Tomlinson D. Todd and the Institute on Race Relations

Jennifer Morris
Archivist
Anacostia Community Museum

Tomlinson D. Todd (far right) interviewed this unidentified group of young people on his “Americans All,” radio program, circa 1950s. Henry P. Whitehead Collection, Anacostia Community Museum, Smithsonian Institution.

Issues with race and racial equity have a long history in the United States, and so do interracial organizations forming to combat discriminatory practices and demand social justice for all Americans. The story of the Institute on Race Relations, founded by Tomlinson D. Todd (1910–1987), is an example of a substantive but understudied history of collaborative anti-racist activism in the District of Columbia.

Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, Tomlinson D. Todd grew up in Washington, DC in a middle-class family. Todd’s father, Rev. Williams W. Todd, served as pastor of the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church and his mother was a schoolteacher in Virginia before marriage. Both parents were college educated and Tomlinson, similarly, pursued higher education after attending Armstrong High School. He graduated from Lincoln University in 1936, with a Bachelor of Arts Degree before studying sociology at Howard University.

Mr. Todd fought against racial injustice and believed bringing people together across racial lines would assist with harmony and understanding among the races and foster greater economic and political achievement in America. He started the Institute on Race Relations in August 1943 with the aim to establish “true democracy” in the nation’s capital.

One of the organization’s first undertakings was to protest discriminatory practices and Jim Crowism in several restaurants and theatres in downtown Washington, DC. They arranged for interracial groups to enter selected restaurants and request service to test segregation and other inequitable policies, strategically scheduled sit-ins with law enforcement to avoid arrest if managers contacted authorities. The organization also secured letters of support from local restaurants that catered to all people regardless of race. The statements were then provided to other heads of companies to persuade them to adopt non-discriminatory policies.  

A letter of support from Arthur Capper (1865-1951) to Tomlinson D. Todd.  Capper was a U.S. Senator from Kansas whom Mr. Todd interviewed on “Americans All,” broadcast before he retired from the U.S. Senate in 1939. Henry P. Whitehead Collection, Anacostia Community Museum, Smithsonian Institution.

The Institute considered it important to shed light on public spaces that denied service to African American soldiers. In 1945, the group ran an ad in the Washington Star newspaper (February 12, 1945) depicting two wounded war veterans, one black and one white, being refused entry together to DC cafes and theaters. In addition, the ad featured accounts of Black soldiers’ heroic deeds and their contributions to the war effort.

This ad denouncing discrimination in the nation's capital also appeared in the Evening Star newspaper on February 12, 1945. Henry P. Whitehead Collection, Anacostia Community Museum, Smithsonian Institution.

After several months of testing policies of discrimination and publicizing their findings, the Institute on Race Relations began sponsoring a series of activities to gain public support. They organized mass meetings at churches; held interracial parties; international fashion shows; intercultural dances; and banquets. The banquets were community forums led by senators, college presidents, civil rights leaders, and other government officials.

The Institution on Race Relations sold tickets to several of their events to garner financial support for the organization. Henry P. Whitehead Collection, Anacostia Community Museum, Smithsonian Institution.

On March 31, 1946, the Institute started sponsoring Mr. Todd’s weekly Sunday night radio program, “Americans All.” The program aired from 1946–1962 on various Washington, DC radio stations including WOOK, WWDC, and WGMS. The broadcast featured dramas, interviews, addresses, roundtable discussions, and renditions from well-known musical aggregations. The program documented a range of perspectives on race and race relations and garnered a large radio audience, while enlightening the city to the injustices of segregation and racial discrimination.

In the wake of  the Institute on Race Relations’ work to bring racial justice to the nation’s capital, the Coordinating Committee for the Enforcement of D.C. Anti-Discrimination Laws, led by activists Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954) and Annie Stein, brought a lawsuit against the Thompson Restaurant. On June 8, 1953, the U. S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously in the Thompson Restaurant case that restaurants in the District of Columbia must accommodate all people, regardless of race, color, or creed. The decision ended discrimination and segregation in DC restaurants.

In 1952, Tomlinson D. Todd interviewed activist Mary Church Terrell (1863- 1954) on her 89th birthday. 

The activism of Tomlinson D. Todd and the Institute on Race Relations deserves further examination for its role in ending discriminatory practices in Washington, DC, and opening a space for interracial conversation and collaboration on a range of issues that affected the lives of all Americans.     

Help us make the records of the Institute on Race Relations more accessible and searchable through transcription on the Smithsonian Digital Volunteers Transcription Center:  here!

Archives Contextualize Artist's Work for Conservator

As a textile conservator I am trained to search for clues in textiles; a small label, a repair, or the structure of the fabric help me to understand the history of an object. Much like a detective I sometimes have to dig deeper to solve an object’s mysteries. This past year I had the opportunity to conduct in-depth archival research on a set of quilts in the AnacostiaCommunity Museum’s collection (ACM).

