Digital Collections, Featured, Franklin Research Center, From Our Collections

Digging through the Tapes: Exploring the Behind the Veil Collection, Pt. 5

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Post contributed by Mattison Bond, Project Research and Outreach Associate

We at the John Hope Franklin Research Center are back again with another blog post to highlight some of the unique oral histories that can be found in the Behind the Veil Digital Collection. Last week’s post featured interviews from folks from Mississippi, New Jersey, North Carolina, and South Carolina. This week, we take a deeper look into the collection by focusing on the interesting items that can be found from Tennessee and Virginia.

You can view Part 4 of this series here: Digging through the Tapes: Exploring the Behind the Veil Collection Pt 4 – The Devil’s Tale (duke.edu)

Enjoy exploring!!

Tennessee

While the Tennessee location filter contains over one hundred items, it is also home of a very unique occupation within the collection. There are three baseball players mentioned in the collection and pictures of baseball teams from different universities. Two of the oral histories were recorded in Tennessee and the other was in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. Today we will focus on the oral history of Joseph Burt Scott, World War II veteran, left hander, and major league baseball player.

Scott was born and raised in North Memphis to a single mother and four other siblings (one passing in infancy). He attended Corns Avenue School and enjoyed learning and working for what he wanted. He speaks highly of the people in his life throughout the interview. Mentioning the dedication of his mother keeping his siblings within the church, and the refined principle and teachers that molded much of his early life.

At an early age he loved baseball and began playing in Memphis as a child. When moving to Chicago to attend high school, he would continue to play, joining little leagues and amateur leagues within the city. He would join the service in 1942 and play on the service team, being the only black player. Scott seems unphased by this and other instances dealing with race throughout the whole interview. He recalls a time when sitting in a restaurant with his teammates, the waitress and manager refusing to serve him, until his lieutenant threatens to make the whole team leave the restaurant. He does not press the issue, saying that he would “look for further adventures” elsewhere if need be. His upbringing and early experiences instilled in him the ability to effortlessly brush off any of the negative products of Jim Crow and persist with determination.

Part 1 16:39 “And I’ve had a lot of words said that a lot of people wouldn’t like, but in my coming up through Chicago little leagues, my coach would always say, “Let it go in one ear and out the other.” And I did that all the way through my career. I never paid any attention to the bad talk about race. And I enjoyed listening to it because I would be laughing at it. As my coach would say, “Let your bat do the talking and your legs do the running,” and that’s what I did.”  

Joseph Scott Profile from the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum https://nlbemuseum.com/history/players/scottj.html

Scott would go on to play for many other major professional teams such as the New York Black Yankees, the Pittsburgh Crawford, and Chicago American Giants, and of course the Memphis Red Soxs. There would be times where Scotts would be paid for playing, and other times he would just play for fun because of his love for the sport. He would also play for the Zulu Giants, a team created by Abe Saperstein, owner of the Harlem Globetrotters.

Separate accommodations were a well-known product of the Jim Crow era as it came to many entertainment and sports teams. Scott speaks about it, but never seems discouraged by the discrimination that he faced. Even when he is asked about race relations while working at Teamsters, a union trucking job he worked after getting injured during his baseball career, Scott says this:

Part 1 37:57 “Oh, what I can say, race is always going to be a problem in the world, in the entire world. It’s a culture of an animal, just like we are animals, just like a cat and a dog. They square with each other. But I don’t have no complex, like a lot of folks do. I don’t envy any race. I don’t. I will only tell you that the way I come up, not to beg and not to borrow. I don’t like that. I like to work for what I want and I like to help people. I’ve always been a type of guy that will give out a lending hand, although I may get burned later on by doing it, which I have over the years, but I don’t look back. I still look ahead”

You can listen to the oral history of Joseph Burt Scott here: Joseph Scott interview recording, 1995 June 14 / Behind the Veil / Duke Digital Repository

Virginia

Virginia has a total of 63 oral histories, with a majority of teacher within this part of the collection, most who have multiple occupations. Evelyn Peevy is in some ways no different.

Headshot photo of smiling woman with glasses, black backgroud
Dr. Evelyn Sears Peevy 1923- 2017, Obituary from Legacy.com https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/pilotonline/name/evelyn-peevy-obituary?id=17672435

Dr. Evelyn Sears Peevy, born in 1923 was a guidance counselor, civil rights leader, and writer in Norfolk Virginia. She grew up in a well to do neighborhood as the daughter of a mother and father that owned two businesses. Her home doubled as a place to live and a commissary that her parents ran. She recalls the rest of childhood, being the seventh among fifteen children and the responsibilities that she had

6:59 “: I cooked. I sewed. I remember I had to sew my brothers’—If they lost buttons on their shirt, it was my job to sew them on because I was next to the oldest girl. Since the oldest one was gone, I did a lot of cooking and sewing, plus working in the store. I got my lessons while I was working in the store. I always felt that my mother had a heavy load, and I wanted to do all I could to help her. So, some of my brothers and sisters called me Miss Goody-Two-Shoe.”

She, along with all of her sisters, graduated from the Hampton Institute. She recalls the culture of Hampton women that was taught to her by the dean of women, having “teas on Sunday afternoon,” not smoking or wearing pants and wearing gloves and hats when going to town to shop.

After graduating from the Hampton Institute majoring in English and minoring in social studies, Dr. Peevy married her first husband. The marriage was unsuccessful and after going back to work, she was given the opportunity to study at Virginia State in counseling. Peevy attended a few different universities, deepening her education. But the running away of her two children served as the largest lesson of her life during this time.

13:35 “They were with my sister in Hampton. They said my sister was pregnant, and she was evil to them. So, the two younger children, they were about 10 and 12, got the little money that I was sending them for spending change, got on their bicycles, went to the grocery store in Hampton, bought luncheon meat and bread, and went to the recreation playground and played all day. My sister finally found them, whipped them profusely, and made them sit down and write me and tell me what they had done. I got that letter, and I cried. I said, “Here I am out here in California trying to learn what to do to help other people, and my own children are suffering.” I never left them again. I started taking them with me to all of the regional conferences and all of the national conventions, because I said it wasn’t worth it if I lose my own children.”

The rest of Dr. Peevy’s oral history details her time within the Iota Phi Lamba Sorority, serving as president for a time. When asked about the racism that she experienced in her life, Dr. Peevy admits that for her it was “like living in a colorless world”. But when she was the head of the guidance department during the time of integration, she started to noticed the effects of racism.

16:22“They sent two women over from North Side Junior High School who were counselors there. They didn’t want to come, and they didn’t want to work under a Black. I had a time with them because they were used to sitting in the lounge reading the paper. What I’d do is go through the lounge to go to the bathroom, and they were saying, “Don’t come over here checking on me.” I said, “I don’t have time to check on you. I had to use the restroom.” You see, that was when I began to realize this thing, this racism is here. Here are these ladies going to come to this Black junior high school and sit around, read the paper or sit in the lounge and could care less about counseling our children.”

While she does not talk about it, she was also the first African American to be appointed to the Norfolk Electoral Board and also served s the Chair of the Advisory Board for Tidewater Community College. She also wrote a weekly column for The New Journal and Guide, a weekly newspaper based in Norfolk Virginia.

Dr. Evelyn Sears Peevy passed in 2017 and is remembered for her work within the schools she served, her sorority, and her community.

You can read more about Dr. Peevy from The New Journal & Guide here: Passes At 94: Dr. Evelyn S. Peevy Remembered for Her Lifetime of Service » The New Journal and Guide

And more importantly listen to her oral history here: Evelyn Peevy interview recording, 1995 August 10 / Behind the Veil / Duke Digital Repository

Woman smiling with glasses, wearing a white suite with green scarf on left shoulder with banquet hall in the background
“In Loving Memory of Alpha Chi’s White Rose Queen Soror Dr. Evelyn Sears Peevy” https://iotaalphachi.org/honoring-leadership

We have come to the end of part of the series that highlights interesting oral histories that can be found under the many location filters that are listed within the collection. But no fear!! We will be back with more interesting oral histories!

