Grant Supports Documentation of New Orleans Hiphop

This morning, the Amistad Research Center was pleased to be among the 200+ recipients of grant funding from the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation. Support from the Foundation will aid the Center’s efforts to expand the forthcoming New Orleans Hiphop and Bounce Archive, a freely-accessible online collection of audio and video interviews with artists, DJs, producers, record store owners, and others within the hiphop and bounce communities in New Orleans.

The digital archive will be comprised of audiovisual interviews currently held at the Center in two related collecitons, the NOLA Hiphop Archive Project Collection and the Where They At Collection.

The NOLA Hiphop Archive was founded by Holly Hobbs in 2012. Thus far, the NOLA Hiphop Archive has conducted over 30 videotaped interviews with hiphop and bounce artists and pioneers in the city, including Mannie Fresh, Mystikal, Partners N Crime, Dee-1, Ricky B, DJ Raj Smoove, Nesby Phips, Nicky da B; Rusty Lazer, Queen Blackkold Madina (Academy Award-winning rapper & star of the documentary Trouble the Water) and more. A sample of these interviews can be viewed below.

The accompanying Where They At collection was begun in 2008 by photographer Aubrey Edwards and journalist Alison Fensterstock, with the assistance of a grant from the Greater New Orleans Foundation. It collected over 50 photographic portraits and audio interviews with New Orleans rappers, DJs, producers, photographers, label owners, promoters, record store personnel, journalists and other parties involved in the New Orleans hip-hop and bounce scene from the late 1980s through Hurricane Katrina, as well as ephemera including original fliers, posters, vintage photographs and more. In a multimedia exhibition form, the collection toured extensively. It currently lives in online form at wheretheyatnola.com.

Grant to highlight African Americans in STEM Fields

Amistad is about to take on another large project with the help of a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The grant will allow the Center to hightlight African American accomplishments in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields.

 

The two-year project will process fifteen archival collections, drawing attention to the long history of African American achievement in the sciences. The completion of this project will not only position Amistad as a national leader of repositories holding collections documenting African Americans in STEM professions, but will also provide a young archivist in the early stages of his or her career valuable experience in the evaluation, organization, preservation, and description of complex archival collections. Selected items from the collections will also be digitized and added to Amistad’s online digital collections database, where they will be accessible to remote researchers.

Physicist Ronald Mickens’ notes for a presentation at Florida A&M University in 1985.

Collections pertaining to science and mathematics are one of Amistad’s eleven core subject strengths and primary collection areas. This project will help increase the visibility of these collections, and help the Center engage a new generation of minority scientists through increased awareness of preceding generations of African American achievement in mathematics, the sciences, and related fields.

 

The grant will provide processing for the papers of Luther G. Bellinger, Albert Turner Bharucha-Reid, James Blackwell, Henry E. Braden III, Eugene Collins, Alexander Louis Jackson II, Ronald E. Mickens, Brent Taylor Pendleton, Joseph A. Pierce, Raymond J. Pitts, Jesse Olin Sheffield, George Thomas Jr., and Robert Ambrose Thornton, as well as the records of the Black Data Processing Association and the Parson vs. Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical Corporation employment discrimination case. Topics covered within these collections include mathematics and science education and mentorship, desegregation and the historic barriers faced by African Americans in the STEM fields, careers in medicine and aeronautics, and more.

 

The mission of the IMLS is to “inspire libraries and museums to advance innovation, lifelong learning, and cultural and civic engagement.” Amistad will be receiving one of thirty-seven grants from the organization, which is distributing a total of over two million dollars to worthy institutions. The Center’s grant is one of several awarded in the area of “Museum Grants for African American History and Culture,” and is intended to “provide professional training, technical assistance, internships, and outside expertise to museums that focus on African American life, art, history, and culture.” Read more about the grant and discover other grant-winners here.

Posted by Brenda Flora

(Image from the Ronald E. Mickens papers. May not be reproduced without permission.)

Digital Resource on the Civil Rights Movement

Flier for the 1963 Freedom
Vote campaign in Mississippi
sponsored by the Council
of Federated Organizations.