Several quilts that are part of an artwork titled The Shroud Series  incorporates fabric patches with photographic images printed on them. The artist Fay Fairbrother designed the quilts based on traditional patterns, and kept them “simple in order for the photographs to speak.”  The quilts juxtapose historic photographs of early twentieth century lynching and gatherings of the Ku Klux Klan with period portraits of African American and white families. This harrowing subject matter made me want to know more about the artists’ life and sources.  

A quilt from The Shroud Series, 2002.0011.0001 Courtesy of Anacostia Community Museum. Photo by Lisa Anderson.

I started my research on Fay Fairbrother by surveying the National African American Museum Project (NAAMP) files in the Anacostia Community MuseumArchives.  The Shroud Series appeared in NAAMP's 1994 inaugural exhibit Imaging Families: Images and Voices. Reading the documents in the files was eye-opening! My archival discoveries include an artist statement and resume, and installation notes and correspondences between the artist, staff members and close friends. From these documents, I learned that the artist studied art history and earned her master's degree in photography at the University of Oklahoma. Installation notes provided important details about how the series was displayed. Through the letters I was able to locate a close friend of Fairbrother and a former professor of hers at the University of Oklahoma. Through interviews with them I learned about the artist’s sources of inspiration, challenges, and working practice.

The research also led me to locate the family photographs and several of the KKK images in the Western History Collection at the University of Oklahoma in Norman.  Several of the lynching images are held at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York, and the Allen-Littlefield Collection at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia.

Detail of a quilt from The Shroud Series, 2002.0011.0001
Courtesy Anacostia Community Museum. Photo by Lisa Anderson.

Further research revealed the identity of the lynching victims Bennie Simmons, Thomas Shipp, Abram Smith, and Claude Neal (Allen 2000 and the New York Public Library digital collections) but  the identity of the African American families remains unknown. I also found information about other exhibits of Fairbrother's work which helped to contextualize The Shroud Series.

Detail of a quilt from the Shroud Series,2002.0011.0001
Courtesy Anacostia Community Museum. Photo by Lisa Anderson

Copies of documents I gathered from all these archives are now within ACM object files as documentation for the quilts. The archival information I reviewed not only provided context to the quilts I was conserving but helped me to understand the intentions of the artist and how she intertwined her art with her personal experiences.

Annaick Parker

Textile Conservator

Anacostia Community Museum

Zora Neale Hurston: Her Eyes Were on Anthropology

Zora Neale Hurston was an important part of the Harlem Renaissance and is perhaps best known for her 1937 novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. But did you know she was also an anthropologist? Hurston spent many years of her life traveling through the American South and Caribbean Islands, collecting folklore and recording African-American cultural practices. Without her work, many of these traditions might never have been recorded. Here at the National Anthropological Archives, we have one of Hurston’s original manuscripts, “Negro Folktales from the Gulf States,” as well as many other materials that document African-American history and culture in the late 19th and 20th centuries.

Hurston was born in 1891 in Alabama, the daughter of a Baptist minister and school teacher. At the age of three, her family moved to Eatonville, Florida, the town where she would later return to conduct her anthropological field work. After her mother’s death in 1904, Hurston held a series of jobs as she struggled to continue her education. In 1918, when Hurston was 26 years old, she was finally able to graduate from high school in Baltimore. Eager to continue her education, she began studying at Howard University and later transferred to Barnard College, where she was the only African American student at the college. It was at Barnard that Hurston met Franz Boas, a pioneer of American anthropology who was a professor at Columbia University at the time. Boas became Hurston’s advisor and hired her to conduct ethnographic research in African American communities in New York City. After Hurston graduated with her B.A. in anthropology in 1928, she wanted to use her new skills to learn more about the cultural traditions of her childhood.

Zora Neale Hurston, 1935. Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Hurston decided to study African-American folklore from the South. Remembering her own experiences growing up in Florida, she knew that there was a rich tradition of folklore in rural, working-class black Southern communities. “From the earliest rocking of my cradle,” Hurston wrote, “I had known about the capers Brer Rabbit is apt to cut and what Squinch Owl says from the house top.” Equipped with the “spyglass of anthropology” as she called it, she traveled to Florida to record and study  folklore  that, for African Americans, encoded a broad range of life lessons and moral principles.

"Florida is a place that draws people," Hurston later wrote about her field work in the South, including "white people from all the world, and Negroes from every Southern state surely and some from the North and West. So I knew that it was possible for me to get a cross section of the Negro South in one state." Beginning in her home town of Eatonville, Hurston visited front porches, saw mills, private homes, and bars to collect hundreds of folktales. Working in the same community that she grew up in, Hurston had a considerable advantage over other anthropologists. “Folklore is not as easy to collect as it sounds,” she admitted, “the best source is where there are the least outside influences and these people, being usually underprivileged, are the shyest.” In Eatonville, like many other small rural communities in the South, there was a general mistrust of outsiders, especially those from the North. “They are most reluctant at times,” Hurston added, “to reveal that which the soul lives by.” Fortunately, Hurston was no outsider and knew the best places to hear folktales in town- the same places she had been as a child.

