Benjamin Newton Duke. From the University Archives Photograph Collection.
Recently, I was tasked with the job of researching and learning about the life of Benjamin Newton Duke, affectionately known as “Mr. Ben.” Mr. Ben was the older brother of James B. Duke, and one of tobacco tycoon Washington Duke’s children.
J.B. was placed in charge of many of the family’s business ventures and became famous for his role in running American Tobacco and other Duke ventures, but Ben was the Duke family’s chief philanthropist. He gave away copious amounts of the family’s sizeable wealth, and was known for his generosity. He also served on several charitable boards, such as the Oxford Orphan Asylum north of Durham.
The purpose of my assignment was to create a timeline (coming soon!) that tells the story of Ben Duke’s remarkable life through words and pictures. In creating the timeline, I looked through boxes upon boxes of photos, letters, and ledgers related to his life. Among the photos that I looked at was a series of interior shots of his home in Durham, “Four Acres,” before it was demolished.
Postcard of Four Acres, the home of Benjamin Newton Duke. From the University Archives Postcard Collection.
Somewhere in the lot was this photo, a look at one of the rooms in Four Acres. If you look closely at the photo, you’ll notice a statue on a pedestal on the right side.
Interior of Four Acres. From the Benjamin Newton Duke Papers.
As part of our ongoing renovation preparation work, we have been researching the origins and provenance of some artifacts in our possession. One of these was a statue that has been residing in the office of the Duke University Libraries’ Exhibits Curator for a decade. We had documentation that the statue came from Four Acres, but we had no photographic evidence to prove it: until now. This series of previously unexamined photographs helped us confirm that the statue in the Exhibits Curator’s office is, in fact, the statue from Four Acres.
It’s nice to know that this simple project of learning about Mr. Ben has connected us so tangibly to all that he did for Duke University.
When Senator John F. Kennedy’s plane landed in Raleigh on December 2nd—one hour before he was due to speak at Duke University—he hadn’t yet declared his candidacy for the 1960 presidential election. Writing about that evening’s address, the Duke Chronicle wrote simply that the “boyish John Kennedy” was the “leading unannounced candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination” and noted a recent decrease in his popularity, especially when compared with potential Republican candidates New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller and Vice President Richard M. Nixon.
Kennedy’s aspirations were, however, clear. The arrangements for the speech were made by J. Leonard Reinsch, then a member of the Democratic National Committee and director of the 1960 Democratic National Convention, whose two children were students at Duke. WUNC-TV filmed the evening—necessitating that the speech be given in the smaller Page Auditorium, rather than Duke Indoor Stadium (not yet known as Cameron)—and the WUNC radio station recorded it for later broadcast.
Kennedy spoke as part of the Major Speakers Series planned by the Student Union’s Educational Affairs Committee. For the 1959-1960 academic year, the student committee, led by chair Byron Battle, attempted to build a non-partisan slate of candidates for high public office. According to their meeting minutes, their efforts to secure Duke alumnus Richard Nixon involved “a constant barage [sic] of letters” from Duke administrators, including President A. Hollis Edens. They also considered extending an invitation to Hubert Humphrey, but decided against it, on the grounds of “a possible preponderance of Democrats, and a fear that he might not have anything worthwhile to say.” (Humphrey did eventually speak at Duke in 1965.)
Letter, Byron Battle to John F. Kennedy, June 23, 1959. From the Duke University Union Records. Click to enlarge.
Local newspaper accounts indicate that the speech, titled “The Challenge to American Colleges” and ranging over key national and regional issues like the space race, North Carolina’s progress toward integration, and Kennedy’s position on birth control, was well-received.
But we’re less sure of the Duke student body’s reaction to the speech, perhaps because the campus’s attention turned almost immediately to a different election. In the same issue of the Duke Chronicle that looked forward to Kennedy’s speech, a undergraduate student reporter named Steve Cohen published the first part of a satire that set the nativity story in World War II-era Poland. Tipped off by the paper’s printer, and worried that the piece would cause controversy damaging to Duke’s reputation, President Edens acted swiftly, suspending publication of the Duke Chronicle until the editorial board could be reorganized.
Senator John F. Kennedy before his address in Page Auditorium, December 2, 1959. Kennedy is standing in the Flowers Building’s Music Room. From the University Archives Photograph Collection.