As commemorations of Freedom Summer and the 1964 passage of the Civil Rights Act take place, the Amistad Research Center reminds everyone of an excellent resource for primary source documents on the Civil Rights Movement — the online digital collection “Print Culture and the Civil Rights Movement, 1950-1980.” This digital collection is an expansion of the exhibition “The Revolution Will Not Be…: Print Culture of the Civil Rights Movement” held at the Amistad Research Center in 2011. As the nation’s oldest, largest, and arguably most comprehensive independent archives/library documenting the modern Civil Rights Movement, the Amistad Research Center has brought together digitized documents from a variety of archival collections, including the papers of activists such as John O’Neal, Fannie Lou Hamer, Clarie Collins Harvey, Connie Harse, John Lee Tilley, as well as the Eric Steele Wells collection, the Center’s own ephemera collection, and other sources. Access to the digital collection is free and can be found via the Louisiana Digital Library or through the portal of the Tulane University Digital Library.

Flier produced following the assassination of civil rights activist Medgar Evers.

This project highlights the newspapers, posters, broadsides, pamphlets, fliers, and other printed ephemera produced by student and community groups, leading civil rights organizations, and individuals, which documented a revolutionary era. The Civil Rights Movement in the United States coincided with rapid changes in a variety of news and communications media. The expansion of television and documentary film-making brought images of the struggles of African Americans and those who supported civil rights into the homes of the American populace. However, control of the tone and content of electronic media was not always in the hands of those who were being documented. It was the democratization of various printed media that allowed civil rights leaders, workers, and organizations to circulate their combined, and sometimes contradictory, voices.

Students, teachers, researchers, and others are encouraged to contact the Center’s Reference Department regarding this digital collection and related materials on the Civil Rights Movement held at Amistad. For more information, please visit the Center’s website. 

Posted by Christopher Harter

(Photos from the Amistad Research Center. May not be reproduced without permission.)

NOLA Hiphop and Bounce Archive Update

The launch of the digital NOLA Hiphop and Bounce Archive has been delayed to a Fall 2014 start, so that we will be better able to accommodate events surrounding the launch of the significant project. Once the digital archive is live, anyone will be able to access the interviews free of charge either in person at the Amistad Research Center on Tulane’s campus in New Orleans or online from anywhere. Watch this space for more details.

The NOLA Hiphop Archive was founded by Holly Hobbs in 2012. Thus far, the NOLA Hiphop Archive has conducted over 30 videotaped interviews with hiphop and bounce artists and pioneers in the city, including Mannie Fresh, Mystikal, Partners N Crime, Dee-1, Ricky B, DJ Raj Smoove, Nesby Phips, Nicky da B & Rusty Lazer, Queen Blackkold Madina (Academy Award-winning rapper & star of the documentary Trouble the Water) and more. A sample of these interviews can now be viewed on the Music Rising at Tulane website at musicrising.tulane.edu.

The accompanying Where They At collection was begun in 2008 by photographer Aubrey Edwards and journalist Alison Fensterstock, with the assistance of a grant from the Greater New Orleans Foundation. It collected over 50 photographic portraits and audio interviews with New Orleans rappers, DJs, producers, photographers, label owners, promoters, record store personnel, journalists and other parties involved in the New Orleans hip-hop and bounce scene from the late 1980s through Hurricane Katrina, as well as ephemera including original fliers, posters, vintage photographs and more. In a multimedia exhibition form, the collection toured extensively. It currently lives in online form at wheretheyatnola.com.

Posted by Brenda Flora.

New Digital Resource: Crescent City Pictorial

Amistad staff are pleased to announce a new digital resource created at Amistad in partnership with the Tulane University Digital Library.

In 1926, former educator and newspaper publisher O. C. W. (Orlando Capitola Ward) Taylor published a 28-page souvenir booklet dedicated “to the Progress of the Colored Citizens of New Orleans, Louisiana,” “America’s Most Interesting City.”  The Crescent City Pictorial was designed by O. T. Griffin and featured the photography of noted early twentieth century New Orleans photographer Villard Paddio.  This largely visual publication features images of homes of noted African American New Orleanians, busineses, schools, churches, and social organizations, and serves as one of the best visual documents of African American middle and upper class life in that time period.

Businesses include the United Industrial Life Insurance Company, Carr & Llopis Undertakers, Dorsey’s Valeteria, Flint-Goodridge Hospital, Geddes & Moss Undertaking and Embalming, George D. Geddes Co. Morticians, Astoria Hotel & Restaurant, as well as pharmacies, photography studios, and mercantile companies.  Social organizations, such as the San Jacinto Club, People’s Community Center, Pythian Temple, the Autocrat Social & Pleasure Club, and Lions Club, are also featured, as well as various schools, including New Orleans College, Xavier University, Straight College, and other elementary and secondary schools.