Franz Boas, undated. Photo Lot 33: Portraits of Anthropologists, circa 1860s-1970,
  National Anthropological Archives, National Museum of Natural History.

By 1935, Hurston had collected enough stories to publish a book, which she called Mules and Men. Franz Boas, who was still advising her as she traveled throughout the South, even wrote the preface of the book at her request. Boas thought that Mules and Men was an exceptional inside look at African-American culture that other anthropologists like himself were unable to capture. “It is the great merit of Miss Hurston’s work that she entered into the homely life of the southern Negro as one of them and was fully accepted as such by the companions of her childhood…added to all this is the charm of a lovable personality and of a revealing style which makes Miss Hurston’s true work an unusual contribution to our knowledge of the true inner life of the Negro.” With her unique perspective, Hurston captured a culture that used folklore as a means of surviving racism, sexism, and poverty.

As important as Hurston’s anthropological and literary work is, she was an obscure and misunderstood figure for most of her life. Though Mules and Men was critically acclaimed, it still faced criticism for Hurston’s decision to write in African-American dialect. Despite her publication of many other books and novels such as Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston’s writing career ended in the late 1940s. After a series of financial and health issues, Hurston died in 1960. It wouldn’t be until many decades later that her literary and anthropological accomplishments were finally recognized.

NAA MS 7532: "Negro Tales From the Gulf States," 1927-1929.
National Anthropological Archives, National Museum of Natural History

Throughout most of the twentieth century, African Americans took part in what historians now call the Great Migration. Between 1910 and 1970, millions of African Americans moved out of the South to escape racism and pursue opportunities in the North and Midwest. This movement, however, came at a cost. As African Americans moved, communities were broken up as members moved all over the country. Hurston’s field notes and Mules and Men provide a glimpse of African American culture in the South as it appeared before these migrations.

The National Anthropological Archives and the Human Studies Film Archives are fortunate to have many materials that shed light on the cultural heritage of African American communities. The NAA is home to Zora Neale Hurston’s original manuscript of African American stories that was later published as Mules and Men in 1935. Simply called “Negro Tales From the Gulf States,” it contains Hurston’s documentation of African American folklore without any editing or changes that were made for publication, and it shows her hand-written edits and notes. The manuscript was published posthumously in 2002 as Every Tongue Got to Confess: Negro Folktales From the Gulf States.”

At the Human Studies Film Archive, there are a number of original film recordings of African American life and cultural practices in the twentieth-century South. The oldest of these films is “Ye Old Time Coon Hunt,” created by Field and Stream magazine in 1917. Originally intended to be a travelogue  style “interest film” to be shown in movie theaters, it shows African Americans participating in a raccoon hunt and celebrating with a communal dance afterwards. The HFSA also has a 1930s film of a Shouter service shot by early documentarian Ralph Steiner. This service, common on the Georgia coast and Sea Island, features dances and other movements that were part of the Ring Shout tradition (an important spiritual and cultural tradition among African Americans). The film was studied by production staff for the 1998 movie Beloved to ensure historical accuracy in their portrayal of a Shouter service. Finally, the HFSA is home to film recordings of Georgia Sea Island Singers from the 1960s. These African Americans performed songs from the Gullah culture of Georgia and South Carolina, and were recorded by noted folklorist Bess Lomax Hawes. These film clips, like Hurston’s own research, reveal the everyday lives and culture of African Americans in the rural, twentieth-century South.

Tyler Stump
Processing Archivist
National Anthropological Archives

Families by Scurlock

It has been really fun for me to watch people’s reactions when I reveal that I spent my summer looking at pictures at the Smithsonian. Of course, it’s much more than that, but the bulk of my time was spent viewing and analyzing family portraits. Over ten weeks, I worked closely with David Haberstich in the Archives Center at the National Museum of American History. I examined portraits from the vast Scurlock Studio collection, and thoroughly enjoyed my time there.

I enjoy looking at photographs. At home and on my own time, I can spend hours going through my family’s old scrapbooks. I like to pretend to be a detective and find connections between the photographs that were not discussed or are frequently overlooked by the elders in my family. I am interested in race and class dynamics, and viewed the Scurlock Studio collection to shed light on the black middle class of Washington, D.C.

Self-portrait of the young Addison Scurlock with his future wife Mamie, ca. 1910. Scurlock Studio Records, Archives Center, National Museum of American History.

After going through at least 100 boxes, some small and some large, of photo prints and negatives, I was very happy to come across a specific sub-collection of photos of strictly families. I spent hours viewing the photos, taking notes, and comparing them. To my surprise, for the most part, all of the family portraits looked the same. Depending on the time period, as the Scurlock Studio was open for 83 years, the backdrops were the same, the poses the same, and the clothing colors were all the same. If I used the Scurlock Studio to define the middle class based on these family portraits, I would say that the black middle class was composed of 1) stylish people, 2) Howard University graduates, and 3) nuclear families.

