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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“Great Negro Americans” Collection Finds a Home at Amistad |
In July, Amistad was excited to accept the donation of master recordings and materials related to “Great Negro Americans,” an educational program produced and written by Alan Sands in 1959 and distributed by Alan Sands Productions throughout the 1960s and into the mid-1980s.
The audio program is narrated by actress Hilda Simms and actor and director Frederick O’Neal, and tells the stories of several notable Black Americans, outlining their achievements in their various fields. The stories included are those of: Dr. Ralph Bunche (government), John H. Johnson (publishing), Marian Anderson (song), Jesse Owens (athletics), Charles C. Spaulding (insurance), A. Philip Randolph (labor), Louis Armstrong (music), Mary McLeod Bethune (education), Robert A. Cole (business), and Dr. Daniel Williams (medicine).
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Amistad’s Collections Depend on Your Support |
Amistad’s mission to collect, preserve and provide access to historical documents is made possible by generous donations from individuals, families and organizations.
Do you have materials to donate? Please visit our collection development policy available here to learn more about how you may donate or contact us at 504.862.3222 or info@amistadresearchcenter.org.
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Amistad to Assist New African Diaspora Curriculum |
Amistad is pleased to recognize the work of the African Diaspora Consortium (ADC) to launch a new Advanced Placement program on the African Diaspora in collaboration with The College Board’s Capstone Program. Amistad and the ADC have discussed ways in which the Center’s unique holdings may contribute to this new curriculum. Meanwhile, the two organizations have worked to include the Center’s Amistad on the Go! educational platform into Athena, an online portal for teacher development, collaboration and resource sharing.
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Commemorating the Centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment |
Amistad is pleased to collaborate with the Rivers Institute for Contemporary Art & Thought to recognize the centennial of the 19th Amendment, which legislated women’s right to vote in the United States. As part of this commemoration, Amistad is hosting one of 19 flags designed and created by Spanish-American artist Elena del Rivero as part of her Home Address initiative. The flag has been installed above the entrance to Tilton Memorial Hall on the Tulane University campus and will remain on view through December 15, 2020. New Orleans is hosting two flags as part of this national project, with the second appearing on the campus of Xavier University of Louisiana.
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Collaborative Digital Exhibition Now Online |
Amistad is pleased to announce its latest digital exhibition, which was made possible through a collaboration with the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana. The exhibition, titled “Justice Can’t Wait. Oppression and Resistance: Slavery to Mass Incarceration in Louisiana” provides a survey of the ways in which people of African descent in Louisiana fought, and continue to fight, against systematic racism. |
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The exhibition explores how enslaved individuals resisted the tyranny of slavery, and highlights leaders in the fight against Jim Crow laws and segregation, as well as current issues facing Louisiana’s justice system.
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Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) Charters Its First Branch in Louisiana |
Led by Amistad’s Executive Director, Dr. Kara Tucina Olidge, the Louisiana Charles Deslondes Branch is a permanent unincorporated affiliate of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, Inc. (ASALH). As an affiliate of ASALH, Inc., the Charles Deslondes Branch shares in the national association’s history as the world’s oldest learned society (founded by Dr. Carter G. Woodson on September 9, 1915) devoted to the research, education and status of culture and history among people of African descent. The branch was chartered on September 12, 2020 during ASALH’s 105th Annual Meeting & Virtual Conference.
The founding members selected Charles Deslondes (1789-1811) as the branch’s name to pay homage to Deslondes, an enslaved African who led the January 8, 1811 uprising in the Territory of Orleans. Dr. Olidge will serve as the founding president of the chapter along with vice president Dr. Sarah Clunis, secretary Khalif Birden and treasurer Dr. Eva Baham. Founding members include Dr. Rosanne Adderley, Turry M. Flucker, Dr. V.P. Franklin, Nancy Hampton, Christopher Harter, Linda M. Hill, Darlene Holmes, Zella Palmer, Dr. David W. Robinson-Morris, Jasmaine Talley, Hsiu-Ann Tom and Leon A. Waters.
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Amistad Contributes to Black Women’s Suffrage Digital Collection |
The Amistad Research Center was selected as one of five content partners on a new project that will document the experiences of Black women during the women’s suffrage movement, as well as their activism from the 1850s to the 1960s. With funding provided by Pivotal Ventures, an investment and incubation company created by Melinda Gates, Amistad joins the Atlanta University Center's Robert W. Woodruff Library, The Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture at the College of Charleston, The Tuskegee University Archives, and The Southern California Library as partners selected for the Digital Public Library of America’s (DPLA) Black Women’s Suffrage Digital Collection.
This new digital resource will make freely accessible nearly 200,000 artifacts, including images, videos, letters, diaries, speeches, maps and oral histories, from DPLA’s more than 4,000 partner institutions.
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Amistad’s contribution will include digitized materials related to Womanpower Unlimited, an activist group in Jackson, Mississippi, that began as an aid organization for the Freedom Riders in 1961, but expanded into areas of voter registration, youth education and civil rights.
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Emergency Funding Provided by LEH |
In May, Amistad was pleased to be one of 17 organizations in eight Louisiana parishes to receive emergency funding through the Louisiana Culture Care Fund, which was administered by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities (LEH). The $10,000 grant was provided to help support Amistad’s operations during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Care Fund was available to humanities organizations throughout the state of Louisiana impacted by the pandemic and was supported by The National Endowment for the Humanities and the Federal CARES Act, The Helis Foundation, The W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and The Josef Sternberg Memorial Foundation. Amistad thanks all of the organizations contributing to this support. Over 55 humanities organizations received support through the Louisiana Culture Care Fund in 2020. |
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This award is made possible through a contribution from The Helis Foundation to the Louisiana Culture Care Fund. |
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Amistad Completes Project to Document African American Classical and Opera Contributions |
As reported in our last newsletter, Amistad received funding from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation of New York to organize the personal papers of eight African American performers and composers who worked in the genres of classical and operatic music. Online finding aids for these collections will debut soon. In the meantime, you can read about these collections and the support of the Delmas Foundation on Amistad’s blog.
