NEH Challenge Grant Kick-Off!

You have probably seen a recent flurry of announcements and excitement about our National Endowment for the Humanities Challenge Grant. This grant will go toward endowing our African American Collections and Outreach Archivist position, making it a permanent fixture of the Southern Historical Collection.

Receiving this grant is excellent news, and it means that we need the support of our patrons and partners more than ever. Every dollar of this Challenge Grant must be matched by three dollars that we raise ourselves.

Many people rely on the expertise and resources this position provides, from families tracing their ancestry to students developing research projects. Raising the money necessary to meet this Challenge Grant will insure that this position is secure, and that we can continue to preserve African American history in the South.

Here’s how you can be a part of something lasting

 

Photo courtesy of the Eastern Kentucky African American Migration Project

Celebrating Bill Dow: Readings from “What I Stand On”

Last year, the Southern Historical Collection was pleased to make two collections available to the public, the William W. Dow Papers and the Richard Davidson Photographs of the Appalachian Student Health Coalition and the Mountain People’s Health Council. Both collections relate to the community of Vanderbilt alumni from the Appalachian Student Health Coalition, which began in 1969 to provide health fairs to rural communities without health care in Appalachia.

In addition to h9780997043402is work as a doctor, William (Bill) Dow became the first organic farmer in North Carolina and the founder of the Carrboro Farmer’s Market (among many other accomplishments).

Before his death in 2012, Dr. Dow recorded his thoughts on sustainable farming with the hope that it could be compiled into a book. His friend, Fred Broadwell, and his partner, Daryl Walker, completed this project resulting the book titled: What I Stand On: Practical Advice and Cantankerous Musings from a Pioneering Organic FarmerIt is now available for order at your local independent bookseller.

Though much of the book contains Dr. Dow’s pioneering farming philosophies, small mentions of the Student Health Coalition are peppered throughout.

Broadwell and Walker will be doing readings from the book at local bookstores during the next few months. If your interested in a pioneering farmer’s wisdom and philosophy, or perhaps enjoy homegrown food, please join them at:

  • McIntyres Books in Pittsboro on Feb 27, 2016  at 2:oopm.
  • Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill on Feb 29, 2016 at 7:00pm .
  • Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill on March 8, 2016 at 7:00pm. With an appearance by
    Isaiah Allen, the chef of The Eddy in Saxapahaw and owner of Rocky Run Farm, who wrote the book’s introduction.
  • Regulator Bookshop in Durham on March 10, 2016 at 7:00pm.

Midcentury Artists Communicating in Big and Small

We are a manuscript collection, meaning that much of our materials are black and white, paper and ink items: letters and ledgers, deeds and diaries, wills and writs. However, if you know where to look, you can come across many bright, bold, beautiful items.

"Jesters" by Hale Woodruff. Linocut and screenprint.
“Jesters” by Hale Woodruff. Linocut and screenprint.

Our current exhibit in the Wilson Special Collection Library’s fourth floor gallery space is Tiny Paintings: Handmade Artist Cards from the Charles Alston Collection. Charles Henry Alston (1907-1977) was an artist, educator, and arts advocate in the middle of the twentieth century, and kept up vigorous correspondence with his many friends, students, and colleagues.

 

This exhibit, created in concert with UNC Art Professor Dr. John P. Bowles, selects cards from the Charles Henry Alston Papers #04931. Learn about ways that artists in the 1940s-1960s used handmade greeting cards to share work with distant colleagues, to test new techniques, and to question social, political, and artistic norms.

 

"Merry Christmas Haiti" by unknown artist, 1949.
“Merry Christmas Haiti” by unknown artist, 1949.
"Prehistoric Images" by Hale Woodruff. Linocut.
“Prehistoric Images” by Hale Woodruff. Linocut.

Coincidentally, Alston and many of his close friends are better known for their work at the other end of the size spectrum: murals. Just across campus, the Ackland Art Museum is hosting Beyond Walls: Designs for Twentieth-Century American Murals (open through April 10th, 2016) featuring some of Alston’s large-scale mural work.

This unique opportunity to view Alston’s work – from miniature to immense – on UNC’s campus is only available until March 31st, 2016.

 

Tiny Paintings: Handmade Artist Cards from the Charles Alston Collection is free and open to the public during Wilson Special Collection Library’s regular business hours.

“Before I’m 25” – Sharing Stories with Google Cultural Institute

In our ongoing quest to engage audiences in new and different ways, we are pleased to unveil a project that we have been working on for the past few months. In partnership with the Google Cultural Institute’s series on Black History and Culture, we have developed an online exhibit of original collection materials titled Before I’m 25… Stories of African American Youth.

beforeBefore I’m 25 is a multimedia exhibit that uses our diverse collections to highlight the ways African American youths have shaped Southern history. Spanning over 150 years, it examines the lives of young African Americans through the lenses of freedom, military service, the pursuit of education, entertainment, and activism.

The Google Cultural Institute allows museums and archives throughout the world to share their collections with the online using sleek, innovative technology. As part of the Google Cultural Institute’s series on Black History and Culture, The Southern Historical Collection is in good company with partners ranging from the National Museum of African American History and Culture to the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Each of over forty exhibits covers one niche of Black history and culture, from Alvin Ailey to Frederick Douglass, and from Black comic books to African American inventors.

We are excited to share this digital exhibit with you and hope that it enhances discussions by and about African American youth, and how history shapes our present day.