The Duke Chronicle published its next issue on December 14, 1959, 11 days later. The issue carries only a brief mention of Kennedy’s speech, in an editorial from new editor-in-chief hopeful Jim Brown, who wrote:
We are constantly in danger of focusing all our attention on the sensational. Significant events often pass unnoticed. People all over the nation know of the Chronicle incident. But how many of them heard about the speech that Senator Kennedy made the day after the Cohen article was published. . . . Senator Kennedy’s masterful presentation had a considerable impact on the student body. But compared with “A Christmas Story” the attention that it received was negligible.
Later that afternoon, Marian Sapp was elected by the University Publications Board as the Duke Chronicle’s new editor-in-chief. Kennedy declared his candidacy for president on January 2, 1960. We’re not definitively certain what happened to Steve Cohen, but Sapp herself alluded in her own December 14th editorial to the “destruction . . . of one boy’s right of expression in any University publication.”
Shortly after Duke’s football win over the University of North Carolina on October 20th, the Duke University Libraries’ Communications and Development Departments and the Duke University Archives had an idea: why not bring the Victory Bell to Perkins Library? The University Archives has tons of historical material about Duke’s football team and the Victory Bell—including the bell’s original clapper, “liberated” from a UNC gymnasium in 1964—and, well, how much fun would it be to ring a bell in a quiet library?
After a few phone calls to our friends in Duke Athletics, the Victory Bell’s cart rolled over to Perkins Library this past Friday morning. Here are a few pictures from what proved to be a very fun—and occasionally very noisy—day. And, no, even though we’re librarians, we didn’t shush any of our bell ringers!
The Victory Bell arrives at Perkins Library!An excited student reacts after ringing the Victory Bell.Two more students get ready to ring the Victory Bell.Coach David Cutcliffe and Provost Peter Lange share a turn. Note some remaining blue spray paint on the inside of the bell.President Brodhead rings the Victory Bell.
So what do you think, Coach Cutcliffe? Shall we do this again next year?
In an earlier blog post, we mentioned that we’ve been processing thousands of sports-related negatives and prints transferred to the Duke University Archives by Duke’s Sports Information Office.
I recently began reviewing images from the 1930s and 1940s. In envelopes labeled “football sidelights” are negatives of the Duke University Marching Band, fondly known as DUMB.
In existence since the early 1900s, DUMB is an integral part of Duke sports, providing music and vocal support at games, and has established a reputation for performing creative and highly entertaining halftime shows. For more information, take a look at the finding aid to DUMB’s own records, part of the University Archives’s collections. Below are a few of my favorite images.
Duke University Marching Band, October 7, 1939Duke University Marching Band Drum Line, October 21, 1939Duke University Marching Band, October 28, 1939Majorette Lucille King and her Mother, November 19, 1938Duke University Marching Band and Blue Devil, 1940
This past Saturday, Duke’s football team defeated Wake Forest, 34-27 (Go, Duke!).
In honor of this victory, the Duke University Archives thought it would be fun to share some historical photos we recently received from the Sports Information Office. These action shots are from football games in 1931 and 1932 show Duke playing (and defeating: 28-0 in 1931 and 9-0 in 1932) Wake Forest.
Duke vs. Wake Forest, October 1931Duke vs. Wake Forest, October 1931Duke vs. Wake Forest, October 1932Duke vs. Wake Forest, October 1932
For the last two months, I have been processing a large accession of materials from the Duke Sports Information Office. The vast majority of the accession consists of photographs and negatives from Duke football teams, served with a side of basketball and seasoned with photos of other teams and individual athletes. As you can imagine, I have gone through many generations of athletes, coaches, and of course, fashion trends. This post is dedicated to a few assistant football coaches who weren’t afraid to show add some fashion flair to their official photos.
Assistant Football Coach John Guy shows us his kitchen style. The no-apron look was very in that season.
I should also say outright: I love sports, particularly college athletics. I did my undergraduate work at a football school. I have free t-shirts from at least a dozen other athletic teams at my undergrad school. My graduate degrees are from . . . well, another school in the Triangle with a basketball team. As a result, processing this collection has been a lot of fun for me.
Assistant Football Coach David Holton is a man who is not afraid of mixing patterns and textures in his outfits. Stripes, plaid, and corduroy: very boho-chic.
During my time processing the Sports Information Collection, I’ve noticed something about the coaching staff photos: although the head coaches by and large have fairly tame outfits, the assistant coaches most certainly do not. Perhaps they want to ensure that players can see them on the sideline/courtside? Maybe they just love mythologically-inspired ties? We’ll probably never know for sure!