The Crescent City Pictorial is a truly rare book, with the only reported holdings at Amistad and LSU.  We are happy to share this important resource with the public as well work to create similar digital resources over the next couple years.

Image from the Crescent City Pictorial and may not be reproduced without permission. 

Help Support Amistad’s Expansion of Music-related Holdings with Hiphop Collections

The Amistad Research Center is a wonderful resource for researchers interested in African American musicians and vocal artists. The Center holds the personal papers of concert and operatic stars such as William Warfield, Carol Brice, Anne Wiggins Brown, Camilla Williams, Annabelle Bernard, Mattiwilda Dobbs, and Thomas Carey. Jazz music is well-documented in the papers of Ellis Marsalis Jr. and Harold Battiste, while the topic of music education is found within the papers of Lucile Hutton and Mildred Katharine Ellis. And there is so much more.

 

Amistad is currently expanding its music-related collections into new genres — hiphop and bounce music. Recent donations, described below, have placed the Center at the forefront of efforts to document and preserve materials that chronicle the development of these genres in New Orleans. 

Holly Hobbs, a Ph.D. student at Tulane University working on a dissertation on post-Katrina New Orleans hiphop and recovery has begun donating video interviews gathered as part of The NOLA Hiphop Archive. The Archive was founded in 2012 as an effort to collect, document, and make accessible to the public the oral histories of New Orleans’ influential rappers, producers and DJs who helped to create and popularize hiphop and bounce music traditions in the city and beyond. The collection currently holds more than 30 videotaped interviews with the city’s hiphop and bounce artists and pioneers, including Mannie Fresh, Mystikal, Partners N Crime, Dee-1, Ricky B, DJ Raj Smoove, Nesby Phips, Nicky da B & Rusty Lazer, and Queen Blackkold Madina, star of the Academy Award-winning Katrina documentary, Trouble theWater.

Complementing the Hiphop Archive is a portion of audio interviews recorded as part of the Where They At bounce project. The Where They At project was begun in 2008 by photographer Aubrey Edwards and journalist Alison Fensterstock, with the assistance of a grant from the Greater New Orleans Foundation. It collected over 50 photographic portraits and audio interviews with New Orleans rappers, DJs, producers, photographers, label owners, promoters, record store personnel, journalists and other parties involved in the New Orleans hip-hop and bounce scene from the late 1980s through Hurricane Katrina, as well as ephemera including original fliers, posters, vintage photographs and an extensive collection of record, CD and cassette tape scans. In a multimedia exhibition form, Where They At was presented at the Smithsonian-affiliated Ogden Museum of Southern Art, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, Austin’s Birdhouse Gallery and SXSW festival, Minneapolis’ Soap Factory, New York City’s Abrons Art Center and the Direktorenhaus in Berlin, Germany. It currently lives in online form at wheretheyatnola.com. Amistad currently houses 19 audio interviews and 37 interview transcripts as part of the Where They At collection.

Preliminary descriptions of the collections at Amistad can be found in Amistad’s online finding aid database: NOLA Hiphop Archive Project Collection and Where They At Collection. In Spring 2014, Amistad will work with our donors and Tulane University’s Digital Library to launch the community-accessible NOLA Hiphop and Bounce Archive , which will provide online access to the NOLA Hiphop Archive video interviews and portions of the Where They At audio interviews.

To support this digital initiative and to assist in the collection of an additional 30 new videotaped oral histories, a Kickstarter campaign has been launched by the NOLA Hiphop Archive. A portion of the proceeds of this campaign will assist with the foundation of a public audiovisual station in Amistad’s Reading Room. With its “all-or-nothing” funding model, Kickstarter campaigns are limited in time and in the targeted funding amount. With a goal of concluding the campaign prior to the Christmas holiday, an expedited 20-day campaign is being conducted. Please consider donating, sending to your friends and family, sharing via social media, or any other assistance you are able to provide. A donation of any amount toward the successful goal will help to further document and provide support and recognition for these important members of the New Orleans creative community and beyond. More info on the NOLA Hiphop Archive is available via the video below.

