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Amistad is committed to collecting, preserving, and providing open access to original materials that
reference the social and cultural importance of America's ethnic and racial history,
the African Diaspora, human relations, and civil rights.
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Amistad Thanks GiveNOLA Day Donors
Support furthers educational outreach
The Amistad Research Center is thrilled to announce that with your help we raised nearly $7,000 for
Amistad on the GO!, Amistad's education program created to provide 6th-12th grade teachers and students an interactive educational experience on the contributions of African Americans and ethnic minorities in the making of America.
If you missed the event but would still like to support the education of our deserving youth, please make a donation through Amistad's website.
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Amistad Welcomes New Director
Elizabeth Williams joins Amistad's Board of Directors
The Amistad Research Center is pleased to welcome Elizabeth Williams to its Board of Directors.
Elizabeth Williams is a philanthropist who contributes her time and resources to many New Orleans charities. The American Cancer Society recently recognized Mrs. Williams contributions to the community and honored her as a Belle at their 2015 "Belles and Beaus" Gala. She is a past chairperson of the Susan G. Komen annual "Survivor's Luncheon" and a six-year member of the Susan G. Komen Summercure Chef's Wine Dinner committee. In addition to her support for local schools, Mrs. Williams is a proud member of several civic organizations including Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated, The Links, Incorporated (Crescent City chapter) and Jack and Jill of America (New Orleans chapter). Elizabeth earned her bachelor's degree from Tulane University. After graduation, she worked in the administration at Dillard University. She is married to James M. Williams and they are the proud parents of three phenomenal children.
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| Judge Revius Ortique with LA Supreme Court Justice Bernadette Joshua Johnson, 1994. |
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Recent Acquisitions Document New Orleans History
Donations expand Center collections
Four recent donations to the Amistad Research Center highlight the varied and expansive nature of New Orleans history. These new collections are comprised of personal memoirs, artwork, photographs, audiovisual and born-digital material, and personal papers that document family life in the city during the early 20th century, post-Hurricane Katrina recovery, the judicial and civic career of the first African American elected to Louisiana's Supreme Court, and the emergence of bounce music in New Orleans.
The new collections include the personal papers of artist and puppeteer Ralph Chesse, an addition to the papers of Louisiana Supreme Court Judge Revius Ortique, Aubrey Edwards' photographs of the New Orleans hiphop community, and film material on post-Katrina New Orleans by Luisa Dantas. In considering her donation to the Center, Dantas commented,
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Amistad, with its rich history and thoughtfully curated collections, is the perfect home for the archive that will allow scholars, researchers and others to gain access to and learn from these multifaceted stories."
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| Undated photograph of Harold Sylvester early in his career. |
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Increasing Access to Center Collections
Newly organized collections now available
Amistad's staff has recently completed the archival processing of three collections which are now open for research. The papers of Harold Sylvester document his work as an actor, writer, director and producer. He participated in the first integrated high school basketball game in New Orleans between St. Augustine High School and Jesuit High School and was the first African American to attend Tulane University on an athletic scholarship.
The papers of literary scholar and teacher Jerry Ward contain examples of his writing and correspondence that highlights his life and study of African American literature, especially the Black Arts Movement. Lastly, the papers of Juanita Chenault Carman, an educator, social worker, poet, and author, contain her writings, which she largely self-published as a means to promote creativity and reading skills.
The finding aids for each of these collections are now available in Amistad's online finding aid database.
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National Forum on Community Archives
Third in a series of four national meetings
The series of national forums on the topic of community archives and digital cultural heritage, co-sponsored by the Amistad Research Center, continued with an excellent meeting of community archivists and supporters from the Midwest in Evanston, Illinois, on May 10, 2017. The Evanston forum focused on questions of networking and collaboration, and was the third of four planned meetings, with previous meetings held in Los Angeles (October 2016) and New Orleans (January 2017). The final forum will be held in New York City in October 2017.
This project is supported by a National Leadership Grant from The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and is a collaborative effort co-sponsored by
The Amistad Research Center, T
he Shorefront Legacy Center, The South Asian American Digital Archive, Mukurtu, and The Inland Empire Memories Project of the University of California-Riverside. Details on the project and videos of the first two forums can be found at the link below.
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| The Capture by Jacob Lawrence. Silk screen on rag paper, 1987. |
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Exhibition Opens on Jacob Lawrence and Representations of the Haitian Revolution
On display through August 31, 2017
Amistad's new exhibition,
To Preserve Their Freedom: Jacob Lawrence's Toussaint L'Ouverture Serigraph Series seeks to celebrate the centenary of Jacob Lawrence's birth and his artistic contributions. In 1938, Lawrence completed his first major series. Named for the legendary Haitian leader Toussaint L'Ouverture, who helped to emancipate Haiti from Spanish and French rule, the series catapulted Lawrence into the national spotlight. Lawrence subsequently re-imagined his original forty-one panels as fifteen dynamic serigraphs. This exhibition of the Toussaint L'Ouverture limited edition print series is a testament to Lawrence's dexterity as an artist and his mastery of historical narrative. Accompanying the prints are materials drawn from Amistad's library and manuscripts collections that illustrate how Lawrence, as well as other African American artists and writers imagined Toussaint L'Ouverture and other leaders of the Haitian Revolution. The exhibition will be on display at the Amistad Research Center from May 30 - August 31, 2017. Admission is free.
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New Addition to Staff
Anastacia Scott, Education Consultant
Dr. Anastacia Scott is a New Orleans native and recent graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, having earned a PhD in Africology, and graduate certificates in Museum Studies and Nonprofit Management. Dr. Scott serves as Amistad's educational curriculum developer for the Amistad-on-the-Go! program.
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Intern Traci Taylor helps prepare works for exhibition.
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Interns Gain Valuable Experience While Assisting Center
High School and College Students Join Amistad for Spring Semester
It was "all hands on deck!" this past semester as Amistad hosted 19 college and high school student interns from Southern University-New Orleans, Tulane University, and Metairie Park Country Day School. The students assisted in all functions of the Center, including processing archival collections, digital outreach, assisting with acquisitions and cataloging, reference assistance, and content summary of oral histories. Staff chipped in to supervise and mentor the students, whose work greatly assisted Amistad throughout the semester.
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Other Staff News...
Chianta Dorsey, Reference Archivist,
attended the BitCurator Users Forum at Northwestern University on April 27-28. The forum brought together representatives from libraries, archives, museums, and related information professions engaged in (or considering) digital forensics work to acquire, better understand, and make available born-digital materials. The forum provided valuable information to assist the Center with assessing needs related to our digital collections, digital curation standards, and the preservation of information on older storage media.
Christopher Harter, Director of Library and Reference Services, is a co-author of the recently-published article "Diversifying the Digital Historical Record: Integrating Community Archives in National Strategies for Access to Digital Cultural Heritage." The article appears in the May/June 2017 issue of D-Lib Magazine.
Laura Thomson, Director of Processing, and Brenda Flora, Archivist, traveled to Chicago in April to present at the Digital Public Library of America's annual conference, DPLAFest. Their presentation, "Bridging the Centuries with Digital Social Justice Collections" highlighted Amistad's digital collections and digitization efforts.
Brenda Flora also attended Tulane University's Risk and Safety Summit, focusing on work place hazards and safety strategies.
Reference Assistant Phillip Cunningham, Archivist Jasmaine Talley, and Chianta Dorsey attended THATCamp Lafayette on March 25, 2017. THATCamp is an acronym for "The Humanities and Technology Camp," and is a meeting where humanists and technologists of all skill levels learn and build together in sessions proposed on the spot. It was hosted by the University of Louisiana at Lafayette as a one day "unconference" that primarily focused on digital storytelling and the tools used to create them. The meeting allowed Amistad's archivists to view how undergraduates and professors are utilizing digital tools in the classroom and how digital platforms are used by other archives for online storytelling.
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