The photos above showcase the ties of Freshman Football Coach John Gutekunst. I’ve taken the liberty of calling out the patterns on both so that you can see in better detail. Clearly, Gutekunst stayed with the animal theme over the course of his career—by the later picture, he even ventured to wear a butterfly shirt with the mythological tie!
To close out this post, I think we should all tip our hats to the adventurous styles of these assistant football coaches. They have showed us how to look cool on the sidelines, in the kitchen, and in your formal yearbook photos. Keep up the great work!
Now tell me: who’s your style icon? Are you channeling Guy’s daring “no-apron” look, Holton’s mixed patterns and textures, or Gutekunst’s animal-themed accessories?
In this month’s update of the CCC Project at Duke University, we are happy to announce the publication online of the records of Duke’s Department of African and African-American Studies. The items included in this collection document the beginnings of the department, the research and teaching of its faculty members, and the various social and cultural movements occurring within the African-American community during the 1970s and later. We encourage researchers to peruse the digitized documents, accessible from the collection inventory, to find a host of items sure to add to the scholarship of the long civil rights movement.
Our document spotlight for the month highlights the struggles that the African and African-American Studies Department, then known as the Black Studies Program, experienced in its earliest days. From its inception in 1969, the Black Studies Program had been offering several courses through adjunct faculty. Still, the Program lacked a director and its course slate remained minimal, although the Program did offer a major.
In addition, members of the African-American community at Duke contended that the university’s administration did not implement programs to encourage “black cultural representation.” The document shown below is a draft petition from late 1979 written by members of the African-American community at Duke asking the administration to ameliorate both the academic and cultural issues that hampered the growth of the African-American community at the university.
Draft Petition to Duke Administration Regarding Cultural Representation of the Black Community. Department of African and African-American Studies Records, Box 1, folder 30 (File ID daams01030169)
Although we do not have a completed petition in the Department’s records, the goals of the document did eventually become Duke’s policy. University administration would create new standards to recruit more African-American faculty members. In addition, the Program would soon become a fully-staffed Department. In terms of cultural engagement, the establishment of the Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture in 1983 helped to fulfill the demands listed in the petition. Researchers will now have the opportunity to learn even more about the beginnings of African-American Studies at Duke and how struggles for recognition led to a strong academic and cultural presence on campus.
The grant-funded CCC Project is designed to digitize selected manuscripts and photographs relating to the long civil rights movement. For more about Rubenstein Library materials being digitized through the CCC Project, check out previous progress updates posted here at The Devil’s Tale!
Post contributed by Josh Hager, CCC Graduate Assistant.
It’s a busy Friday afternoon, and many of us are eagerly anticipating the 5:00 PM ringing of the Duke Chapel carillon. Then, university carillonneur J. Samuel Hammond will play Dear Old Duke to send us off for two days of rest and relaxation.
On this day in 1939, though, the carillon drew 5,000 people to campus on a drizzly evening, as then-university carillonneur Anton Brees and visiting mezzo-soprano Mary Frances Lehnerts prepared to perform what Duke’s Alumni Register termed “America’s first vocarillon recital.”
The vocarillon concert (voice + carillon=vocarillon) was an innovation that Brees had brought with him from his native Antwerp, where he (and his father before him) served as carillonneur of that city’s cathedral. Brees, who gave the carillon’s inaugural performance as part of the 1932 commencement celebrations, spent his summers at Duke–he spent the remainder of the year as carillonneur at the Bok Singing Tower in Lake Wales, Florida–presenting popular weekly carillon concerts that drew visitors from all over the area.
A view of the crowd at the 1939 vocarillon concert.
On that August night in 1939, the concert-going crowd filled West Campus’s quadrangles, spilling all the way down Chapel Drive. Lehnerts sang five pieces, accompanied by Brees on the carillon, from the Chapel’s balcony, some 175 feet above her audience. The Durham Morning Herald reported that she “sang with no more effort than would be required in a small concert hall,” and yet concertgoers sitting by Few Quadrangle could hear her clearly.
Mary Frances Lehnerts performs during the 1939 vocarillon concert.
