The Sleuthing Pays Off

Kheir greeted me today with a nice surprise -- 9 or so boxes of material pertaining to the Brown v. Board of Ed 50th Anniversary Commission files, all of which are housed at CSU! I didn't even know there was an entire collection that was specifically about the anniversary (the anniversary being in 2004, when CSU held the reenactment with Charles Freeman playing the role of the judge in the case). So I spent a large part of the day scouring those files to find anything with his name on it to prove a CSU connection, which would be a great addition to the Justice Freeman exhibit. Boy am I glad Kheir had previously told me to scour The Chicago Defender back issue archive a few weeks back (accessed through CPL) to see if there was anything written about Freeman and CSU. And to think that CSU had the whole collection about that anniversary commission (and that there even was a commission)! In those files I found a physical copy of that Defender article that featured a picture of Justice Freeman, which would be a lot better to use for the exhibit than some not-so-great print out from the internet. I also found some mentions of the reenactment in the Chicago Tribune, as well as the paper program for the event (multiple copies, no less). And all because I had found that one detail about the 2004 event. Thanks, internet! And thanks, past CSU archivists! The importance of keeping stuff, honestly. I feel vindicated in my hording tendencies my feelings about the importance of keeping material that might be important later. I was always that person taking the notes, being the secretary, holding onto the important stuff, so I can get with this. This is, I think, the heart of being an archivist.

In looking at all the records in the boxes today I learned that the event had been televised on WYCC. WYCC does not exist anymore so it's not like they had an archived website of material that had been aired on it (the event was in 2004, so unless someone purposely digitized it and uploaded it after sites like YouTube became popular, we probably won't be so lucky to find footage somewhere). That being said, I did find, in another box, some CDs/DVDs. Perhaps the event was filmed and is saved on them. I gave the discs to Kheir and he contacted the front desk of the library where they have a drive he can use to look a them. It would be nice to have that footage to show, but I have a hunch it isn't on those discs. We shall see.

There was some concern about getting access to videos from the website History Makers: The Nation’s Largest African American Video Oral History Collection. The idea was to show videos of interviews with Justice Freeman on a loop at the event. A few weeks ago I figured out how to get access to the site through a CPL account, so today Kheir and I watched some of the videos of Justice Freeman talking about his humble beginnings, his family, school and other things. 

It's interesting to finally hear someone's voice after spending time researching them in their archive.

Of particular interest to me was his relationship with Harold Washington (who, I learned, actually didn't like practicing law but did like politics [no surprise there], and for a brief period lost his law license for essentially, not showing up to stuff). I was working on labels at the same time, designing them for the glass cases. The event we will be premiering this material is in about a week and a half or so, and we're almost done getting it all ready.

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Today's standards fulfilled as per the Society of American Archivists Curriculum:

Society of American Archivists Curriculum: A. CORE ARCHIVAL KNOWLEDGE, 1. Knowledge of Archival Material and Functions, b) Appraisal for Selection and Acquisition, g. Management and Administration (p. 5)

A. CORE ARCHIVAL KNOWLEDGE, 3. Contextual knowledge, a) Social and Cultural Context, d) Underserved & Underrepresented Communities (pp. 7-8)