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Grant to Document Contributions of African American Women |
A Range of Experiences: Documenting African American Women's History and Achievements is a project funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services to complete the archival processing (arrangement, description and preservation) of the personal papers of sixteen African American women leaders active in a variety of fields, including the arts, social justice activism, labor activism, civic leadership, politics and business.
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This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services [MH-245560-OMS-20]. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of the Institute of Museum and Library Services. |
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Planning for Collections Care and Sustainability |
In order to plan for future collections care and sustainability, Amistad will undertake a survey of the infrastructure and systems associated with collections storage thanks to a $50,000 planning grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The Center will work with consultants to examine current needs for its various holdings – manuscript, library, audiovisual and fine art – at the Center’s main facility in Tilton Memorial Hall and its offsite storage in order to create a strategic plan for better environmental and preservation care. |
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This project has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the human endeavor. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this article, do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities. |
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Brenda Flora, Curator of Moving Images and Recorded Sound, was invited to present a webinar to the Association of Moving Image Archivists' inaugural Diversity and Inclusion Fellowship cohort on “Effective Communication Strategies: Advocacy for A/V Archivists.” It was a great opportunity to discuss professional advocacy issues with emerging professionals. She also took part in the panel "Making and Talking Money: LAM (Libraries, Archives and Museums) Salary Transparency," hosted by the Archival Workers Emergency Fund Organizing Committee on September 21, which is available for viewing here.
Deputy Director Christopher Harter joined Dillard University archivist John Kennedy and Dr. Tony Bolden of Kansas University’s African and African-American Studies department on August 26 for an online discussion titled “An Evening in the Archives: The Tom Dent Papers,” sponsored by One Book One New Orleans. The discussion focused on the literary legacy of New Orleans author Tom Dent and the importance of preserving writers’ personal papers. The talk is available for viewing here.
Amanda Lima, Archives Assistant, was recently accepted into Louisiana State University’s School of Library & Information Science. Lima’s previous education was from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she studied anthropology, Latin American studies, African American studies, and women and gender studies. Before coming to the Amistad, Lima was an intern at the W.E.B. Du Bois Center. Her current focus at LSU is in archival studies, from which she is excited to gain new skills that will add to the work she is currently doing here at the Amistad.
On September 17, Executive Director Dr. Kara T. Olidge joined Andrea Andersson, Founding Director and Chief Curator of the Rivers Institute for Contemporary Art & Thought, and Cameron Shaw, Deputy Director and Chief Curator at the California African American Museum, for an online discussion titled “In Place of Place-Making,” which explored the history of cultural place-making and an alternative model that invests in shared ideas over landmarks.
With the effects of a global pandemic and among various changes in 2020, the Academy of Certified Archivists (ACA) decided to host its first ever online exam. Archivist Felicia D. Render passed the Certified Archivist Exam in August, which demonstrates a defined body of knowledge and skills, professionalism and successful archival practice. Certified Archivists increase the integrity of the archival profession while ensuring a standard of excellence in historical preservation.
Digital Archivist Hsiu-Ann Tom passed the Society of American Archivists (SAA) Digital Archives Specialist Certificate Exam in September. After enjoying the past two years as a Human Rights Archives Steering Committee member, Tom is excited to begin a three-year appointment on SAA's Graduate Archival Education Committee, where she will be working on issues related to graduate archival education and archival internships.
Amistad is pleased to welcome Courtney Tutt to its staff as Project Archivist. Tutt received her BA in anthropology from the University of Houston and later her MSLS in library science with a specialization in archives and digital imaging from the University of North Texas. She has interned at the University of Houston, Houston Metropolitan Research Center and the Rothko Chapel. She has also worked at organizations such as the American Institute of Architects, Holocaust Museum Houston and the University of Houston. Tutt will work on a three-year project for Amistad, during which she will be responsible for the arrangement, description and preservation of 615 linear feet of records of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund (FSC/LAF) and Emergency Land Fund (ELF). This project has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
With funding from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, Amistad has hired Sarah Waits to assist with completion of the processing of the papers of Dr. Marguerite Cartwright. Sarah will receive a certificate in archival studies from the MLIS program at LSU in December. She received her BA in english and history from LSU and a Master's in history with a public history concentration from the University of New Orleans. Sarah worked at the National World War II Museum as a digital archives cataloger for the past three years. Prior to that, she worked at the New Orleans Museum of Art and at the Hermann-Grima and Gallier Historic House Museums in the French Quarter.
Amistad is pleased to welcome Jake Yount to its staff as Digital Projects Assistant. Jake received his BA and MA in history from Southeastern Louisiana University. During his time in graduate school, he focused on POW treatment during the Second World War. He interned at Southeastern's Center for Southeast Louisiana Studies, where he helped create an exhibit on the First World War, and at the Jackson Barracks Louisiana National Guard Archives. He plans to start classes for a certificate in archival studies, either with LSU or the Society of American Archivists, in the near future. He also works as an Assistant Archivist at the Louisiana State Archives in Baton Rouge. Jake is creating a file format survey of the extensive digital material held at Amistad as part of an Institute for Museum and Library Services grant.
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