In between each of Lehnerts’s performances, Brees played solo pieces for the carillon. Here’s the evening’s program:
America (for carillon)
Somewhere a Voice is Calling by Arthur Tate (for voice and carillon)
Maryland, My Maryland (for carillon)
Homing by Teresa del Riego (for voice and carillon)
Gavotte in G minor by Johann Sebastian Bach (for carillon)
Holy Night by Franz Gruber (for voice and carillon)
I Can Hear My Savior Calling by Philip P. Bliss (for carillon)
Encores:
Only a Rose by Rudolph Friml (for voice and carillon)
Roses of Picardy by Haydn Wood (for voice and carillon)
Moonlight and Roses by Edwin Lamare (for voice and carillon)
The Last Rose of Summer by Friedrich von Flotow (for voice and carillon)
The Old Refrain by Fritz Kreisler (for carillon)
Dear Old Duke by R. H. James (for carillon)
Yes, that many encores. We wish we could have been there.
Trinity College faculty for the 1878-1879 academic year. Lemuel Johnson is seated to the right of President Braxton Craven.
LEMUEL JOHNSON (15 January 1828 – 29 April 1900) taught for more than thirty years the entire mathematics curriculum at Trinity College when it was a fledgling institution located in Randolph County, North Carolina.
Though there is no present building or other monument to his name at Duke, the Rubenstein Library holds in various collections a small memorial to this pioneer faculty member in the form of four manuscript letters, a mathematics primer that was widely distributed during the Civil War era, a carte de visite of him and another of the Trinity faculty of the late 1870s, and an 1887 map of Durham County printed from his own manuscript map, the first published presentation of the bounds of this county after its formation in 1881 from sections of Orange, Wake, and Granville.
He was the second graduate of Normal College, Trinity’s predecessor, when it was a very humble institution situated in a rural, red clay, Quaker-Methodist corner of the Carolina piedmont. There, beginning in 1852, he taught courses in arithmetic, mensuration, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and calculus as well as performing the duties of college treasurer, librarian, and first president of the Trinity College alumni association.
Among his most memorable achievements as an educator was his tutoring of the gifted Giles sisters, every evening in his parlor after a full day of classroom teaching. Mary Z. Giles, Persis P. Giles, and Theresa Giles were graduated with the Trinity class of 1878 (although segregated into a “Ladies” column with less than full membership), an event that the Wilmington Morning Star reported as “unprecedented in the history of North Carolina colleges.” Indeed, the celebrated Sallie Walker Stockard, early historian of Alamance county and first female matriculate at the University of North Carolina, received her diploma in Chapel Hill in 1898.
In the last years of his life, Professor Johnson supported himself through hard times by teaching in rural high schools and by working intermittently as a civil engineer, and his maps of Randolph and Davidson counties are available online via the NC Maps site.
Post contributed by David Southern, Rubenstein Library researcher and Managing Editor for the Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle at the Duke University Press.
Currently, there is a debate among faculty at the University of Chicago regarding whether or not President Barack Obama’s presidential library should be erected on campus. Duke University experienced a similar debate in 1981, in what is today referred to as the Nixon Library Controversy.
In late July 1981, Terry Sanford initiated negotiations with former president Richard Nixon (Duke Law 1937) to locate the Nixon presidential library on the campus of his alma mater. When this information was revealed to faculty members during the week of August 10, 1981, many opposed the proposition as well as Sanford’s failure to consult the faculty prior to initiating negotiations.
Many who opposed the library had moral objections to memorializing a president whose behavior in office was reproachable, and they feared a negative effect on the university’s reputation. Other concerns included the effects of greatly increased tourist traffic on campus and the aesthetic nature of the large proposed structure. However, supporters of erecting the Nixon Library on campus argued that the scholarly and academic benefits of locating the vast Nixon Presidential Materials collection on campus should and would outweigh any moral concerns. These supporters tended to denounce the actions of vocal dissenters as divisive and/or arrogant.
Meetings of the Academic Council and Board of Trustees during September and October 1981 were dominated by this debate, and a group of faculty formed the Committee Against the Nixon-Duke Library (CANDL) to organize the efforts of faculty, students, alumni, and others opposed to the proposed library. Although the Academic Council voted not to recommend further negotiations with Nixon in a 35-34 decision September 3, 1981, the Board of Trustees later voted 9-2 to proceed. By April 1982 negotiations had stalled, and a year later Nixon’s representatives announced that a site at Chapman College in San Clemente, California, had been chosen for the Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library.
Duke University Archives houses several collections related to the Controversy. Our most recent acquisition is the Peter Wood Papers on the Nixon Library Controversy. Wood was Professor of History during this time and was a member of CANDL. Included in his papers is the following flyer:
Click to enlarge.
For more information about the Nixon Library Controversy, we invite you to consult resources within Duke University Archives, including the following collections:
