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The Case for Archival Partnerships the Radcliffe Workshop on Technology & Archival Processing A More Complete Record: The Case for Archival Partnerships The Radcliffe Workshop on Technology & Archival Processing Thursday, April 12 Knafel Center, Radcliffe Institute | Public Transcript 3:00-4:30 Scholars Report on Research Experience | Panel Discussion Moderator: A'lelia Bundles, journalist and author of On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker . Garrett Felber, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Mississippi and Visiting Scholar in the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History, Harvard University . Valerie Boyd, Charlayne Hunter-Gault Professor of Journalism and Director of MFA Program in Narrative Nonfiction, University of Georgia; author of Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston . Anastasia Curwood, Associate Professor, Director, African American & Africana Studies, University of Kentucky - Good afternoon, everyone. That was so incredible, Beverly and Craig! [APPLAUSE] Like Beverly, I wish I'd written that book. And Beverly is somebody who's helped me with my research for many, many years. My name is A'Lelia Bundles. And I'm so proud. This is my alma mater. And I'm so proud of what is happening today. [APPLAUSE] And there are so many faces of people that I'm seeing who have helped me with my research for the last several decades as I've been writing about members of my family-- probably most well-known, Madam CJ Walker. But I've seen people who literally helped me four or five decades ago, because I am that old. But you know, a special thanks to Sarah Thomas, to Marilyn Dunn, Jane Kamensky, and Amanda Strauss. I know lots of other people have worked very hard. But the vision that came from conversations with Julieanna Richardson and Marilyn Dunn and Hollie Smith, and others who-- Khalil Muhammad-- and others who've been talking about something like this for so long, and to see it actually happening and to know the relationships that are going to-- some that are already-- that already exist. And the relationships that are going to be built as a result of this day and a half, just makes me very, very happy, because I know the value of archives. It is a pleasure for me to introduce you to our panelists. Our focus is going to be, as we talked on the phone, to prepare the richness and value of collections that are both inaccessible and accessible, the great discoveries and positive experiences that we've had and the help that we've gotten from often overworked and under-resourced staff and institutions, the challenges that we faced when working in some of the collections and talking about-- someone asked earlier about where people should donate their papers, so we will be talking about that. But it's my pleasure first to introduce Anastasia Curwood, who is an Associate Professor of History and Director of African-American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky. Her scholarship focuses on the interface between private life and historical context for black Americans in the 20th century. Some of her family papers are here at the Schlesinger Library. She is a native of Cambridge. And her current project is a critical biography of Congresswoman and Democratic candidate for United States President Shirley Chisholm. Anastasia? [APPLAUSE] She will be-- I'm going to introduce all three. But we should give you applause. It's also my pleasure to introduce Valerie Boyd, who is the author of the critically acclaimed biography, "Wrapped in Rainbows, The Life of Zora Neale Hurston., winner of the Southern Book Award and the American Library Association's Notable Book Award. Valerie and I met because we shared an editor at Scribner many years ago. She is a Professor of Journalism and the Charlene Hunter-Gault Distinguished Writer in Residence at the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia. Simon and Schuster 37 Ink will publish Gathering Blossoms Under Fire, The Journals of Alice Walker in 2019, which Valerie's editing. And finally, Garrett Felber is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Mississippi and a Visiting Scholar in the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University. He is the co-author of The Portable Malcolm X Reader from Penguin Books with Manning Marable and is currently working on a manuscript titled Those Who Know Don't Say, The Nation of Islam, Black Nationalist Politics and The Carceral State. He helped found Liberation Literacy, an organization dedicated to building social justice literacy and re-imagining community through education and conversation inside and outside of prisons in Portland, Oregon. So we will first hear from Dr. Curwood. [APPLAUSE] - Well, I'm very excited to be here. And as a scholar, I appreciate being able to address those of you who are making my work possible. There are people here who have specifically made my work possible. And I'm excited about this project to make-- to start to ensure some better access or work in partnerships to ensure better access to archival material, treasures that we have scattered around the nation in archives that belong to HBCUs. And I think my job here is to report from the field of play a little bit, what it's like to be a scholar and to have my livelihood in many ways depend on these institutions-- and my livelihood and my passions in my work. So I'm going to comment on my experiences in three areas-- at the Archives, as a member of a donor family-- A'Lelia just alluded to that-- and as a contact with possible future donors in the course of my scholarship. So as a researcher at the Archives, the things that work well when I've gone to HBCUs have been that the staff are unbelievably dedicated under sometimes extremely trying circumstances. And I think Holly said, she's gone. But she said, we beg, borrow, and steal. People make a way out of no way to try to preserve these materials and create access for them. And when I show up, people know what I'm working on. And they genuinely care what I'm working on. There are people in this room who have said, oh, hello, yes, oh, here's what-- I'd like you to look at this, or I think it would be a good idea for you to look at that. So that level of engagement with the work of the scholars coming in has been absolutely essential to what I've been trying to do as a scholar. And I haven't noticed that degree of engagement at other institutions. There's one institution here in town I've done research at and I thought, do they even want me here? I'm using the materials. But it's very inconvenient for me to be here. That's not always the case at PWI's, not by a long shot. But that feeling has existed. What happens, as I've been a researcher, and I've noticed in some of my HBCU experiences, is sometimes materials just aren't accessible. So they might be in storage. They might be not processed. Their hours tend to be shorter because there isn't as much money for staff. So the costs for the researcher might go up if you need x number of hours to work with the materials, then you can't get to them except for between certain hours. And then you wind up spending a long time. This happens at the New York Public Library, which is not an HBCU. But it's an interesting situation. But those hours-- those of you who have researched in the New York Public Library at the Schomburg know that those are short hours and certain days. And it's not cheap to stay in New York. So you have to stay longer. And so there are some issues related to the under-resourced problem that Beverly Guy-Sheftall alluded to. And those shift some costs on to researchers. So those are my-- I'm going to leave it there with my experiences as a researcher. And I'll talk for a moment about my experience as a member of a donor family. So my grandmother was a 1956 PhD in social psychology here at Radcliffe. So she was an alum. She was one of the very early-- I actually don't know what number she is in terms of a black woman PhD from Radcliffe. But she was pretty pioneering. And the first contact we got from Schlesinger was from Eva Mosley. And I mean, she was on us immediately. She said, what are you going to do with those papers? And she had paid attention. She knew when my grandmother passed on and she asked about them. Well, we didn't do anything about them. And as it happened, I wound up finding some of her personal papers and using them in my first book, which was about African-Americans' marriages. And there are some personal letters between her and my grandfather that are incredibly riveting. We finally, I don't know, 20 years after-- yeah, I think it was 20 years after that first contact we finally donated the papers. Cathy [? Kraft ?] and Kathy Jacobs came up, helped put them into boxes, and they sent a moving truck. It was absolutely a painless process that resources help with. And then I got a finding aid within a few months. They'd been processed. It was astounding. So most of her professional papers are accessible without permission.
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