If you have been enjoying the series let us know in the comment section below. We would love to hear from you!

 

Economists' Papers Archive, Featured, From Our Collections

Jack L. Treynor Papers Open for Research

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Post contributed by Nestor Lovera Nieto, Part-time Research Scholar for the Economists’ Papers Archive and Visiting Scholar at the Center for the History of Political Economy.

The Jack L. Treynor papers are now open for research as part of the Economists’ Papers Archive, which is a collaboration between the Rubenstein Library and the Center for the History of Political Economy. Jack Lawrence Treynor (1930-2016) was a white American economist who was born in the railroad town of Council Bluffs, Iowa. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Haverford College in 1951 and a Master of Business Administration (with distinction) from Harvard Business School in 1955. Between these two degrees, he was drafted during the Korean War and served for two years with the US Army Signal Corps in New Jersey.

Treynor was one of the first to explore the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) in “Market Value, Time, and Risk” in 1961. Although part of this writing was not published until 1999, it was mimeographed and widely circulated throughout the profession by colleagues who recognized its value. In fact, some of Treynor’s colleagues speculate that had he published his work on CAPM, he might have been a Nobel Prize laureate. In 1990, William F. Sharpe was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for his role in developing CAPM, which he had done independently of Treynor around the same time and published in 1964.

Treynor not only published under his own name but the names of two notable 19th-century economists: Walter Bagehot and Alf(red) Marshall. In fact, one of Treynor’s most cited articles, “The Only Game in Town” (1971), was written under Bagehot rather than Treynor. His motivations for using these pseudonyms and why he specifically chose these two remain a mystery yet to be unraveled.

A page from the "Financial Analysts Journal" dated March-April 1971. It features an article titled "The Only Game in Town" by Jack L. Treynor under the pen name Walter Bagehot. The page combines text, illustrations, and design elements.
First page of “The Only Game in Town” (1971)

The material in this collection came from Treynor’s home, which doubled as his office for Treynor Capital Management (TCM) after it was established in 1985, and two women from his family directly supported his professional career. His wife Elizabeth “Betsy” Treynor served as TCM’s administrative assistant and played a significant role as the creator or co-creator of many records, including most of the electronic ones. Additionally, there are printouts of emails intended for Jack but addressed to Betsy, with her responding either on his behalf or in her own capacity.

An older man and woman standing in front of an exterior, tiled wall with a wall-mounted fountain.
“Betsy” and Jack Treynor outside their home in Palo Verde Estates, California.

His daughter Wendy Treynor, who double-majored in economics and mathematics before pursuing a career in social psychology, annotated drafts of articles and conducted regression analysis.

This is a page that contains two sections of printed text titled "Australia Regression Analysis," each followed by statistical data and a handwritten yellow sticky note with some text. This note was written by Wendy Treynor as a reminder for her to print for her father any data or analysis possibly related to the printed sections.
Regression analysis conducted by Wendy Treynor.

One unique aspect of this collection is the abundance of handwritten items, including over 50 letter-size notepads and hundreds of transparencies (the originals of which have been photocopied and subsequently discarded; preservation photocopies have been retained in the collection).

A handwritten list titled "Recipe for a Loser," it is a copy of a transparency written in red marker. The handwriting is legible but slightly uneven, with some words emphasized by being written in all capital letters.
“Recipe for a Loser,” written in ink on a transparency.

Unlike most other economists represented in the Economists’ Papers Archives, Treynor was not a lifetime academic, having spent only 1985 to 1989 as a visiting professor at two institutions. Instead, his day job was as a financial analyst, with his research and writing on the side.

Treynor made significant contributions to the field of financial analysis, such that his peers in professional associations recognized him as having “changed the direction of the profession.” Demonstrating his innovative spirit, Treynor also registered a patent in 2004 for a “Method for maintaining an absolute risk level for an investment portfolio.”

A hand-drawn diagram labeled "Fig. 1," depicting a network of interconnected elements related to trading.
Draft of a diagram for Treynor’s patent application.

Although the above diagram might leave us scratching our heads, it is undeniably cool because it is so well-drawn. Speaking of cool, Treynor was also an avid model train collector and layout builder (a nod to his hometown roots) and enjoyed writing plays in his spare time.

A detailed model train setup in Treynor's two-car garage. The scene features multiple tracks that curve and intersect, with a variety of structures and buildings placed on the layout. There are model trains, including a locomotive, positioned on the tracks. The setup includes industrial elements such as tanks and towers, and there is a bridge spanning some of the tracks. Wooden posts support the ceiling, and the overall layout is intricate and extensive, showing one of Treynor's hobbies. The lighting is provided by overhead fluorescent lights.
Intricate model train layout in Treynor’s two-car garage.
Digital Collections, Featured, Franklin Research Center, From Our Collections

Digging through the Tapes: Exploring the Behind the Veil Collection Pt 4

Post contributed by Mattison Bond, Project Research and Outreach Associate, John Hope Franklin Research Center 

We at the John Hope Franklin Research Center are back again with another blog post to highlight some of the unique oral histories that can be found in the Behind the Veil Digital Collection. Last week’s post featured interviews from folks from Kansas, Louisiana, and Michigan. This week, we take a deeper look into the collection by focusing on the interesting items that can be found from Mississippi, New Jersey, North Carolina, and South Carolina.

You can view Part 3 of this series here: Digging through the Tapes: Exploring the Behind the Veil Collection. Pt. 3 – The Devil’s Tale (duke.edu)

Also all the oral histories that will be featured this week focus on the lives and experiences teachers!

Mississippi

When using the Mississippi location filter, you will find a total of 71 items that are listed in the collection. But using the search bar will let you into another part of the collection that is just as valuable and interesting. It would be a disservice to the researcher to not point to the Mississippi Self-Portrait file that contains a total of 42 pictures of men and women from the 1950s. Flip through the collection to see the faces of graduates, families, couples, and even a Santa Clause.

photo image of a man and woman posing in a picture
Lucinda Gulledge slides
Photo image of boy and girl with a graduation cap and gown
Lucinda Gulledge slides
Photo image of young boy posing with a Santa Clause
Lucinda Gulledge slides

 

The oral history that is highlighted today is accompanied with just as many interesting photos. Lucinda Gulledge, born on a farming community in 1913 in Hernando, Mississippi. Along with being a teacher assistant, Gulledge was active within the Civil Rights Movement. The first time she began to take part was when she boycotted the Liberty Cash grocery store because they would not allow Blacks within the facility.

Photo image of a husband, wife and daughter, family of Lucinda Gulledge
Lucinda Gulledge slides: Family portrait, 1940s https://repository.duke.edu/dc/behindtheveil/btvst008001007

Lucinda could be described as fearless and resilient, as she boldly stated on multiple occasions that she did things other people were afraid to do. Such as driving a woman and her children to an integrated school:

Part 2 00:00“People were just plain scared. And so I don’t guess you could blame them for it. They was plain scared. And this one lady and my son and her daughter was the only two kids in my integrated that school. She wouldn’t carry her daughter over there unless I went with her, she was just plain scared. Some people just had that fear, but I never was. Never was. And so when they went from Davis to Greenwood High, I’d get in my car, I’d go over there and pick both of them up. Pick both of them up, bring them on home.”

And housing some of the white protesters that were coming down to participate in the movement.