It is very clear that style and fashion were of major importance to the black middle class in Washington. In the earliest photographs from the collection, individuals wore elegant gowns and dapper suits. As time passed, the black middle class paid attention to fashion trends and seemed to wear their Sunday Best in the portraits. Many of the photos in this collection showed young black professionals and recent Howard University graduates with their families. The men often stood behind their wives and children, and children who recently graduated donned their graduation cap and gown. This showed the importance of education and pride in educational achievements among the black middle class. Men who served in the armed forces proudly displayed their military uniforms. Well-dressed children appear happy and privileged, having solo photo shoots with children’s toys and other props. The family portraits show the characteristics that were important to the black middle class and coincide with narratives of black middle class families in popular culture.

As I viewed these photographs, I connected their “look” to the many television shows of black families that have dominated primetime television, one of the most recognizable and influential family shows being The Cosby Show. In several instances, I could hardly differentiate the two, as the families captured by the Scurlock Studio seemed like exact replicas of TV families. Additionally, as the time period changed, I thought of other television shows such as "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air," "My Wife and Kids," and "Black-ish." Many of these portraits reaffirmed these shows as portraying realistic family structures representations on television.

While I am proud to say that I awesomely spent the summer digging through family portraits and drawing the connections between them, I am now more excited to continue my research on black middle class family structures. It is clear that the Scurlocks dealt with a specific clientele in Washington, but I am interested in revealing what they did not capture. There were very few photographs in the collection of a single parent and child(ren). In these instances, because the portraits are not all labeled or dated, it is difficult to know if the parents were indeed single or if the other parent was absent. We know that the images of mothers and children that were taken for Ebony magazine "'Gold Star Wives' series" are women whose husbands were away in the military. For these clearly middle class (or even upper-middle class) women, background information is available, but unfortunately, each photograph in the collection does not have a similar description.

My archival research in the Scurlock Studio collection raised many unforeseen questions. Are the families with in-home portraits wealthier than those families with in-studio portraits? Who determined the poses? The photographer? The family? Why did some family portraits include the parents and children only, while others included grandparents and in-laws? Who made these decisions? As these photographs show what the middle class physically looked like between the periods of 1911-1994, they force me to wonder how other families who also fit middle class descriptions looked in Washington.


Aysha L. Preston, Visiting Graduate Student, Summer 2015
Archives Center, National Museum of American History

The Duncan P. Shiedt Collection and All That Jazz

The National Museum of American History sponsored a variety of special activities in April to celebrate Jazz Appreciation Month, including special concerts and the opening of the LeRoy Neiman Jazz Café in the Museum, with its colorful mural (painted by Neiman) depicting eighteen jazz masters.  Spearheaded as usual by Dr. John Hasse, the Museum’s indefatigable curator of American Music, Jazz Appreciation Month often focuses on jazz-related acquisitions by the Museum, especially in the Archives Center.  Searching for “jazz” in SIRIS reveals the jazz-related riches of the Archives Center, from the original music manuscripts of famed composer and bandleader Duke Ellington to published sheet music in the Sam DeVincent Collection (arranged by the topics or subjects of songs), to photographs of jazz musicians by many important photographers.

Photograph by John Miner.  Billy Strayhorn playing piano, possibly Chicago, 26 May 1952.
From the Duncan P. Schiedt Photograph Collection, Archives Center, NMAH

Dr. Hasse has located and helped to negotiate most of the Archives Center’s jazz acquisitions over the years, collaborating with our staff to arrange and complete the transactions.  Some of these acquisitions were made possible through personal friendships and professional connections dating back to his graduate work in music at Indiana University, and Indiana, it seems, has been an unusually fertile source of dedicated collectors of jazz-related collections and archives.  This has been of personal interest to me because I also pursued graduate work at Indiana University in Bloomington—not in music, although I knew a number of music students.  Our most recent major jazz-related acquisition was donated by the children of another longtime friend and colleague of John Hasse’s—Duncan P. Schiedt.  Schiedt was himself a distinguished photographer of jazz musicians, but he also collected the work of other jazz photographers, and authored a number of books.  He wrote in the preface to his book Jazz State of Indiana that “Indiana represented something special in jazz history” and that “Hoosier jazz” made a special contribution to the style of many college and professional jazz bands. The Archives Center is just beginning to view the thousands of photographs in this collection.  Shown above is a photograph of jazz great Billy Strayhorn, from the Schiedt collection.

David Haberstich
Curator of Photography, NMAH Archives Center     

Frederick Douglass Birthday Celebration!

This Douglass portrait  and signature card was probably part of a photography album or assembled by a collector, Anacostia Community Museum Archives, Smithsonian Institution. 

The National Park Service will celebrate the 197th birthday of Frederick Douglass on February 13th and 14th, 2015, with special programs and activities at the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site. This year, the Anacostia Community Museum will serve as one of several partnering locations for the celebration by hosting a special behind-the-scenes tour with a focus on archival materials related to Frederick Douglass.

Frederick Douglass wrote his first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass in 1845. Anacostia Community Museum Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

In Lessons of the Hour, 1894  one of Douglass's last major speeches, he addressed the issue of mob lynching of Blacks in the American South.  Anacostia Community Museum Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

The tour will provide a glimpse into Douglass’s life through his autobiographies and newspapers, photographs, and speeches. It will also highlight the efforts of a 1950s civic association, The Coordinating Committee of Anacostia and Vicinity, to preserve Douglass’s home.  In a  1953 letter written to the Frederick Douglass Memorial & Historical Ass., Charles E. Qualls voiced the concerns of the committee:

We believe that the Frederick Douglas [sic] Home and grounds can be  maintained in proper and fitting state for this great man.  All the people want to know is how they can help and that moneys raised and donated will be judiciously spent and wisely taken care of; that the home and grounds and proper protection of relics and cataloguing of books be accomplished.

The Coordinating Committee of Anacostia and Vicinity celebrated the success of their letter writing campaign for the upkeep of the Douglass home with a invitation only Soiree. Dale/Patterson Family papers, 1886 - 1990, Anacostia Community Museum Archives, Smithsonian Institution, gift of Dianne Dale.

The Frederick Douglass Memorial and Historical Association was established by Douglass's second wife, Helen Pitts after he died to preserve his legacy and mange his possessions.  The National Association of Colored Women's Clubs began assisting with the upkeep of his home in 1916.  In September 1962 the home became a unit of the National Park Service and opened to the public on February 14, 1972.  Dale/Patterson Family papers, 1886 - 1990, Anacostia Community Museum Archives, Smithsonian Institution, gift of Dianne Dale.

This special tour will take place Friday the 13th from 1:30 – 2:30 at the Anacostia Community Museum.  It will be a great opportunity for the public to come out and view some of our treasures and celebrate the birthday of this great American.

Jennifer Morris
Archivist
Anacostia Community Museum Archives

Leslie Payne: Old Airplane Builder

One of my favorite artists in the Anacostia Community Museum collection is Leslie J. Payne. Born in 1907 in rural Northumberland County, Virginia, Payne was a fisherman and a crabber. Payne only received a fourth grade education, and remained impoverished for all of his life. He had few opportunities for travel, to satisfy his curiosity about the world, to put his enormous creative energies to work, or to indulge his larger than life personality. But in 1918, he attended an air show when he was only eleven years old that was to change his life. As a direct result of that event, Payne began a lifelong obsession with airplanes and airfields.

Leslie Payne poses with one of his airplanes. Image courtesy of Johnathan Green.



In the 1940s Payne began to construct airplanes, most of them relatively small in scale. Beginning in the 1960s, however, Payne began to construct what he called imitation planes. These were large scale planes, constructed so that Payne and a passenger could sit in the cabin and enjoy the view. On Sunday afternoons, Payne would invite selected young ladies to join him on flights in his planes and they would put-put around the surrounding fields. The young women wore their good Sunday clothes—one recalled wearing white gloves and pearls—and Payne wore a flight suit, aviator cap, and goggles, and outfitted each passenger with helmet and goggles . He maintained a travel log book in which the young women kept notes on each flight’s imaginary itinerary, and also had his passengers take Polaroid photos. On those occasions, for those few hours, Leslie Payne became a pilot, with all the powerful and romantic notions that that suggested in the 1960s. On the back of his flight suit was emblazoned a huge emblem that revealed his self-made identity: Old Airplane Builder. Homemade.

Using metal, canvas, automobile parts, kitchen tools, and other materials that he scrounged, he built imitation planes and then transformed his small farm into an airfield, complete with AIR TOWER, machine shop, and runways. He had no truck, or transportation for the larger pieces of scrap metal, so he carried the stuff back to his farm.

After Leslie Payne retired to a nursing home in the late 1970s, and after his death in 1980, his airfield was abandoned. The planes, tower, and machine shop remained until 1987, when Jonathan Green, then director of the California Museum of Photography traveled to Lillian, Virginia, and with the permission of the family, brought back a plane, the air tower, and some of the machine shop. Green’s team spent years restoring the artifacts. In 1994, Green assisted the Anacostia Museum in acquiring the collection, and it remains an important part of the museum’s holdings today.

Leslie Payne motto.  Image courtesy of Johnathan Green.

Let me end with Leslie Payne’s motto that was burned over the doorway of his machine shop: Safty first, Tak No Chance!

This post originally appeared on the Anacostia Community Documentation Initiative  blog.
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If you enjoyed this entry, you might also like Inside the Artist's Studio: Leslie Payne .


Portia James
Senior Curator
Anacostia Community Museum

75th Anniversary of "Gone with the Wind"

This October, the Smithsonian Collections Blog is celebrating American Archives Month with a month-long blogathon! We will be posting new content almost every weekday with the theme Discover and Connect. See additional posts from our other participating blogs, as well as related events and resources, on the Smithsonian’s Archives Month website.

