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 to Preserve “Black Dance Stories"
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News recently circulated in The New York Times about the online series, “Black Dance Stories.” The show, which started as a virtual place to build community, turned into an extensive documentation of the histories of Black dance artists, told by the artists themselves. Though archived on YouTube, the hope of show creators was for a Black-led institution to house the records in a more official capacity. The Amistad Research Center is happy to announce that we were chosen to be the repository for the Black Dance Stories collection.
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Shining a Light on Modern Slavery in the United States: The Peonage Collection
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The Amistad Research Center is pleased to announce the receipt of the Peonage Collection donated by historian and genealogist Dr. Antoinette Harrell. Dr. Harrell uncovered cases of illegal peonage (debt slavery) in sixteen states and revealed painful stories of African Americans from the southern states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas and Florida. Some African Americans from this region were still living enslaved well into the 1960s, including some on Mississippi plantations.
The collection currently encompasses 249 digital photographs documenting Donald Jeffery and his family, who had lived on the Ballground Plantation in Warren County, Mississippi; and the Louis Allen family in Fluker, Louisiana, and the other places in which family members were enslaved in peonage throughout the 20th century. Additionally, there are images of Dr. Harrell’s visits to historic peonage plantations in Clarkdale, Mississippi, and Kosciusko, Mississippi, where she spent immeasurable hours researching peonage
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Antoinette Harrell conducting peonage research in the attic of the Attala County Courthouse. Photo credit: Walter C. Black, Sr.
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records, including discovering peonage records in the attic of the courthouse in Attala County, Mississippi. She also conducted research on peonage at the childhood home of Oprah Winfrey in Kosciusko.
Amistad received the first deposit of the collection in digital form in August; additional research materials compiled by Dr. Harrell in analog form are anticipated this fall. More information about Dr. Antoinette Harrell, her activism and her collections at the Amistad Research Center are highlighted in Amistad’s blog.
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Research Assistance Leads to Donor Support
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The COVID-19 pandemic has changed how cultural institutions, such as the Amistad Research Center, provide services to researchers, from shortened reading room hours to increased reliance on digital surrogates. However, in this (hopefully temporary) brave new world, Amistad has prided itself on the efficiency and professionalism of its Research Services staff, and two recent examples prove that even during a pandemic, we are able to meet the needs of researchers both near and far.
In May 2021, recently retired Chief Justice of Louisiana Bernette J. Johnson needed access to her personal papers housed at Amistad for an interview celebrating the 50th anniversary of the National Bar Association’s Judicial Council. Amistad’s staff assisted Justice Johnson to locate materials as background research for her interview and converted our Reading Room into a temporary interview studio for her and Judge Cenceria P. Edwards. To show her appreciation, Justice Johnson donated $11,000 of unused campaign funds to support Amistad’s continued work of preserving African American history.
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Judge Cenceria P. Edwards (left) and Justice Bernette J. Johnson (right).
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A few months later, reference archivist Lisa Moore received an email inquiry from retired judge Pamela Veal, who was conducting genealogy research as a surprise gift to her husband. While Amistad’s collection did not yield much material, Lisa expanded her search online to provide leads and details about the family. Judge Veal later reported the outcome of Lisa’s assistance: “[Lisa] was so detailed, efficient and thorough that my husband and his sister were tearing as they read the information she provided. I am thankful to Ms. Moore for all of her assistance. This was the best gift my husband received. Thank you so much." Amistad also received a $250 donation from Judge Veal, which was dedicated to Lisa Moore.
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Amistad’s Collections Depend on Your Support
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Amistad’s mission to collect, preserve, and provide access to historical documents is made possible by generous donations from individuals, families, and organizations. Please consider becoming a recurring donor through our Network for Good page.
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Do You Have Materials to Donate?
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Interested in donating personal papers, organizational records, works of art, books, or other materials to Amistad? Please visit our collection development policy available here to learn more about how you may donate, or contact us at 504.862.3222 (ext. 3) or info@amistadresearchcenter.org.
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Visit Prospect 5 at Amistad
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This year Prospect New Orleans is back and Amistad is thrilled to take part as one of the venues. Prospect is a citywide contemporary art triennial that invites artists from all around the world to design projects at numerous venues across the city. For locals and visitors in New Orleans, Prospect offers a great opportunity to view our city through the eyes of brilliant and talented artists. Prospect is slated to open the week of October 23rd, with the work of Kameelah Janan Rasheed on view at Amistad starting Saturday, October 30th. Rasheed's work uses Black storytelling, primarily text, across spaces large and small, physical and digital, to grapple with poetics, politics, and the pleasures of things, unfinished and uncontained.
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Kameelah Janan Rasheed, 2019. Credit: The Arcades Project.
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Information about visiting Amistad and our facility can be found here. Please note: Due to the size of the reading room, there is a limited capacity of four visitors at a time. Visitors must show proof of vaccination, negative COVID test within 72 hours prior to visiting, or Tulane University ID to visit the Center.
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Amistad Joins National Digital Stewardship Alliance
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Amistad is now a member organization of the National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA), an international membership organization that supplies advocacy, expertise and support for the preservation of digital heritage. Launched as an initiative of the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) of the Library of Congress in 2010, the NDSA’s institutional home as of January 1, 2016 is the Digital Library Federation (DLF) at the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR).
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Amistad is one of 264 member organizations representing universities, government and nonprofit organizations, commercial businesses and professional associations, committed to the long-term preservation of digital information.
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Amistad Has Extended Its Hours
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Amistad strives as an independent community archive to be just that: open and available to serving our community. Amistad is excited to announce the return of Saturday hours, and the addition of extended hours on Wednesdays. Now researchers can come into Amistad until 7 p.m. on Wednesdays and from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturdays. Make an appointment with reference services to come in and browse collections by calling 504-862-3217, or email reference@amistadresearchcenter.org. You must wear a mask while in our reading room; we also require proof of vaccination against COVID-19 or proof of a negative COVID-19 test within 72 hours prior to your visit. For more information on researching at the Amistad, and for COVID-related updates, click here.
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Documenting the Victor DuBois African Art Collection
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Amistad staff had the great pleasure of welcoming art historian Dr. Margaret Vendryes and Cuban author and interdisciplinary artist Jacqueline Herranz Brooks back to the Center. Dr. Vendyres was the curator of the 2010 Beyond the Blues exhibition at the New Orleans Museum of Art and currently is a professor of art history at York College at City University of New York (CUNY). Both Dr. Vendryes and Brooks photographed and inventoried the Victor DuBois African Art Collection in order to create a catalog. The collection consists of eighty works gifted to the Center by the estate of Victor DuBois, who formed his collection in the 1960s. DuBois was an anthropologist, educator, political scientist and art collector.
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Margaret Vendryes examining a ceremonial object from the DuBois Collection.
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Cassandra Press: An Unfolding, Sanford Biggers, and the Amistad Research Center
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Kandis Williams, who will be involved in The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation art residency (see below), took part in an exhibition at the California African American Museum; the exhibition opened July 2021. Williams founded Cassandra Press in 2016, and since then has published thirty-one spiral-bound readers—dense volumes of history, sociology and theory—organized thematically. Cassandra Press: An Unfolding, Sanford Biggers, and the Amistad Research Center is presented with the adjacent exhibition, Sanford Biggers: Codeswitch. Williams’ part in the exhibition presents a collection of Cassandra Press’ historic readers, as well as a new
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Cassandra Press: An Unfolding, Sanford Biggers, and the Amistad Research Center exhibit.
reader, incorporating research from French ethnographic studies and the archival collections of the Amistad Research Center as context and in response to Biggers’ codex series of quilts.
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The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grant to Support Artist Residencies
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Amistad, in collaboration with the Rivers Institute of Contemporary Art & Thought, announces the award of $500,000 from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This award will support artist archival research residencies at Amistad and the development of new works based on material history. The residency runs from August 2021 until December 2023 and will welcome five international artists. Artists include American-born Kandis Williams, Moroccan-French artist Yto Barrada, British artist Helen Cammock, Kuwaiti-Puerto Rican artist Alia Farid, and American-born artist Troy Montes-Michie.
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Troy Montes-Michie, from Rock of Eye. Photo courtesy of Siglio Press.
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New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation Oral History Collection
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With support from a New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation (NOJHF) Community Partnership Grant, the Amistad Research Center has completed the digitization of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation Oral History Collection housed at Amistad. This collection includes 59 audiocassette tape interviews with 27 Louisiana-based musicians across multiple genres, including jazz, zydeco, classical, R&B and Mardi Gras Indian traditions. The collection was formed out of a project funded by NOJHF and coordinated by Tom Dent between 1983 and 1988. The Foundation donated the collection to Amistad prior to the formation of its own archives.
Interviewees include Placide Adams, Alvin Alcorn, Morris Ardoin, Danny Barker, Alvin Batiste, Harold Battiste, James Black, Germaine Bazzle, Clifton Chenier, Gregory Davis, Roger Dickerson, Henry Dudley, Leroy Jones, Kidd Jordan, David Lastie, Roger Lewis, Ellis Marsalis, Willie Metcalf, Allison "Tootie" Montana, Cyril Neville, Walter Payton, Herlin Riley, Gregory Stafford, Alvin "Red" Tyler, Walter Washington, Michael White and Chester Zardis.