Part 1 7:40 “See, I wasn’t like the rest of the Colored people, scared. “No, he ain’t coming to my house.” A lot of them didn’t let them come in their houses. I said, “They can come here.” They come here, and I ain’t never did have to trouble. They stayed as long as they want. Stayed all night. Yeah, they stayed all night. Sure did. When I didn’t cook for them, they would get up and go in there, and fix something their self. Even I had some white ladies to come. Sure did. It was rough, but we made it through.”

Like many folks Gulledge participated in the movement by attending boycotts and marches, even attending a march to see Martin Luther King Jr. She would provide a place to stay to local and sometimes well know civil rights activist like Marian Evelyn Wright, children’s rights activist. She would work with organizations like SNCC and SCLC and help organize voter registration.

You can listen to Lucinda Gulledge here: Lucinda Gulledge interview recording, 1995 August 01 / Behind the Veil / Duke Digital Repository

New Jersey

New Jersey is another one of the smaller location filters within the collection. There is only one oral history within this part of the collection and it belongs to Dolores Bradley, who is actually a North Carolina native from Northampton County.

From Bradley’s interview, researchers gain insight into how the civil rights movement impacted her hometown in rural North Carolina, where she attended Northampton County Training School. She recalls that one of their early fights was for transportation for Black children to attend school. Her father, a principal, and community members organized the NAACP, successfully obtaining buses for Black students and a gym for the school.

Part 1, 12:07 “There weren’t any Black buses originally, I don’t think, when I first started to school, because I can remember my older cousin who was almost 10 years older than me, and his friends. He would wait for them, and they came from a little town, it’s called Pleasant Hill, which was two miles beyond where we lived. They had to walk up almost five miles into town. Then, I can remember a man named Mr. Buffalo, and my dad, Mr. Earl, who was the principal at that time. I guess I must have been between eight and 10 or 11 years old, because I vividly remember when they fought to get the school buses for the Black students to ride. They had meetings and what have you, and basically, that was the same group of people that organized the NAACP in our county”

When Bradley moved to New Jersey, she was originally under the impression that things would be better. She admits to feeling freer in the South than she did up north.

Part 2, 3:41”…I had heard the myth of the North and had bought it. And then, when I moved there, after I was grown and out of college or what have you, I realized that I was no more free than I was in the South. In fact, I think I felt freer, because I was younger and maybe more—Again, I was in that kind of shelter thing in the South. So in some ways, I felt freer than I did in New Jersey.”

She provides listeners with an intimate view of her life as she tries to pursue education, travels to Norfolk, VA, and enjoys holiday celebrations with her family.

Listen to the interview of Dolores Bradley here: Dolores Bradley interview recording, 1995 July 23 / Behind the Veil / Duke Digital Repository

North Carolina

When opening the location filter, you will notice that the first state listed, indicating that it is the largest part of the collection comes from North Carolina. With a total 338 items, the materials within the North Carolina collection span audiocassettes, oral histories, and pictures. Not listed under the location filter are two videos from the Duke University Center for documentary Studies [https://documentarystudies.duke.edu/] that features teachers from Wilmington NC.

These videos detail black education in New Hanover County, giving viewers information about the history of education within the county and the thoughts of different educators about their jobs. For example, Educator Lavinia E. Sneed believed that

 Video 2, 7:17 “teaching gave me good full life, and it was because of my opportunity to help develop my students that I feel like my life has been fulfilled. I’m praising the pression of teaching, because it has been the best thing that I have known.

Some would speak on their experiences dealing with desegregation, attending programs to learn about the problems of desegregation sponsored by UNC Chapel Hill and pushing for it within their own schools. Bertha Boykin Todd, a media specialist spoke about trying to purchase books and materials that taught about desegregation.

Video 2, 1:41:50 “I was reprimanded several times for ordering too many books on the desegregation and integration topics. Of course, that didn’t stymie us too much. We continued to provide for our students what we thought was best.”

While there are many teachers to be found under the North Carolina location filter, these videos allow viewers to connect a face to the voice, and to experience first hand the passion and resilience of educators as they strive to make a difference during Jim Crow.

Both videos can be found at these links:

Wilmington, NC Teachers’ Video – 1, 1990-1995 / Behind the Veil / Duke Digital Repository

Wilmington, NC Teachers’ Video – 2, 1990-1995 / Behind the Veil / Duke Digital Repository

South Carolina

There are a total of 123 items within the collection that can be found under the South Carolina location filter. Fittingly, there were more educators interviewed within this part of the collection and thus we will end this blog post with highlighting educator Lula Homes.

Photo image of four generations of family members, one standing, three siting in the front row
Earnestine Atkins, Lula Holmes, and Louise Nesbit slides: Lula Holmes with four generations of women (Lula Holmes in standing, with her grandmother, mother, and daughter present), 1930s-1992

Throughout Holmes recollections, the oral history provides a vivid picture of the what it was like attending the historic Penn School, located on Saint Helena Island. She speaks about the classes that were offered and which ones especially piqued her interest.

Part 2, 1:17 “Let’s see. English, literature, math, biology, chemistry. I’m trying to think now. And then, we had the industrial. We had Home ec, sewing…My favorite class would be chemistry. I like history. Ancient history or just plain history.”

There was a clear difference in the what was taught between the boys and girls within the school. Regardless, the Penn school provided opportunities for the children to learn skills that would be helpful to not only them, but the surrounding community. She recalls participating in what was called the “better home day” where,

Part 2, 21:08 “the home ec class would take a building in the community that was in disrepair and they would use it as a project. And the girls, the boys would do the woodwork, put in new interiors…the girls would go and we’d make draperies, we’d make the— Even if the bed was an old bed, either we would find somebody who would give a bed. Some of the stores or some White family would donate a bed or some Black family who had an extra bed or an extra table or an extra, not lamp. Well, oil, kerosene lamp then. And the boys would make, if they had a fireplace, they’d make [indistinct 00:23:06] iron, and so that it would be nice looking. And anything in the house that needed repairs was done. And the boys would take old furniture and refinish it. And then we would have a big day, a celebration where the public could go in and out and see what can be done with little or no money. And that involved both the boys and girls in our industrial work. They saw some of the things that we learned at Penn in our classes. That was a big day.”

While there are no photos directly linked to the oral history, searching for “Lula Holmes” on the webpage provides access to photos of Penn students and campus buildings from another part of the collection.

Photo image of a house with the words Praise House written above the doorway
St. Helena Island, South Carolina, Penn School and Penn Center: Prints https://repository.duke.edu/dc/behindtheveil/btvst035019
Group of young women with vegetable sign
Earnestine Atkins, Lula Holmes, and Louise Nesbit slides: Girls with vegetable sign, Farmer Fair, Penn School, St. Helena Island, S.C., 1939 https://repository.duke.edu/dc/behindtheveil/btvst009001001

 

You can listen to the oral history of Lula Homes Here: Lula Holmes interview recording, 1994 August 10 / Behind the Veil / Duke Digital Repository

Featured, Franklin Research Center, From Our Collections

Digging through the Tapes: Exploring the Behind the Veil Collection. Pt. 3

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Post contributed by Mattison Bond, Project Research and Outreach Associate, John Hope Franklin Research Center 

Highlighting Oral Histories by State Part 3

We at the John Hope Franklin Research Center are back again with another blog post to highlight some of the unique oral histories that can be found in the Behind the Veil Digital Collection. Last week’s post featured interviews from folks from Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky. This week, we take a deeper look into the collection by focusing on the interesting items that can be found from Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan.

You can view Part 2 of this series here: Digging through the Tapes: Exploring the Behind the Veil Collection Pt. 2 – The Devil’s Tale (duke.edu)

Enjoy exploring!!

Kansas

There is only one oral history that falls under the Kansas location tag. This oral history belongs to Ulysses Marshall, factory worker and sharecropper. Marshall was born and raised in St. Louis Missouri until he turned thirteen when his family moved southward to Fargo, Arkansas. When asked about his experience in Fargo, Marshall simply states, “It was bad.” This same sentiment would be repeated throughout the oral history as Marshall recalls his experience living within the South during Jim Crow.

When recalling his first experience with racism:

 Part 1, 14:23 “I was pointing at this here White man. It was something I was pointing to, because I was trying to show my mother and father about it, and my daddy, he knows that could be an offense to point at the White man. That was a bad thing, because he may even think you was talking or making fun of him. He said, “Don’t do that. Don’t never do that. Don’t point at that man,” or something like that. “You could get us all in trouble.” It was just that bad.”

Or when describing police brutality: “Brutalities were bad. Bad. Real bad”

And even when he was recalling his experience as a Navy man:

Part 1, 32:17 “Well, yeah, they would about the prejudices, the hatred, and stuff like that. And this is one reason I couldn’t make a career out of it. Some of them made a career out of it. I said it wasn’t much freedom back here, but it wasn’t no freedom at all, back there, because to me, it was just you’re confined in a prison or something like that. It was just completely, totally discrimination, during that time. So that’s why I got out, and I could never see—well, they tell me the Army was a little better, but it was bad, because my brother, he retired from the Army and he was telling me some of the experiences that he went through, something like that. But they was bad, real bad.”

Marshall would end up in Kansas for the same reason that his father would leave St. Louis, Missouri, in search for work. After a long search for work in California with no success, Marshall would find work at a steel mill in Gary, Indiana. He would then be laid off that would lead to him finding work in Kansas at an airplane factory, where he would retire from.

The oral history of Ulysses Marshall may be bleak to most that take the time to listen to it. His life, filled with struggle and constant racism since moving South, is a reflection and example of the horrors that Jim Crow inflicted on the lives of everyday African Americans. But, as with many of the accounts within the collection, Marshall is still able to leave listeners with true and encouraging words. Interviewer Paul Ortiz would ask Marshall, what was it that “kept [him] going and striving through all the difficult” moments. Marshall, inspired by President Floyd Brown, founder of the Fargo Agricultural School would respond:

Part 2, 9:02 “I got a lot of inspiration from President Brown. Like he said, like his motto used, “work will win,” and to me, I’m a stronger believer in that. I think if a person wants something bad enough and go ahead to work and pursue it, I think he can accomplish. I think a man could reach about any goal that he strive for if he go—you got to put something into it because nothing going to come there and fall in your lap. I mean, if somebody think that, they just fooling theyself. So I kind of like that motto, “work will win.

 You can listen to the oral history of Ulysses Marshall here: Ulysses Marshall interview recording, 1995 July 15 / Behind the Veil / Duke Digital Repository

Louisiana

The Louisiana location filter is the second largest in the collection, with a total of 138 items. When looking for a unique story in this part of the collection, the easiest option would be choosing the oral history of the only cytologist. Michael Gourrier was born and raised in New Orleans. He moved to Columbus, Ohio in 1962 to go to graduate school and then to Indianapolis. It was not until 1969 that he moved to Texas to work as a laboratory supervisor for the United States Public Health Service.

Interestingly enough, listeners do not learn this information, or much information about this particular occupation until closer to the end of the interview. Gourrier’s oral history focuses more on the history and contributions of African Americans to music, particularly Jazz.  His early exposure to all types of music would set the tone and theme of the oral history as one of the first questions he answers is how Jim Crow shaped his life, and the music scene of New Orleans.

Part 1, 8:56 “New Orleans was a segregated society to an extent. It still is today. But from my perspective, music is a language that transcends all races, ethnic backgrounds and laws, whether legal or illegal…. Well, the other areas of activity around the city as far as the housing and the general accommodations and all, they might not have been able to live up to that particular adage. But as far as music is concerned, I think that it is definitely one of that you could say was really separate but equal, if not better.”

Within the interview, Gourrier provides listeners with a comprehensive history of race relations both outside and inside the music scene of New Orleans. While he believes that “Music has no color. I mean, it’s not black, it’s not white, it’s not red, it’s not green,” he acknowledges that Jim Crow laws significantly influenced the development of musicians, particularly in the South.

Part 1 31:51 “… the backwardness of the South, they were always behind and they were just slow in evolving. And then because of the segregation, Blacks were extra slow in being exposed and afforded the opportunity to be involved in this particular aspect. So I think this was one of the big factors as far as why everything here was, and shall we say, a later stage of development than it were other places. Because I mean, if you go back and you look at the period called the Harlem Renaissance. What were we doing down here? I guess you could say we were just one step past the menstrual shows during that particular period down here”

Gourrier’s passion for educating and sharing his love for Jazz would grow throughout time. He even mentions that after he retires, he hopes to become a jazz historian. Still alive today, he is better known as Mr. Jazz, radio host of WRIR-FM RDIO in Richmond, Virginia.

Image of Michael Gourrier sitting in front a piano with shelves of CDs in the background
Picture of Michael Gourrier, source: “Word and Image: Michael J. “Mr. Jazz” Gourrier Jazz Director at WRIR- Style Weeklyhttps://www.styleweekly.com/word-image-michael-j-mr-jazz-gourrier-jazz-director-at-wrir/

You can learn more about Michael Gourrier here: Michael Gourrier interview recording, 1994 August 04 / Behind the Veil / Duke Digital Repository

Michigan

The Michigan location filter has only two oral histories. Both interviews were conducted in two different cities and while each is unique, one stands out for several reasons. Alex Byrd, the interviewer of both oral histories had the pleasure of interviewing his own father, Sanford Byrd!

Sanford Byrd’s earliest memories are within an orphanage in Essen and Bad-Herzfeld, Germany. He did not know his biological parents and he also mentions that Sanford is not his actual name. He also is unsure whether the date listed on his birth certificate is correct or not.

Photo image of a birth certificate document for Sanford Byrd, 1946
Sanford Riemenschneider’s (Byrd) birth certificate, 1946 March 30 Alex Byrd slides: Sanford Riemenschneider’s (Byrd) birth certificate, 1946 March 30 / Behind the Veil / Duke Digital Repository

Part 1, 8:58 “But my name in Germany was Franz. That’s F-R-A-N-Z, which I think the English interpretation is Frank. Franz Xavier, which is a Saint’s name since I was Catholic. Well, they told me I was Catholic. I was too young to have any religious beliefs. Xavier and Maria, which really in Germany wasn’t unusual for a boy to have a girl’s name, especially if was a saint, a patron saint. And then Riemschneider. Okay. Riemschneider is spelled R-I-E-M-S-C-H-N-E-I-N-D-E-R. Riemschneider, which literally translated means belt tailor. Riem being a belt, and Schneider is a tailor”

Throughout the oral history Sanford recalls his time within the orphanage and how being black in Germany was much different than being black within the United States. Broken into three parts, listeners are able to travel with Sanford across the states, learn and listen to the German language, and listen to the light banter between father and son as he recalls his personal history.

By searching for Sanford’s interview in the search bar at the top of the page, researchers and listeners are also able to come across Sanford’s German adoption files and pictures of young Sanford from his passport.

