Community-Driven Archives

Hello and welcome to the Community-Driven Archive blog located on the Southern Historical Collection’s Southern Sources! The Southern Historical Collection is part of the Wilson Special Collections Library of the University Libraries, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. On this blog, we, the Community-Driven Archives Team or CDAT for short, will talk about the work you see (like the “AiaB” Archivist in a Backpack) and some behind the scenes activities, such as discussions about funding, obstacles we’ve faced, the little victories, and aspects of community archives that don’t make it into the brochures. We hope that you find our posts engaging and thought-provoking, and this blog is for anyone and everyone. From archival and institutional practitioners to community members and everyone in between you are welcome here!

Community archives are complex and there are a lot of ways to talk about the different types of community history and memory practices. One common analogy is that of a garden. In a recent Letonica article, Director of the Southern Historical Collection Bryan Giemza notes,  

[there are] those who see the archive as analogous to a garden. Properly tended, it keeps growing, and the measure of its good is both in its sustainability and the measure of nourishment it provides. If food sustains the ability of a community to reinvent itself, which is necessary to the advancement of any civilization, an archive contains the cultural resources that provide the creative sustenance for the process.

Gardens offer a more accessible image of information and community materials; they are an epicenter of collaborative activity. Community champions break the ground and help prepare the foundation. Donors provide the seeds, while volunteers till the soil, water, and feed the new growth. Visitors, outsides and locals, consume the produce and have the seeds of inspiration planted in their own minds. The community can be nourished by the visibly of their work, and the tangible outcome it provides, be that an exhibit, a website, a history harvest, or series of oral history interviews. Community archives can be kept small and within the bounds of the planter or they can climb over the garden walls and expand outside anyone’s previous notions. These types of community archive-gardens are unique to each community and we at CDAT are excited to share our experiences and hear about the work of others! 

We post every week on different topics but if there is something you’d like to see, let us know either in the comments or email Claire our Community Outreach Coordinator: clairela@live.unc.edu. 

Follow us on Twitter    #AiaB #yourstory #ourhistory #communityarchives #EKAAMP #HBTSA #SHC #SAAACAM #gardenarchives

EKAAMP Garden

This image is from one of our pilot projects, the Eastern Kentucky African American Migration Project, or EKAAMP. Gardens feature heavily in our jargon and our work as you can see!

New Collections: Love Letters

We have a number of new collections that are preserved, processed, and now available for research. Love and war were in the air, as the bulk of the materials include courtship correspondence and letters written by people while they were serving in the Armed Forces. Some highlights:

  • New materials span from the 1830s-2007
  • Subjects geographically range from the Kwajalein Atoll to Martha Washington College to the New Orleans levees.
  • Lots of love! Many of these collections feature letters between loved ones.
  • Some interesting mentions include a pair of waraji rice straw sandals, some 375 reported yellow fever deaths, and former UNC System President Frank Porter Graham participating in anti-war efforts of the 1930s.

Click on any of the collection titles to learn more about the materials, view any digital items, and request them for use in our reading room.

Continue reading “New Collections: Love Letters”

Violence, Hardship, and the Southern Response

The South has witnessed unspeakable historical violence, hardship, and unrest. Whether it is a system developed over hundreds of years or the single act of one person, Southerners have used these circumstances as fuel to protest for a better reality and a better future.

At first blush, an archive might seem like an unusual place to learn about current events. We can’t provide the latest headline, updated numbers, or 24-hour news coverage. What an archive can do, though, is help explain how we got here in the first place. It can provide context, it can set the scene, and it can fill out a timeline. It can help draw comparisons, and it can bear witness to cycles, to repetition, and to causes and their effects. It can show what has worked in the past, and what has not.

We continue, as we always have, to collect the stories of those who stand up against violence and hardship. Below are just a few of our many collections that highlight how people have confronted difficulties in the past and fought for a South they could believe in.

Continue reading “Violence, Hardship, and the Southern Response”

New Collections: Activists, Educators, Families, and War

We have over a dozen new collections that are preserved, processed, and now available for research. Some highlights:

  • New materials span from 1764 to 2010
  • Subjects geographically range from Mexico to China (with plenty of Alabama and North Carolina in between)
  • Grassroots organizing, coal mining, and educational activism are common themes
  • There are 3 Civil War photographs and 2 books containing personal sketches from much of the UNC Chapel Hill classes of 1859-1865

Click on any of the collection titles to learn more about the materials, view any digital items, and request them for use in our reading room.