Posted by Christopher Harter

Reactions to the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Bombing

This Sunday, September 15th, marks 50 years since four little girls–Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley — were tragically killed during the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church by the Ku Klux Klan in Birmingham, Alabama. The savagery of their deaths sparked grief, anger, and protests throughout the nation, as evidenced by these items housed in the Eric Steele Wells papers at the Amistad Research Center.

This flyer is for a “National Day of Mourning for the Children of Birmingham” held in New York City on September 22, 1963.

This armband was likely worn during the protest advertised in the flyer above.

This flyer strikes a more angry tone than the one above and specifically faults President John F. Kennedy for his lack of response.

More information on these documents can be found in Amistad’s new digital collection “Print Culture and the Civil Rights Movement, 1950-1980,” which can be viewed through the Louisiana Digital Library.

Posted by Christopher Harter

(Images from the Eric Steele Wells Papers. May not be reproduced without permission.)

Glimpses into the 1963 March on Washington

This week marks the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The Amistad Research Center offers multiple ways to access original documents that chronicle the August 28th march and provide a glimpse into the day’s events. Materials from various archival collections can be viewed as part of the Center’s current exhibition, Through the Lens: Photographing African American Life, or as part of the new digital collection, Print Culture of the Civil Rights Movement, 1950-1980.

Organizing manual for
the March on Washington.

Organized by leaders of various civil rights organizations, including CORE, NAACP, SNCC, SCLC, and the National Urban League, the March on Wasington featured speeches by John Lewis, Whitney M. Young Jr., Eugene Carson Blake, Rabbi Joachim Prinz, Mathew Ahmann, and others. It was at this march where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his I Have a Dream speech.

The Robert G. Sherer Collection contains photographs, texts of speeches, and other materials that document the march. Included in the Sherer collection are copies of the speeches delivered that day, including the advance text of Dr. King’s speech, which lacks the improvised “I Have a Dream” section. Also present is the unedited version of the speech delivered by John Lewis of SNCC, which caused controversy among civil rights leaders due to its harsh tone against the Kennedy administration and the fact that the speech was edited prior to Lewis’ delivery. Photographs from the collection are currently on display in the Center’s Reading Room through September 27th.

Amistad’s new digital collection includes not only the organizing manual pictured above, but issues of the SCLC newsletter that contain news about the march. Feel free to stop by or browse online to learn more about one of the most significant demonstrations of the Civil Rights Movement.

Posted by Christopher Harter

(Image from the Robert G. Sherer Collection. May not be reproduced without permission.)

New Digital Resource on the Civil Rights Movement

Flier for the 1963 Freedom Vote campaign in Mississippi sponsored by the Council of Federated Organizations.

The Amistad Research Center is pleased to announce the release of a new online digital resource that documents American civil rights efforts entitled “Print Culture of the Civil Rights Movement, 1950-1980.” This digital collection is an expansion of the exhibition “The Revolution Will Not Be…: Print Culture of the Civil Rights Movement” held at the Amistad Research Center in 2011. As the nation’s oldest, largest, and arguably most comprehensive independent archives/library documenting the modern Civil Rights Movement, the Amistad Research Center has brought together digitized documents from a variety of archival collections, including the papers of activists such as John O’Neal, Fannie Lou Hamer, Clarie Collins Harvey, Connie Harse, John Lee Tilley, as well as the Eric Steele Wells collection, the Center’s own ephemera collection, and other sources. Access to the digital collection is free and can be found via the Louisiana Digital Library or through the portal of the Tulane University Digital Library.

Flier produced following the assassination of civil rights activist Medgar Evers.

This project highlights the newspapers, posters, broadsides, pamphlets, fliers, and other printed ephemera produced by student and community groups, leading civil rights organizations, and individuals, which documented a revolutionary era. The Civil Rights Movement in the United States coincided with rapid changes in a variety of news and communications media. The expansion of television and documentary film-making brought images of the struggles of African Americans and those who supported civil rights into the homes of the American populace. However, control of the tone and content of electronic media was not always in the hands of those who were being documented. It was the democratization of various printed media that allowed civil rights leaders, workers, and organizations to circulate their combined, and sometimes contradictory, voices.

Students, teachers, researchers, and others are encouraged to contact the Center’s Reference Department regarding this digital collection and related materials on the Civil Rights Movement held at Amistad. For more information, please visit the Center’s website.

Posted by Christopher Harter

(Photos from the Amistad Research Center. May not be reproduced without permission.)