Photo image of a passport document for Sanford Byrd
Inside of Sanford Byrd’s passport, 1956 Alex Byrd slides: Inside of Sanford Byrd’s passport, 1956 / Behind the Veil / Duke Digital Repository

 

Photo image of passport document with photo of Sanford Byrd
Inside of Sanford Byrd’s passport, 1956 Alex Byrd slides: Inside of Sanford Byrd’s passport, 1956 / Behind the Veil / Duke Digital Repository

 

Digital Collections, Featured, Franklin Research Center

Digging through the Tapes: Exploring the Behind the Veil Collection Pt. 2

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Post contributed by Mattison Bond, Project Research and Outreach Associate, Jon Hope Franklin Research Center 

Highlighting Oral Histories by State Part 2

We at the John Hope Franklin Research Center are back with another blog post to highlight some of the unique oral histories that can be found in the Behind the Veil Digital Collection. Last week’s post featured interviews from folks from Alabama, Arkansas, and Florida. This week, we take a deeper look into the collection by focusing on the interesting items that can be found from Georgia, Illinois, and Kentucky.

You can view Part 1 of this series here: Digging through the Tapes: Exploring the Behind the Veil Collection – The Devil’s Tale (duke.edu)

Enjoy exploring!!

Georgia

While searching through the collection using the Georgia location filter, you will find two women that share similar names but different lives, Carolyn Johnson King and Carol Johnson King.

Carolyn King, born in 1948 on what was once a plantation. The Keaton Quarter was owned by a white doctor, had a white overseer, and held multiple black families that worked on the land. Her oral history starts with detailing life in rural Georgia and the relationship that she had with the other families:

Part 1, 13:05 “It was great. Everybody just was quiet and people got together and went to church and we had to go to Sunday school every Sunday… Most people were kin, we were all kin people, one thing. We were all related. All family people, we really were. Like if someone would have a baby, like if my mother had a baby, a lady in another household would come and cook for us and wash for us maybe one or two weeks until my mother able to get up and go and do what she could do, until she got better…If anybody got sick, people would just go to that house and just really take over until that family got better…Everybody, just one happy family. We didn’t have much, but we had a whole lot of love, that was one thing.”

Interestingly she also goes into details about her time as a minster, detailing some of the visions that she experienced in her life time.

Part 3, 1:58 “If I sit down, this angel would sit down. If I get up, it would get up. It followed me around the house for a couple of months… I would see blood. The walls would be covered in blood…And I know some of this that I seen was the devil. The devil was showing some of these things, I know that now.”

About a month before, Sally Graham, who also interviewed Carolyn King, had a conversation with Carol Johnson King. Carol was an educator and the first director of a federally funded Head Start program within the southeastern part of the country. Her oral history details her time as not only an educator and director, but also being apart of the Dougherty County School Board, an activist, community organizer and the wife of famous civil rights lawyer C.B. King.

Along with her story, Carol’s oral history is unique because it has 34 related items that contain the photos of the autograph books of her in-laws Margaret (Maggie) Slater and Clennon King when they attended the Tuskegee Institute. Carolyn recalls that “Daddy King” drove horse and buggy for Booker T. Washington and that George Washington Carver wrote a note in “Mama King’s” graduation book.

Photo image of an autograph book owned by Carolyn King from 1916
Carol King slides: Clennon King’s autograph book – note from T.V. Gaunt, 1916 April 17 https://repository.duke.edu/dc/behindtheveil/btvst007006004
Photo image of a page of an autograph book from 1912 owned by Maggie Slater
Carol King slides: Maggie Slater’s autograph book – note from C. Valentine, 1912 April 20 https://repository.duke.edu/dc/behindtheveil/btvst007006023

It is important to note that both interviews are titled “Carol King”. By paying attention to the “Item Info” found below the interview transcript you can distinguish between the interviews, paying attention to the description info and the occupation. Or you can use these links to find them here!

Carolyn John King’s Interview: Carolyn King interview recording, 1994 July 03 / Behind the Veil / Duke Digital Repository

Carol Johnson King’s Interview: Carol King interview recording, 1994 June 18 / Behind the Veil / Duke Digital Repository

Illinois

There are only three oral histories found under the Illinois location filter. All three interviews were recorded in Chicago, Illinois and each interviewee was born in Arkansas. Today we focus on the life of Christine Trailor , one of the seventeen beauticians that can be found in the whole collection.

Christine Trailor was born January 5, 1928, in Crittenden County, Arkansas. Within the interview, she shares her experience learning how to do her own hair and how she came to be a beautician.

“I learned by doing—Well, I always have had to do my own since I was six years old, so I used to have a lot of hair, so sometime a girl would stop on the way to school, and help me do my hair. It was real thick and long. And then I started, when I came here, I guess it was a, well, passing time, and I just started doing hair. Actually, I didn’t play basketball because—I liked playing basketball, but every time I would start to play, it was a girl that didn’t like me. She would come and just ring the ball out of my hand, and that just turned me off. And I started going to the hut, I guess was a way of passing the time, keep from being bored. So that’s when I started doing hair.”

She migrated to Chicago, IL in 1951 after finishing college at Arkansas AM&N. Once there she worked at two tailoring shops, pursuing a career in cosmetology after. Two years later she opened her own shop. At the time of the interview, she was operating her second shop for 22 years.

Within her oral history, researchers can learn not only her experience of being a beautician but also her experience migrating northward to Chicago.

You can listen to the Christine Trailor’s oral history here: Christine Trailor interview recording, 1995 July 15 / Behind the Veil / Duke Digital Repository

Kentucky

By clicking on the Kentucky location filter, you will find the only five oral histories of “coal miners” within the collection.  From those five, you can learn more about James “Jim” “Red” Eaves, the only federal mine inspector in the collection. Within his oral history, listeners can learn about the family of Eaves, back to his grandmother,

Part 1, 10:43 “And she was an old woman then because she had a Barker stick about four foot long, I guess, where she’d walk with. And she would follow you upside the head with that stick. I had a little old wheel I rolled around the house. She was sitting out in the yard, had a pipe in her mouth, smoking. She told me, said, “Boy, you get on out there if you want to roll that wheel. Don’t roll that around here near me.” I got out there. A few minutes later, I got back close to her. Next thing I know, that stick went upside in my head. The wheel went one way and I went the other. But she didn’t play now. When she told you something, she meant business.”

James Eaves started working in the coal mines around the age of 18. In the later half of his interview, listeners can learn more about his time within the coal mines as one of the few federal mine inspectors that were black. By searching deeper within the collection, you can also view his Foreman of Coal Mines Certificate.

Photo image of a plaque owned by James Eaves acknowledging his status as foreman of coal mining, 1966
Alex Byrd slides: First Class Certificate Foreman of Coal Mining for James Eaves, 1966 https://repository.duke.edu/dc/behindtheveil/btvst010008036

Mr. Eaves also makes an appearance in the oral history of Sydney Gilmore, another coal miner.

You can listen to Mr. Eaves oral history here: James Eaves interview recording, 1995 August 04 / Behind the Veil / Duke Digital Repository

You can also listen to him on the Sydney Gilmore, Jr. (primary interviewee) and James Eaves interview recording, 1995 July 26 / Behind the Veil / Duke Digital Repository

Digital Collections, Franklin Research Center

Digging through the Tapes: Exploring the Behind the Veil Collection

Post contributed by Mattison Bond, Project Research and Outreach Associate, John Hope Franklin Research Center

Highlighting Oral Histories by State Part 1

After the Civil War, newly freed African Americans began to utilize their newfound rights and freedoms to improve their lives across the South. The Reconstruction era (1865-1876) stands as one of the most progressive periods for African Americans. During this time, Black Americans were actively participating in government, establishing schools, and creating opportunities for housing and employment. But this period of progressiveness did not last forever. The return of the Democratic party and white supremacists to political power, along with the withdrawal of Northern intervention, plunged the South into the period known as Jim Crow (approx. 1880s-1950s).