Bulk-mail (postcard) hanging advertisement for the Marlboro Theatre, Upper Marlboro, Maryland, advertising the program for the week of April 14th, 1940, highlighting the premiere of ‘Gone With the Wind’. Robinson and Via Family Papers, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, AC0475-0000269-02).

The David O. Selznick film version of Margaret Mitchell’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “Gone With the Wind” (GWTW) celebrates the 75th anniversary of its premiere in December 2014. In the current era, when blockbusters, or would-be blockbusters, are released at regular intervals, the excitement around the original opening of GWTW may seem strange to us.  This object of advertising ephemera from the Marlboro Theatre in Upper Marlboro, Prince George’s County, Maryland provides a window into the film’s promotion to a rural audience.  The Marlboro, designed by John Eberson, was built for theatre entrepreneur Sidney Lust and had opened for business in January 1938. 

GWTW did not go into general release until after a star-studded premiere in Atlanta in December 1939.  With immediate popularity and wide critical acclaim the film became the “must see” motion picture event of 1940.  GWTW did not reach Upper Marlboro until April 28, 1940 and Lust used bulk mail to advertise its coming to the Marlboro Theatre’s largely rural customer base.  Lust cleverly used a hanging card and on the reverse side of the GWTW promotional postcard advertised the theatre’s April 14-27 program.  At .75 for unreserved and $1.10 for reserved seating (roughly $12 and $18 in current money), the cost of a GWTW ticket was quite an investment for local tobacco farmers and their families.  The Washington Post reported the day after the opening, “'Gone With the Wind’ opened in three of Sidney Lust’s Maryland theaters yesterday before large and appreciative audiences.  The famous Selznick production was presented simultaneously at the Hyattsville Theater, in Hyattsville; the Milo Theater, in Rockville; and the Marlboro Theater, in Upper Marlboro.” (“Gone With the Wind”, The Washington Post, April 29, 1940, page 16.)



Verso of image above.  A bulk-mail hanging advertisement for the Marlboro Theatre, Upper Marlboro, Maryland advertising other films on the schedule for April 14-27, 1940.   Robinson and Via Family Papers, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, AC0475-0000269-01.

Other Archives Center collections contain material related to this film.  Only a few weeks earlier and about twenty miles away, African Americans had picketed the showing of "Gone with the Wind" at the Lincoln Theatre in the segregated Shaw neighborhood of Washington, D.C.  The film's racist assumptions and stereotyped portrayals of African Americans roused normally complacent residents to mount a protest that foreshadowed the civil rights activism of the 1960s.

"Jim Crow" showing of "Gone with the Wind" / at the uptown Lincoln Theater. Rufus Byars, manager of Lincoln on left.
Probably photographed by Roberts S. Scurlock, March 9, 1940.  Scurlock Studio Records, Archives Center, NMAH

Franklin A. Robinson, Jr.
Archivist, Archives Center
National Museum of American History

The Guiding Spirit of Tuskegee

In my previous blog post, Donors in the Archives, I promised to share interesting tidbits learned about treasures in the Dale/Patterson Family papers. During a recent processing session with the donor, Dianne Dale, I learned an interesting fact about Frederick Douglass Patterson, who Ms. Dale affectionately refers to as “Uncle Fred.”

I was aware of Frederick Douglass Patterson’s many accomplishments during his long and distinguished career. He was the third president of Tuskegee Institute (University); founder of the United Negro College Fund; and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1987.

What I didn’t know about Dr. Patterson was his personal aspiration to fly and his role in establishing an aviation program at Tuskegee.

The Spirit of Tuskegee Institute,  Frederick Douglass Patterson papers, 1882 - 1988.  Anacostia Community Museum Archives.

As Ms. Dale and I organized the Patterson materials within the collection, she provided me with further insight. She said:

While serving as president of Tuskegee, Uncle Fred was able to use his position to realize his dream of flight. He established a commercial aviation program and learned to fly at an old cow pasture at the school. When WWII escalated, he saw the potential for training black pilots and met with officials at the Department of Defense to find out if the Army Air Corps was to be integrated. His idea was that if the armed services were to remain segregated, Tuskegee had the capacity to train black men to fly.

At the time, Eleanor Roosevelt was a trustee of the Julius Rosenwald Foundation, which funded black schools in the rural South. Uncle Fred invited Mrs. Roosevelt to Tuskegee to propose the construction of an airfield there. Eventually Tuskegee received funding to start pilot training at Moton Field. Benjamin O. Davis Jr. and Daniel “Chappie” James were a part of the ROTC program and were among the first officers to command and train troops now known as the Tuskegee Airmen.

Dr. Patterson’s interest in flight soon subsided after almost crashing his plane twice. His passion for aviation turned into an avocation until he finally stopped flying and focused his energies on building Tuskegee’s military aviation program.

Frederick Douglass Patterson isn’t mentioned often when we speak of the Tuskegee Airmen. However, I would argue it was Patterson’s aspirations to fly coupled with his belief in aviation programs to provide opportunities for trained African American pilots that paved the way for the celebrated WWII fighter pilots.

Jennifer Morris
Archivist
Anacostia Community Museum Archives    

Resourceful Researcher

Alert reader Christine Windheuser (also an Archives Center reference volunteer) handily solved the conundrum I presented in my previous blog, “Lazy Researcher.”  She discovered that the “other” Marian Anderson concert at the Lincoln Memorial was presented as the singer’s tribute to the former Secretary of the Interior, Harold L. Ickes, at a memorial service held in his honor at the Memorial, with an estimated ten thousand listeners on the Mall.  Chris Windheuser (with a little help from ProQuest) located the Washington Post article, published April 21, 1952, which conclusively identified the occasion as a memorial service for Ickes, who died February 3, 1952.

Photograph by Robert S. Scurlock, April 9, 1939
Singer Marian Anderson speaking to Secretary of the Interior Harold S. Ickes before her concert at the Lincoln Memorial.  Assistant Secretary of the Interior Oscar Chapman (at right) was Secretary of the Interior when Marian Anderson sang at a memorial service for Ickes in 1952.  Scurlock Studio Records, Archives Center, National Museum of American History 

Ickes was a liberal member of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration, a strong “New Deal” supporter, and administrator of the Public Works Administration, known as “Honest Harold” for his fight against corruption.  As a supporter of civil rights, he tried to address the concerns of both American Indians and African Americans.  Indeed, some biographical sources present him as a nearly heroic figure, fighting bigotry and racism.  It is not entirely clear (to me, anyway) why he was presented as an arrogant, comic caricature in the musical play “Annie,” in which he is forced by President Roosevelt to sing “Tomorrow.”

Photograph by Robert S. Scurlock, April 9, 1939.
Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes (center).
Scurlock Studio Records, Archives Center, National Museum of American History

When the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow famed contralto Marian Anderson to present a concert in Constitution Hall, Ickes offered the Lincoln Memorial and the National Mall as a stunning open-air alternative.  Her Easter Sunday concert in 1939 was a landmark event in the history of civil rights.  Robert S. Scurlock photographed that historic recital, attended by a reported seventy-five thousand people.  When Ickes died years later, Oscar L. Chapman, Secretary of the Interior at the time, apparently chose to honor Ickes with this outdoor memorial service, and Marian Anderson was asked to sing in acknowledgment of her friendship with Ickes and to celebrate his efforts at eliminating racial barriers.  The Post quoted Chapman as saying, “The fullness of his [Ickes’s] leadership was vividly dramatized here 13 years ago.  And with her thrilling voice of genius, Marian Anderson on that glorious day, even as today, symbolized and reemphasized for the Nation and for the world that America really stands for equality of opportunity for all on the basis of individual merit.”

Anderson’s vocal program included “Ave Maria” (composer not cited)  Bach’s “Komm’ Susser Tod,” and “Beautiful City.”  Then she led the audience of an estimated ten thousand people in the singing of “America.”  I was delighted to learn that Marian Anderson had honored her mentor this way, and to learn the story behind the Scurlock images of her from the 1950s.  We are not yet certain if Robert Scurlock was again the photographer—it might have been his brother George, or another Scurlock Studio employee—but it seems highly likely that he was.

David Haberstich
Curator of Photography, Archives Center

Donors in the Archives

The Dale/Patterson Family papers is a recent acquisition in the Anacostia Community Museum Archives.  The materials were donated by Dianne Dale—an author, artist, and community historian, whose family settled in Hillsdale neighborhood in southeast Washington, D.C., in 1892.  Ms. Dale is a wonderful community historian and we are fortunate to receive the fruits of her labors.  The collection includes photographs and documents from her family papers and materials Ms. Dale acquired from other families for her publication: The Village ThatShaped Us: A look at Washington DC’s Anacostia Community. 

As president of the Anacostia Historical Society and former president of the Anacostia Garden Club, Ms. Dale is still utilizing some materials from the collection for her local history projects.  Not wanting to miss out on this important collection opportunity, museum administration agreed to accept her donation in multiple registration sets.  As the museum archivist, I must admit, I would have preferred to receive the total collection at one time in order to complete processing and expedite public accessibility.  However, Ms. Dale generously offered to assist with establishing physical and intellectual control of her donation. 

One of the earliest treasures in the Dale/Patterson Family papers is this 1866 program from the First Congregational Church in Washington, D.C.

It’s been months since the first accretion of Dale’s material to our permanent collection and several more have followed.  Dianne Dale is currently working as a Behind-the-Scenes volunteer to help organize the Dale/Patterson Family collection. Although processing this collection would have been a substantive project for an intern, having the donor in the archives has proven to be a valuable resource.  Ms. Dale has brought enthusiasm, passion, and a wealth of knowledge to the archival project, as well as a willingness to learn about archival principles and the preservation of archival collections.

For an archivist, listening to a donor weave facts and dates to tell little known stories around documents provides a rich and textured view of a collection. I appreciate learning about the materials and she enjoys learning how we preserve and use them.

