempted to positively spin sterilization as a way to prevent “unwanted” children and improve the lives of “defective” patients. One pamphlet touted that “families of the sterilized patients likewise approve almost universally of the operation…many of the feebleminded girls have married after sterilization and these marriages have been reasonably successful” (John S. Bradway Papers). By 1957, more than 575,000 pieces of literature had been distributed by the League.

Color-coded map of North Carolina showing infant mortality by county. — Map of North Carolina Depicting Infant Mortality Rates by County from 1951-1955

Ironically, North Carolina seemed to be facing an infant mortality crisis at the same time as the Human Betterment League was promoting sterilization practices. The above image, found in Elizabeth Roberts Papers, shows us that infant mortality was devastatingly high in the state. Over half of all counties experiencing 30 or more infant deaths per 1,000 live births between 1951-1955, yet the Human Betterment League persisted in campaigning for sterilization well into the 1970s. By 1988, the League had disbanded, but its history is well preserved thanks to places like the Rubenstein Library.

From Our Collections

“I AM… SOMEBODY”: Honoring Jesse Jackson Through the Florence Tate Papers

March 2, 2026 John Gartrell

Post contributed by Krista Bradley, John Hope Franklin Research Center Graduate Intern

Jesse Jackson was a reverend, activist, and political icon from Greenville, South Carolina, who helped shape modern civil rights politics. Rising to national prominence in the 1960s as a protégé of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., he built his career on grassroots organizing, self-pride, community building, and active participation in American democracy. In 1971, he founded Operation PUSH (People United to Serve Humanity), whose mission was “to protect, defend, and gain civil rights by leveling the economic and educational playing fields, and to promote peace and justice around the world.” The organization later evolved into the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, which still operates today. Within Operation PUSH, Jackson became known for his motivational work with Black students, often reciting the poem “I Am Somebody,” written by Atlanta pastor and civil rights leader Reverend William Holmes Borders, Sr. Jackson’s use of the poem gained national attention in his 1972 Sesame Street appearance, where he performed the call-and-response poem with a group of children.

1984 Jesse Jackson campaign poster, Florence Tate Papers, 1960s-2006, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.

By the early 1980s, Jackson had built enough momentum to take a bold step: running for president—and what a historic run it was! In his first presidential campaign, he elevated the idea of a “Rainbow Coalition,” originally developed by Fred Hampton to organize marginalized groups in Chicago and fight racism, poverty, and police brutality. Jackson’s use of the term transformed it into a broader ideology of uniting diverse communities, young and old, and encouraging them to use their voting power to effect positive change. Though he did not win the 1984 Democratic nomination, Jackson’s third-place finish significantly reshaped national conversations about who can wield political influence. Building on this progress, he launched another presidential campaign in 1988, winning several primaries and caucuses—including key victories in Southern states. These victories established him as a serious contender for the Democratic nomination, even though he ultimately finished second. Jesse Jackson’s life’s work is the result of a vivid imagination rooted in fearlessness, pride, and determination. He inspired so many communities across the country, not only through his pursuit of higher office, but also through the doors he dared to open.

group of political buttons — Jesse Jackson presidential campaign buttons, Florence Tate Papers, 1960s-2006, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.

Florence Tate (1931-2014) was a 1966 graduate of English from LeMoyne College in Dayton, Ohio. There, she began her career as a reporter and became active in several civil and human rights organizations and Pan-Africanist affairs. As Jackson’s press secretary during both of his presidential campaigns, Tate assembled a collection that documents the strategic labor and teamwork associated with seeking higher political office, while preserving the essence of the civil rights movement and the individuals who carried it forward. Her papers, acquired by the John Hope Franklin Research Center in 2017, include campaign buttons, photographs, press releases, newspapers, zines, internal communications, business cards, correspondence, and extensive notes. Materials on Jesse Jackson in her collection remind us that historic legacies are rarely built without trustworthy and knowledgeable support in both open and closed spaces. By providing access to these materials, we honor a lifetime spent enduring impossible obstacles and pushing the boundaries of possibility.

Handwritten notes and business cards, Florence Tate Papers, 1960s-2006, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.

Citation: Rainbow Push Coalition(2018). Accessed 2026 February 25. https://www.rainbowpush.org/organization-and-mission

Featured, From Our Collections, Technical Stuff

Not THAT Thomas More

February 20, 2026 Meghan Lyon

Last fall, an intern alerted the Technical Services Department to a problem in one of Rubenstein Library’s archival catalog records: “The catalog record for the Thomas Moore Papers lists ‘More, Thomas, -1685’ as the author. The author’s last name should be spelled “Moore” (with two Os), and his date of death, though unclear, was almost certainly after 1817, which is when the letters in the collection were addressed to him.”

The cataloging error for More, Thomas. — A screenshot of the original catalog record, with “More, Thomas, -1685” as creator.

Nerd alert: This is my favorite kind of library mix-up. This was an old-style catalog record, where the title was just “Papers,” and as our intern pointed out, it said that the collection’s creator was “More, Thomas, -1685.” To confirm: No, it’s not THAT Thomas More.

How does this sort of mis-attribution make its way into the catalog? My best guess is that this was a technical error by an authority service vendor, which probably happened years ago but was only just now caught. As our intern pointed out, the date of the collection is centuries after 1685; plus the name was spelled differently. I investigated and found that our own legacy description (the card catalog, dating from 1958) has Thomas Moore, spelled correctly, but at some point between 1989 and 2023, our online catalog’s entry for Thomas Moore got matched and merged with an authority record for Thomas More, d. 1685. In this case, it is a pretty obvious mistake. It also amused me that both Thomas Mores share their name with an even more famous St. Thomas More (1478-1535), Renaissance humanist and author of Utopia. But, it’s not always this obvious that there’s a problem. More and more frequently, common creator names are getting mismatched and merged by AI or other automation tools, which are often unable to reliably disambiguate names—and so, will often assume and act as if all Thomas Mores/Thomas Moores are the same person.

Letter in the collection addressed to Mr. Thomas Moore of Baltimore

Errors like these serve to underline the important role of professional catalogers in the creation and maintenance of our collections’ metadata. Determining a creator’s identity, and distinguishing between identities, is a fundamental component of technical services librarianship. It can be very tricky to dig up information about historically obscure creators of manuscript collections—especially for a name as common as Thomas Moore. In Rubenstein Library Technical Services, we prioritize name authority work as part of our broader inclusive description program. By researching and establishing name authority records for the individuals and organizations documented in our collections, we expand access and discovery of materials from historically under-described communities and groups. Name authority records are shared across libraries, allowing for cooperative cataloging among different repositories. The Library of Congress Name Authority File is a dataset full of Thomas Mores and Thomas Moores — all contributed by different libraries in order to clarify which Thomas was the Thomas More who authored or created the specific work they have in their collection. By participating in this process, we make it easier for researchers to find connections between our holdings and other libraries’ collections, and we expand the existing name authority file by adding important access points and information to help disambiguate between similar names.

Rubenstein’s 19th century Thomas Moore was hard to pin down—the letters addressed to him in the collection indicated that he lived in Baltimore in 1817. I took a look through the letters and confirmed he worked as a watchmaker and was an Irish immigrant. There were way too many Thomas Moores in online immigration and naturalization logs for me to to be certain of a birth, death, or naturalization date. But, as I researched, I was able to determine that the RL’s Thomas Moore is also documented in the papers of the Moore and Gillespie family of South Carolina, held at University of South Carolina. His era of activity (early 19th century), his location (Baltimore), his country of origin (Ireland), and his profession (watchmaker) were enough for me to disambiguate the RL’s Thomas Moore from the dozens of other Thomas Mores and Moores that were already established as names in the Library of Congress Name Authority File. So, along with updating our collection’s catalog record, I was able to contribute a new authority record just for him. Problem solved! Going forward, our library and any other library holding more (Moore?) of his papers will be able to link to the right Thomas Moore, from the right century.

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