Jim Crow laws, created and enforced by southern state legislatures institutionalized racial segregation and the disenfranchisement of African Americans. These laws would impact almost every aspect of Black life and essentially roll back most of the progress that was made by African Americans during Reconstruction. What came next would leave a lasting impression on the world. African Americans of all ages, occupations, and backgrounds would begin standing up for their rights. Courageous leaders, determined students, resilient activists, and everyday people would begin boycotting and challenging Jim Crow throughout the country. The Civil Rights Movement (approx. 1950s-1970s) would change the country as they knew it and ultimately lead to the destruction of the Jim Crow system.

The Behind the Veil digital collection offers a rich and irreplaceable repository of oral histories, images, and administrative files from the people that experienced Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Movement across the South. The collection features the personal histories of individuals from a wide array of occupations and backgrounds. Researchers can navigate the collection using filters to locate historical accounts by occupation, format, and location. To assist you in exploring, the John Hope Franklin Research Center has chosen a few unique examples from different locations within the collection.

We hope you enjoy!

Alabama

Alabama is one of the larger location tags within the collection with over 200 photographs and 100 oral histories. Start your search by listening to the oral history of one of the more famous interviewees within the collection: Johnny Ford, the first African American mayor of Tuskegee Alabama.

Photo of Johnny Ford looking up with hands clasped
Source: Thomas, Deborah. Johnny Ford, mayor of Tuskegee – Tallahassee, Florida. 1984-01-12. State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory. <https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/112336>

Johnny Ford was born “deep in beautiful Bullock County” Alabama. He was adopted by his uncle at the age of four, moving to Tuskegee. He shares his experiences growing up in Tuskegee, detailing not only racial segregation but also divides in social and economic classes. With his everyday observations of segregation, he also reflects on when the idea of becoming mayor first crossed his mind.

[10:53] “We would have to watch the games from a tree, climb up in the tree and look over and watch the little White boys and girls playing in the park, playing ball. I used to hear my parents complain about that, and they said, “We are paying for these parks just like everybody else, yet we can’t get in.” I had read about Al Clayton Power and heard about him being elected and all of this. I said, then I remember saying to the guys, we would have to peep through the fence, and I said, “The mayor of this town must be a powerful dude, if he can keep us out of this park. One day I think I’d like to be mayor of this town.”

Ford would go on to be involved in the Civil Rights movement in Knoxville, TN as he attended college. He would work on the Kennedy campaign in 1968 and later help to elect the first two African Americans to the Alabama legislature. Johnny Ford served as the Mayor of Tuskegee from 1972- 1996, and then again in 2004 and 2012.

You can hear the voice of Mayor Johnny Ford by listening to his oral history here:

Johnny Ford interview recording, 1994 July 13 / Behind the Veil / Duke Digital Repository

Arkansas

There are a total of 64 oral histories that are available under the Arkansas location filter. Within these 64 items you can find the oral history of Willie Lucas. While there are a total of three midwives mentioned throughout the collection, Willie Lucas is the only midwife that has a recorded oral history.

Willie Lucas was born in Hughes, AR in 1921. The daughter and granddaughter of midwives, Lucas was convinced she would not follow in her mother’s footsteps. She recalls her mother waking up in the middle of the night to deliver babies, sometimes having to travel through the cold and rain.

[8:52] “They didn’t have any cars and she would come in sometime and raining in the wintertime and her clothes would be frozen stiff on her. She’s be standing up and I said “Lord I’ll never be a midwife.””

That sentiment did not last long. Lucas would later train to be a midwife, shadowing her mother. The first time she delivered a baby, the parents named the child after her. Within her interview she speaks about the differences of midwifery during her time in the 40s and that of her mother’s time. She details the types of tools that were used, the ways that they were paid, the home remedies that helped with the birthing process, and the obstacles that the medical field posed to midwives.

Her oral history contains two parts and a transcript. You can listen to Willie Lucas’s oral history here:

Willie Lucas interview recording, 1995 July 07 / Behind the Veil / Duke Digital Repository

 

Florida

There are a total of 216 items that can be found under the Florida location filter. Within these items you can find the oral histories, administrative files, and specifically a collection of images of students and faculty at Florida A&M University, thanks to Sue Russell.

Born in Milton, Florida in August 1909, Russell was the daughter of a teacher and brick mason. She recalls that her mother encouraged education for her and her siblings. They attended school up until the 6th grade in Milton, until they were sent to Pensacola to finish high school.

[44:00] “The biggest problem we had was school problem, I guess, because after we finished the sixth grade there as—Well, they used to call us Negros then. We couldn’t go to school with the Whites… We had to leave Milton for Escambia, or go somewhere else if we wanted to finish high school.”

Photo of a members of a football team four are standing, four are kneeling in front
Seniors from Florida A & M football team, 1936 Source: https://repository.duke.edu/dc/behindtheveil/btvst009006025

Sue Russell first attended Florida A&M College in 1928, graduating two years later with courses in business administration. In 1943, she re-enrolled and eventually completed her four-year degree. It was in school that Russell admits to experiencing her first taste of racial discrimination. Further into the interview she talks about campus life, her ambitions to be a home economics teacher, and some of the discrimination she experienced. Even more interesting is the numerous pictures of students and faculty that attended Florida A&M during the time that Russell was enrolled.

Image of a program document, Home Economics of Florida A & M University, 1933-34
Home Economics, Florida A & M pamphlet – staff portrait, 1933-1934 Source: https://repository.duke.edu/dc/behindtheveil/btvst009006012

You can listen to Sue Russell’s interview here:

Sue Russell interview recording, 1994 August 05 / Behind the Veil / Duke Digital Repository

Digital Collections, Featured, Franklin Research Center

Behind the Veil Digital Collection Launched and Open for Research

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The John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History & Culture is pleased to announce the launch of the Behind the Veil digital collection, now accessible in the Duke Digital Repository – https://repository.duke.edu/dc/behindtheveil.

Behind the Veil digital collection homepage

Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South was an oral history project conducted from 1992-1995 by the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. The 3-year digitization project, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2021, expands access to this archive of oral histories, photographs, and video recordings of African Americans who remained in the US South through the period of Jim Crow (see grant announcement here – https://blogs.library.duke.edu/rubenstein/2021/07/05/neh-implementation-grant-to-duke-libraries-will-increase-access-to-african-american-oral-histories/).

Olivia Cook and family, New Orleans, 1940s
Three schoolboys, Wilmington, NC 1920s

The digital collection has over 4,200 items, highlighted by over 1,100 fully transcribed interviews and over 1,700 photographic slides. This archive represents the largest repository of stories authored by African Americans from the American South during the period of Jim Crow. In the coming weeks we will be sharing more of the interviews and supporting materials in Behind the Veil through a special blog series.

Behind the Veil Project Staff, 1990s

 

Use these links for more resources on Behind the Veil:

Featured, Franklin Research Center, From Our Collections, New at the Rubenstein Library, Photography

Franklin Research Center Acquires the Celeste and Reggie Hodges Photograph Collection

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

Ceremonial maskThe John Hope Franklin Research Center is happy to share the acquisition of the Celeste and Reggie Hodges Photograph Collection. The collection documents nearly two decades of their life in West Africa, after they joined the Peace Corps in the late 1960s. While there, the Hodges’ worked as teachers and for international agencies but spent years applying their love of amateur photography to document the everyday life of their neighbors and friends with a unique look at the local customs from fishing, basket weaving, husbandry, religious and rites of passage ceremonies. Over that same time, they were also gifted a number of masks, instruments and other artifacts that have been donated to a number of museums over the last few years (https://nasher.duke.edu/stories/a-personal-gift-2/). Both Celeste and Reggie worked behind the camera and developed their film in a makeshift darkroom when they had access to electricity and water in their village. The photographs display African life before the devastation of wars and Ebola in the 1990s affected the people and places where the Hodges’ lived.  The materials now in the Franklin Research Center include their photo negatives, original prints and digital scans, along with printed materials including artwork done by their students. This body of materials provides an intimate, firsthand perspective of this period and people. The collection will be made available once processing is completed.