Continue reading “New Collections: Activists, Educators, Families, and War”

March is Women’s History Month

In honor of Women’s History Month, this blog post is dedicated to Sallie Swepson Sims Southall Cotten (1846-1929) of Pitt County, N.C.

Oversize Volume SV-2613/12, in the Sallie Southall Cotten Papers #2613, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Oversize Volume SV-2613/12, in the Sallie Southall Cotten Papers #2613, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Sallie Cotten was a campaigner for women’s issues, with a focus on achieving equal education and legal status for women.  She was secretary of the Mothers’ Congress, and when the North Carolina Federation of Women’s Clubs was formed she was the first elected vice-president.  She drafted their constitution and wrote their Federation Song.

Oversize Volume SV-2613/4, in the Sallie Southall Cotten Papers #2613, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Oversize Volume SV-2613/4, in the Sallie Southall Cotten Papers #2613, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

She was elected president in 1911, where she started an endowment fund, incorporated the NC Federation, and even designed the NC Federation Seal.

Oversize Volume SV-2613/4, in the Sallie Southall Cotten Papers #2613, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Oversize Volume SV-2613/4, in the Sallie Southall Cotten Papers #2613, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

When she retired from the presidency she was named Honorary President for life.  She helped start an Educational Loan Fund that was named in her honor.  She also served four years as the Director for North Carolina on the General Federation Board of Directors.

Oversize Volume SV-2613/12, in the Sallie Southall Cotten Papers #2613, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Oversize Volume SV-2613/12, in the Sallie Southall Cotten Papers #2613, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The Southern Historical Collection is proud to have her papers, which include correspondence, scrapbooks, reminiscences, and a copy of her book The White Doe.

SHC partners with Southern Jewish Historical Society, grant supports digitization of part of the Mordecai Family Papers

Earlier this year, the SHC received $1,000 from the Southern Jewish Historical Society‘s Lowenstein Archival Grant program to support the digitization of 39 writings (diaries, travel accounts, memoirs, prose and poetry) from the SHC’s Mordecai Family Papers. The SHC’s Mordecai Family Papers are heavily used on site by scholars, students, and members of the local community. We were honored to receive this support from the SJHS and we are pleased that we can now make these writings available to researchers online, via the Digital SHC.

We are also pleased to share the news that the SJHS will hold its Thirty-fifth Annual Conference in Chapel Hill this year, October 22-24, 2010. In honor of the SJHS conference, the SHC will mount an exhibit celebrating the history of Jews in the American South.  The exhibit will run October 22-December 22, 2010 (on the 4th floor of Wilson Library).

Featured Z- Collection: Lizzie Chambers Hall (#4145-z)

Lizzie Chambers Hall was the wife of W. T. Hall, who was the  pastor of Baptist churches in Danville, Virginia from 1897-1907, and in Roxborough, Pennsylvania from 1913- 1928.

Photo of Lizzie and an article she wrote from her scrapbook

The Lizze Chambers Hall Papers contain  photographs, scattered family correspondence, and a scrapook which Lizzie compiled.

The scrapbook contains news papers clippings, pictures, religious tracts and broadsides,  printed and manuscript poems (some of which were written by Lizzie herself ) and other memorabilia. It is a fascinating record of certain elements of African American family life and religious practices in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Click here to link to the finding aid for the Lizzie Chambers Hall papers.

Dad, send money. I need pantaloons. (1846)

[Our final installment of our “welcome back” series.]