Under this grant ARC completed the professional digital transfer of 33 tapes, totaling 33 hours and 41 minutes of recordings. Recordings digitized under this grant join 26 previously digitized recordings so that the entire collection is now digitally preserved, as are transcripts for each interview. Amistad thanks NOJHF for its support and looks forward to working with the Foundation’s archives to promote access to these invaluable recordings.
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For a second year Verizon Communications Inc. is partnering with the Amistad Research Center in support of our Conversations in Color series, a free public cultural series that features artists, educators and community activists in talks about their work and its impact on social change. Verizon has generously donated $7,500, and together we cannot wait to share new inspirational stories in the upcoming seasons.
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In the Shadows of History: Documenting the Activism of Antoinette Harrell
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Documentation of the life of Antoinette Harrell, a historian interested in race relations in the southern region of the United States, is currently being preserved at the Amistad Research Center. The Amistad Research Center acquired the Antoinette Harrell papers in 2002, and received additional donations in 2013 about her work as a prolific activist, historian and genealogist. Her papers primarily contain correspondence, news clippings, photographs, yearbooks, leaflets, genealogical materials and other ephemeral items. The collection is extremely rich on the subjects of African American Louisiana history; New Orleans and Louisiana city and state civil activities; genealogy; reparations; peonage; and documentation of Harrell’s career, with collected files from her civil and social activities.
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Photograph of Antoinette Harrell-Miller and Gary Groesch, 2002.
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Of note are photographs of Harrell and her involvement with a grassroots organization, Citizens for Change.
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Art Is Alive: Opening of the Dorothy E. Yepez papers
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We are pleased to announce the opening of the Dorothy E. Yepez papers! Dorothy E. Yepez (1916-1999) was an artist, gallery owner, former nurse and teacher of violin and piano. She owned Dorothy Yepez Galleries for fifteen years in Saranac Lake, New York; and also worked in the area of children’s theater in New York City during the mid-1960s. Her personal papers are one of the sixteen collections representing African American women leaders in a variety of fields that are part of the grant project, “A Range of Experiences: Documenting African American Women’s History and Achievements.” Yepez’s archival papers are now available for research, preserved with funding assistance from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).
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Dorothy E. Yepez, circa 1950.
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New Footage from the Civil Rights Era Available for the First Time
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In the culmination of a multi-year project supported by the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), the Amistad Research Center is excited to announce the digitization of the Ed Pincus Film Collection. The initiative is the largest film digitization project in ARC’s history, providing access to more than 85 hours of previously unreleased material tracking Southern civil rights organizing, voter registration, and white supremacist violence in the late 1960s.
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Community members discuss current events at a barbershop.
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Footage from the Pincus Collection is currently being uploaded to the Louisiana Digital Library, a process that will be completed by year-end.
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Marian Hamilton Spotts Papers Now Open for Research
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The Marian Hamilton Spotts papers are now open and available to researchers. This collection gives valuable insight into the Cincinnati Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs, an organization dedicated to education, civil rights, community service and “meeting the cultural needs of its people.” This project was made possible with funding assistance from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
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In August, Phillip Cunningham, Head of Research Services, participated in a panel webinar on “Job Interview Best Practices.” The panel was hosted by the Association of Moving Image Archivists.
Curator of Moving Images and Recorded Sound Brenda Flora and Archives Assistant Khalif Aziz Birden will be presenting at the upcoming Association of Moving Image Archives (AMIA) fall conference in November. They will share the work they have done to make the Ed Pincus Film Collection available digitally and will screen excerpts from the collection.
Dr. Kara Tucina Olidge was appointed to the South Arts Board of Directors. Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, South Arts is a nonprofit regional arts organization empowering artists, organizations, and communities, and increasing access to arts and culture. In partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and the State Arts Agencies of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee — with additional funding from other public and private donors such as the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation — South Arts supports artists and organizations through a rich and responsive portfolio of grants, fellowships, and programs.
Laura Thomson, Director of the Archives Division, is serving as a member of the Community Advisory Committee’s (CAC) working group, RSF-6: Natural & Cultural Resources, as part of the City of New Orleans Comprehensive Recovery Plan Community Advisory Committee. The Natural & Cultural Resources RSF (Recovery Support Functions) supports the protection of natural and cultural resources and historic properties through appropriate response and recovery actions to preserve, conserve, rehabilitate and restore them consistent with post-disaster community priorities.
Executive Director Dr. Kara T. Olidge, Deputy Director Christopher Harter, and Curator of Manuscripts Jasmaine Talley were invited to speak to a UCLA California Rare Book School course on “Developing and Administering Ethnic and Cultural Heritage Collections” during the week of August. All three spoke on their careers and Amistad’s collections and history.
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Find. Follow. LIke. Let's Be Friends!
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Support for the Amistad Research Center comes from
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