Woman cleaning fish

From Our Collections

Interview with 2023 Archive of Documentary Arts Collection Award Winner – Gabriella Mykal

Post contributed by Shiraz Ahmed, curatorial intern for the Archive of Documentary Arts

Shiraz Ahmed, curatorial intern for the Archive of Documentary Arts interviews filmmaker Gabriella Mykal via email about her film “Rape Play”, one of the winners of the 2023 Archive of Documentary Arts Collection Awards. Since 2015, the awards have recognized excellence in documentary film, photography, and audio, with cash prizes and the chance to have a body of work archivally preserved and exhibited at Duke.

“Rape Play” (2023) by Gabriella Mykal utilizes experimental techniques to explore how a genre of online erotica has troubling ramifications for young women. At times surreal and eyepopping with its colorful aesthetic, the film addresses this difficult topic with humor and a playfulness reflective of a new generation of filmmakers.

The other winners for 2023 include:

Resita Cox | Film| “Freedom Hill” navigates the environmental racism washing away a North Carolina town of under 2,000 residents.

David Fisher | Film | “The Round Number” explores why and how the number six million was written into the canon, and what its meaning can teach us about the Holocaust.

Holly Lynton | Photo | “Meeting Tonight” portrays a historical worshiping community and its evolving traditions in contemporary rural South Carolina.

This Q&A has been lightly edited.

 

Shiraz Ahmed: What was the starting point for “Rape Play” when you realize this teenage pastime was a larger phenomenon worth of examination?

Gabriella Mykal: “Rape Play” had a false start in 2020 and it took me about a year to get on the right track. The first try was supposed to be a video installation where the visuals involved endurance performances that represented the experience of healing as durational and intentional and efforted. The audio for the installation was going to be interviews with women around me, trusted friends, talking about past experiences of sexual dysfunction and violence.

It just wasn’t working because the approach was not sustainable. The subject matter was too intense, the research too traumatizing. Initially, I was only working around the premise of sexualizing violence. Trends in porn. Visceral assault stories. There was no humor, no lightness to the work. And I realized the form the work was taking was missing the thing I found most interesting about the interviews I was conducting: the tone. These conversations were hyper casual, filled with laughter and speaking in shorthand. I realized the project needed to speak that language, and I needed a point of entry that allowed me enough distance from the subject matter to make my observations without being overwhelmed.

Fanfiction and erotica kept coming back up. Every time we were searching for an analogy, looking for a way to contextualize an abusive ex-boyfriend or a confusing hook up, we would start by saying, “Do you remember reading this fic?” “It’s like this trope.” And we would laugh at the references, and then we would say, “Yes, exactly, I know exactly what you mean.” It became apparent that we all seemed to be moderating and understanding our most intimate experiences through these niche media bubbles. The film needed to look through the same lens.

 

The film’s first scene involves creative use of dramatization and colorful set design. Why use this particular, playful approach for a topic that gets gradually more serious as the film goes on?

I wanted to intro the audience immediately to the text, because if you’ve never read erotica, fanfiction in particular, the film is sort of meaningless to you. The opening aims to immerse the viewer in some of this context, and then disrupt that immersion to take the viewer into a new imagination, this fictitious interview based on these almost ridiculously light conversations about something so heavy.

Visually, I can’t claim having any kind of formal reason for the playful design choices. I just had this image in my mind. Blue walls. Red carpet. A bedroom that’s sparse and strange on a set. I wanted the set design to speak to the imagination and the strangeness that is inherent in written erotica, which is to say, for all the details you might be filling in while reading, there’s also a great deal of blanks left. The blue room is an imagined liminal space of desire and trauma.

 

You interview a number of women who have experience with this genre of erotica, including the actress in your staged scene. How did you approach these individuals and what were you hoping they would gain from this documentary experience?

The process of making this film was a real community effort. The pitch was, “I’m making this film about fan fiction and how it changed my brain chemistry.” I was lucky to find a community of women and queer people who resonated immediately with the subject and wanted to be a part of it.

Everyone I interviewed was not only willing but excited to be open and have these conversations that, when had off camera, are incredibly constructive and healing. Of course, it’s very daunting to have them on camera, so we discussed what we were comfortable with and not comfortable with a great deal before.

What I hoped people would gain by participating was that constructive healing experience that I have when having these conversations, which is to truly relate and level with another person that is coming from a similar place. I think the tone and content of the interviews in the film comes from the fact that you’re watching conversations between dear friends who have a great deal of trust in each other. Putting that on camera, infusing the film with that energy was paramount, that magical bedroom culture that’s created and cultivated by women of all ages constantly. A radical, self-effacing authenticity. A fearless self-exposure.

You often employ clever cinematic techniques that mislead the viewer as to what direction the film is headed in. How do these techniques relate to the overall topic, questions and message you want the film to deliver on?

The thesis of the film is that we have a very complicated relationship to these materials the same way that we have a very complicated relationship to our actual sexual experiences, positive and negative, so the film takes on that complicated relationship. Sometimes it’s highly critical and sometimes it’s celebratory. Oftentimes it’s somewhere in between, or it’s doing both at the same time.

I wanted the film to follow a lineage of meta-modern hybrid docs where the complicated nature of the subject matter informs the film’s ability to “level with you” or to pretend like it’s leveling with you. I’m personally not very interested in documentaries that ever claim to be fully truth telling. I think that docs that use some of these prototypical, historically anthropological formal techniques to allow them credibility are sort of short cutting having to really convince you of anything.

And I think, best case scenario, it’s just the most direct way to go about making nonfiction media, but worst-case scenario, it’s in very bad faith. I wanted “Rape Play” to take a form wherein the content is always in good faith, but the presentation is playful. So, the film is going to, in one moment, make you think that it’s scripted, then make you think that it’s not. Then it’s clearly scripted, but it feels very honest. Then, it’s obviously not scripted, but it’s also highly edited. And then of course there’s the ending sequence in which I talk about a personal experience of sexual violence and the sequence is both deliberate and planned and off-the-cuff.

The film runs on an engine in which the same questions we interrogate ourselves and each other with surrounding sexual violence (is this true, is this valid, is she exaggerating, is she withholding and if so, what?) are reveled in, but deliberately not answered in a way you would expect.

 

Your choices of interview settings – mostly women’s bedrooms, including your own – play a particular role in this film. What were you hoping for these settings to evoke for the subject and the viewer?

The intuitive choice suddenly became, “I should be talking to these girls in their rooms.” Of course, there are two exceptions. Victoria’s interview, which is outside in the same backyard as her scene, and Avalon, who is interviewed in the blue room set from the opening of the film.

The formal argument is that the film, specifically the essay portion that sets up a great deal of the context for these online subcultures that we’re talking about, is deeply invested in discourse and research surrounding bedroom culture amongst teenage girls and how you can effectively call the teenage girl bedroom a hub of cultural production. Across the world, in their respective private domains, these girls are creating assets that they then put into this egalitarian free market for each other in a share economy. I was one of those girls that was sitting in my bedroom online, producing and receiving for years. In a way, I’m still one of those girls; this film was made largely by me, sitting alone, writing and editing in my bedroom. The film hops between intimate spaces, imagined and real, at the rapid pace and leisure that one might experience being online.

Also, the nature of these conversations was extremely intimate, and I wanted to host them in the spaces that people felt the most comfortable. I wanted the viewer to feel like they were really sitting in the room with us having these conversations, like you’re lying in a friend’s bed half asleep, listening to two friends giggling late into the night about the worst things that have ever happened to them.

 

The denouement of this experimental essay film has you revealing your own troubling experience with sexual violence. How did you come to the decision to include this material and why did you employ the technique of fictional reenactment for the conclusion?

To me, it felt not only apparent but completely necessary from the moment that I started this project that anything I asked someone else to be willing to do for the film, I needed to be willing to do. If I was going to ask my friends to recite stories about some of these things that have happened to them, I was also going to recite stories about some these that have happened to me. If I was going ask to my friends to be in it, then I would be in it.

I also felt that it would maybe not make any sense if I never told that story. The thing that had finally propelled me into making the film, the moment of clarity I had about what the real entry point was, was not only that these erotic materials that I had been taking in at such a rapid rate when I was younger seemed to thematically speak to this question of how we deal with learned or inherent sexualization of this kind of violence, but that how I grew up online and then what happened to me were completely intrinsically linked.

There was a direct logic there in which it was set up à punchline. I could not understand one without understanding the other. The film then had that same logic and it had to be explained fully from my perspective to finish the argument.

The idea of reenactment was there from the beginning because reenactment also felt totally thematically in line with the premise of imagination and fantasy. The premise that these materials are not “real” so how do we make them look as “real” as they feel. We’re, I would argue, reenacting them in various ways all the time. From there, I became interested in a question: say this traumatizing thing happens to me because in a kind of abstract way, I was trying to enact some of these things from fictions that I had read… How can I repurpose the power of enacting, to act out, to embody, to play? And how can we use that to heal?

I had no interest in using that power of play to relive the traumatic event. Instead, I returned to an obsessive fantasy that had nothing to do with my assailant and instead had everything to do with reconnecting with myself and the people around me. It was a fantasy of resolution. It was a fantasy of moving on.

If we have these two reenactments, one at the beginning and one at the end of the film, then the beginning is what I once would have thought would be the fantasy of how we can use these texts, then the end of the film is a new imagination of how we can use these texts. We don’t just reenact them, we expand on them, and in that expansion, we release ourselves from them.

 

As part of the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, “Rape Play’” will be available for researchers interested in its construction as much as its content. What has working on the film taught you about the form of documentary and its utilization and ability to reveal uncomfortable truths?

Making “Rape Play” taught me a great deal, maybe too much to put into words, but I’ll say this. Documentary is a playground. Documentary is a stage and a therapist’s office. A courtroom. A long car ride. A bunker and a kitchen table. Documentary owes us shock and laughter and discomfort and embarrassment and outrage, but above all else, Documentary owes us truth. We make non-fiction work to debase, self-efface, expose, explain, illuminate, and confuse because the world as we live in it and our lives as we live them are already strange and dense enough as it is. We do the work because it is honest, if not draining and frightening, work, looking and pointing, describing, and criticizing. Documentary, when done right, is the work of not only revealing, but dissecting and living with uncomfortable truths until the alien and the confusing becomes the familiar and the understood.

Bingham Center, Featured, Gender and Sexuality History Collections, RL Scholars, Travel Grants

Proustmania! Reading, writing, sewing Proust today

Post contributed by Matilde Manara, Postdoc Fellow at Institut Lethica, Université de Strasbourg, France.  Manara received an Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick Research Travel Grant, 2023-2024.

I approached the materials held in Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s Papers as part of a larger project on feminist models of writing, behavior, and knowledge to be found in Marcel Proust’s A la Recherche du Temps Perdu. I am particularly interested in understanding how readers can acknowledge a literary model such as A La Recherche, recognizing its importance in their life and/or art, without necessarily embracing its esthetic, moral, or epistemological foundations (and even by openly rejecting them). Along with Sedgwick’s Works in Fiber, Paper and Proust (2005), I delved into Chantal Akerman’s La Captive (2000), Jacqueline Rose’s Albertine (2001) and Anne Carson’s The Albertine Workout (2014). An important part of this research deals with questions raised by Sedgwick herself in her writings on Proust. In the final chapter of Epistemology of the Closet, she notably writes:

I was reading Proust for the first time during just the short stretch of years during which it occurred to me to have ambitions that were not exclusively under the aspect of eternity: to want to publish visibly, know people, make a go it, get a run for my money. Oddly, of course, it was reading Proust that made me want these adventures and think I could find them. The interminable meditation on the vanity of human wishes was a galvanizing failure for at least one reader: it was, if anything, the very sense of the transparency and predictability worldly ambitions that gave me the nerve and skill to have worldly ambitions of my own. Like, I believe, most young women, I never had a shred of identification with JuIien Sorel or the nineteenth-century French male plot of conquering the capital – until after the years of Proust-reading; then both the hero’s airy ambition and his concomitant uncritical adoption of a master text became intelligible and engaging traits (Sedgwick 1990, 241).

In preparing my visit to Duke, I had planned to explore this potential identification by dividing the materials I expected to consult into two categories: those related to Sedgwick’s academic work (syllabi from the seminars she held on Proust from around 1998 up to 2009, notes and drafts for Epistemology of the Closet and The Weather in Proust, scattered articles, and  records of conferences) on the one hand, and those related to her artistic work (textile art, artists’ books, pieces from her 2005 exhibition, Works in Fiber, Paper and Proust) on the other. The days spent at Duke made me realize how much my plan was naive, even somewhat paradoxical, for these two practices are deeply intertwined and connected to each other in the same “fractal” way she suggests Proust’s novel should be read (Sedgwick 2011, 90-93).

I was most struck by two aspects of the materials I had the chance to consult in the archive. First, to see how Proust’s novel, in both its material dimension (the printed paper) and its virtual dimension (the hypertextual lattice we discover when not following a linear progression), becomes itself the object of a découture (witnessed by pages and pages of copied, printed and collaged quotations organized by Sedgwick under thematic headings such as Weather, Interior-outside, Albertine, Happiness, Anxiety, etc.), thus allowing the book’s complex architecture to emerge, while at the same time making it possible to detach from it, or even build it anew. Second, to observe how these shredded fragments feed into Sedgwick’s vast and increasingly central reflection on immanence (drawn on Proust as much as on Buddhism or the philosophy of Plotinus) to such an extent that the underlined pages of the many (including some multilingual) versions of A la recherche she uses over the years bear testimony to this gradual convergence, revealing how transformative reading the novel could have been for her.

My time at Rubenstein library has certainly given me the opportunity to enrich my project, helping me to better understand how Sedgwick reads, writes and seals in Proust – and not on, as she meant by the title of her exhibition at Harvard in 2005, “Works in Fiber, Paper, and Proust.” But it has also, and most importantly, touched me on a personal level, made my Proustian reader self fully and enthusiastically agree with her when she notices that:

It is harder to say in what this truth-effect of Proust consists. AII the paradoxes of a more traditionally conceived vraisemblance are especially active here: molecularly, there are relatively few individual propositions in or arising from the book that it would make sense to consider true; and even at the molar level, propositions or “values” or “attitudes” (erotic or political pessimism, for instance) that could be extracted from Proust do not necessarily seem true to me, to whom, nonetheless, “Proust” seems so “true”. Plainly, classically, it can be said that the coherence and credibility of the work, its vraisemblance in the usual senses, depend on an internal structuration of materials and codes that can only as relation, as structure, be interdigitated with or tested against the relational structures of a “reality” that surrounds and interleaves and thus mutually constitutes it. The truth-effect I am describing goes beyond questions of the work’s coherence and credibility, however. It has to do with the use of the literary work, its (to sound censorious) expropriability by its readers, its (to sound, in a different vocabulary, celebratory) potential for empowering them. For, unmistakably, the autobiographical parable I have just encapsulated as “the years of Proust-reading” represents both a prolonged instance of textual abuse and a story of empowerment. (Sedgwick 1990, 241).

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