Ah, it’s a phenomenon old as time:  college-age sons and daughters contacting home to ask for more money.  The following letter was sent from James Johnston Pettigrew to his father Ebenezer Pettigrew on 8 February 1846.  J.J. needed some money for some new duds.  (This letter comes from the Pettigrew Family Papers, SHC #592):

James Johnston Pettigrew, circa 1855
James Johnston Pettigrew, circa 1855 (from the 1898 book "Lives of distinguished North Carolinians")

Although it is early in the session, I presume it will not be out of place to make a statement of the clothes I shall want, more especially since my wardrobe is nearly exhausted.  The present underclothes are the ones I had when I left Hillsboro [sic], with the exception of four bosoms and collars, which I bought two years ago.  Most of these, that is to say, shirts, drawers, stockings, collars, handkerchiefs, & cravats, are either worn out or have become too small.  The same is the case with my outer clothes, with the exception the two pairs of pantaloons, which were purchased at Raleigh last summer, and are bothe [sic] too small by this time.  In the article of shirts, I am almost certainly deficient.  My present cap has lasted two winters, and Sister Mary can inform you with regard to its shabby appearance during the vacation.  This I mention, merely to show, that I am not diposed to be extravagant in my dress.  The following is a list which I have made out of my probable wants.  I have only one coat for this winter, so that it will be better to get another for Commencement.

  • One Coat.
  • One pair of Pantaloons.
  • Two vests. (I am entirely out of vests, also.)
  • One hat.
  • Shirts.
  • Drawers.
  • Stockings.
  • Two or three handkerchiefs.
  • One or two cravats.
  • Shoes.

There is in addition to these another want, which may appear trifling, but which in my situation is absolutely necessary as a Marshal for Commencement, namely, a cane.  Judging the price of these articles from my clothes last summer and the summers before, the amount will probably be $70 or $80, a very large sum, but I do not see how it is to be avoided, without an appearance which I wouldn’t wish to show.

Beware of fiddlin’ roommates

As our way of welcoming Carolina students back to campus, this week we’ll share a few reflections and experiences of bygone Tar Heels.  These letters and diary entries are rich, funny, often surprising accounts of student life in Chapel Hill.

Take, for example, this 21 January 1834 letter from Charles L. Pettigrew to his father in which junior writes of the challenges in finding (and keeping) a good roommate.

Letter from Charles L. Pettigrew to his father, 21 January 1834 (from Pettigrew Family Papers, #592)
Letter from Charles L. Pettigrew to his father, 21 January 1834 (from Pettigrew Family Papers, #592)

The business of the session has again commenced and I am in a very neat and warm room with out a room-mate, nor do I intend to take a room-mate because good ones are so hard to find; I had one last session, I was compelled to take him his brother wrote to me to take him in my room and there by he would be under some restraint, his brother had just graduated, and had left me his room one of the best rooms and some say the best in college and therefore I felt myself under some sort of obliation [sic] to him, for the first two months he made no noise studied hard and behaved himself well and properly and I liked him very much, the affection was reciprocated, but after a while he got a fiddle and of course got among the fiddlers in college idle and worthless fellows, then he began somewhat to absent himself from his room and finally he went and staid [sic] with one altogether although his trunk was in my room, so we parted and and [sic] very seldom see each other, after he left me he began to drink considerably and to have wines and brandy continually, and boy of about 15, I am afraid he will not do much good in this world…

Beware of fiddlin’ roommates

As our way of welcoming Carolina students back to campus, this week we’ll share a few reflections and experiences of bygone Tar Heels.  These letters and diary entries are rich, funny, often surprising accounts of student life in Chapel Hill.

Take, for example, this 21 January 1834 letter from Charles L. Pettigrew to his father in which junior writes of the challenges in finding (and keeping) a good roommate.

Letter from Charles L. Pettigrew to his father, 21 January 1834 (from Pettigrew Family Papers, #592)
Letter from Charles L. Pettigrew to his father, 21 January 1834 (from Pettigrew Family Papers, #592)

The business of the session has again commenced and I am in a very neat and warm room with out a room-mate, nor do I intend to take a room-mate because good ones are so hard to find; I had one last session, I was compelled to take him his brother wrote to me to take him in my room and there by he would be under some restraint, his brother had just graduated, and had left me his room one of the best rooms and some say the best in college and therefore I felt myself under some sort of obliation [sic] to him, for the first two months he made no noise studied hard and behaved himself well and properly and I liked him very much, the affection was reciprocated, but after a while he got a fiddle and of course got among the fiddlers in college idle and worthless fellows, then he began somewhat to absent himself from his room and finally he went and staid [sic] with one altogether although his trunk was in my room, so we parted and and [sic] very seldom see each other, after he left me he began to drink considerably and to have wines and brandy continually, and boy of about 15, I am afraid he will not do much good in this world…