Simmons GSLIS InfoLink
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February 2009: Documenting a Troubled Past
February is Black History Month, a celebration of African American heritage and achievement that has been observed nationwide since the mid-1970s. In its honor, we profile a recent GSLIS alumna, Holly Smith ‘08LS, who works with the African American archival collections at the Southern Historical Society in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. While at Simmons, Smith had a scholarship from the Spectrum program, sponsored by the American Library Association to increase diversity in the library profession. More than 20 Simmons students have received Spectrum scholarships in the last dozen years. We also highlight some of the African American-related holdings at the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston. To read the full article, please download the PDF of the February InfoLink. |
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Below are links to places and things mentioned in our profile and other articles, including the sidebar article on African American collections at the Massachusetts Historical Society.
- The Southern Historical Collection at UNC Chapel Hill holds about 16 million items and is the world’s largest collection of material about the American south
- Part of Holly Smith’s job is to update the SHC’s Guide to African American Resources, which appears in a larger listing of African American collections in North Carolina. The new site will launch next fall alongside an exhibition.
- Rice planter and slave owner Louis Manigault kept a plantation journal between 1856 and 1879. The journal includes information on plantation life, rice cultivation, market conditions, accounts, and slaves and slavery, and includes a description and photo of Dolly, Manigault’s runaway slave.
- In the Rice Ballard finding aid there is a description of an 1853 letter from an enslaved pregnant woman, Virginia Boyd, to Ballard, her owner, begging him that she not be sold.
- The Museum of African American History on Beacon Hill in Boston includes the nation’s first African meeting house, a museum, and the Black Heritage Trail, a tour of sites exploring the city’s free black community in the 19th century. Some of these buildings are part of the Boston African American National Historic Site, which is the largest area of pre-Civil War black owned structures in the United States.
- The Massachusetts Historical Society houses thousands of items documenting the African-American experience, from colonial-era poetry by Phyllis Wheatley—the first African American to publish a book of poems—to records from civil rights organizations in the 1970s.
- 2008 was the 200th anniversary of the end of the African slave trade in the United States. To mark the occasion, the MHS created the online exhibit "African Americans and the End of Slavery in Massachusetts", which includes 117 items from the MHS collection
- The MHS also created a site with more than 800 images illustrating the state’s role in the antislavery movement.
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