Stay tuned to discover what interesting tidbits I learn about the treasures in the Dale/Patterson Family papers! 

Jennifer Morris                                                                                               

Archivist
AnacostiaCommunity Museum Archives

Lazy Research

Photograph by Robert S. Scurlock.  Marian Anderson at the Lincoln Memorial, probably 1951 or later.
Scurlock Studio Records, Archives Center, National Museum of American History.

Among the most popular photographs in the NMAH Archives Center's Scurlock Studio Collection are Robert S. Scurlock's images of the historic concert given at the Lincoln Memorial by African American singer Marian Anderson on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939.  We have other photographs of this renowned singer at the Lincoln Memorial or in concert on the Mall, which apparently document a separate occasion or occasions, such as the one above.  Some show her singing into a WGMS microphone, and we know that those call letters were used in the Washington area from 1951-2007.  WGMS maintained a classical music format from 1946 to 2007, but did not use the call letters WGMS until 1951.  I wish to challenge readers to suggest or identify and document any public open-air concerts Marian Anderson might have given at the Lincoln Memorial or on the Mall, other than the famous 1939 presentation.   (You'll save me some research time.)  Are they likely to be an occasion other than a concert, such as Dwight D. Eisenhower's inauguration in 1957 or John F. Kennedy's in 1961?  Any comments will be appreciated!

David Haberstich
Curator of Photography, Archives Center

Solomon G. Brown's Poetry

Did you know Solomon G. Brown—the first African American employee of the Smithsonian Institution—was also a talented poet? The legacy of Solomon Brown is not generally known beyond the Smithsonian or the local community of Anacostia where he resided. However, during the 19^th and early 20^th centuries Brown was a man of stature with a public reputation in Washington, DC; Baltimore, MD; and Alexandria, VA. 

Memorial Verse: In Memory of Isaac Brown, 1894 by Solomon G. Brown, 06-030.4
Anacostia Community Museum Archives, Smithsonian Institution

In celebration of National Poetry Month the Anacostia Community Museum highlights Brown’s “Memorial Verse” from our archival collection. You can also assist with transcribing the verse by    visiting the Smithsonian Digital Volunteers: Transcription Center. You may also find interesting “Kind Regards of S. G.Brown”: Selected Poems of Solomon G. Brown, compiled by Louise Daniel Hutchinson and Gail Sylvia Lowe.

Jennifer Morris
Archivist
Anacostia Community Museum Archives

Singing the Past: Gullah Heritage & the Georgia Sea Island Singers

There are endless things to say--or sing--about the ways in which music unites us. Throughout history, people have raised their voices in choruses of faith, of protest, of hope and joy. One power of music, among many, is the ability to compress time between generations, to echo the words and voices of ancestors separated from us by so many years. For the unique culture of the Gullah people, folk traditions of music, storytelling, games, and dance form very real connections between the past and present. Exploring the legacy of the Georgia Sea Island Singers helps illuminate the powerful and little-told history of Gullah heritage, and the power of song. This post contains images of the Bessie Jones and the Georgia Sea Island Singers, captured by photographer Diana Davies, whose extensive documentation of folk performers, festivals, civil rights marches, and more is housed in the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections.

The Georgia Sea Island Singers performing at the Poor People's March, Washington, D.C., 1968. Diana Davies Photograph Collection, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections

In the mid-18th century, thousands of acres of plantation land in coastal South Carolina and Georgia and on the neighboring Sea Islands were being developed primarily for rice production. As a result, there was a boom in popularity for slaves from the Windward Coast of West Africa, or “The Rice Coast,” imported for their knowledge of rice cultivation and irrigation techniques. Many scholars believe Gullah derives from “Angola” where many of these people originated. High prices were paid for slaves from these Western regions, and due to the slaves' skillful growing practices, white planters enjoyed immense profit and success.

Because of diseases carried by mosquitoes in the subtropical climate of the region, many plantation owners avoided the islands and lowcountry during much of the year, leaving African overseers in charge. Through the years to come, the isolation of these rice-growing ethnic groups, who re-created and blended their native African cultures, traditions, and community life, led to the formation of the unique Gullah identity. “Gullah” was originally used to designate the spoken language of Gullah people (also referred to as “Geechee” by some scholars) but its meaning has evolved to refer to the Gullah’s creole language and distinct ethnic identity. In addition to the unique situation of having little contact with whites, the Gullah people were able to strongly preserve many African cultural traditions because of a constant influx of African slaves from the same Windward region--which helped renew and numerically strengthen their community on the islands.

Georgia Sea Island Singers Bessie Jones and Leola Polite Harris, on St. Simon's Island, 1966. Diana Davies Photograph Collection, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archive and Collections.

After the Civil War, much of the land in the Sea Islands was turned over to former slaves who remained and made livings through farming and fishing. The geographic isolation of the Gullah people, and the microcosm formed by their unique situation, created a community in the United States in which African cultural heritage has arguably remained the least changed.

Bessie Jones at home on St. Simon’s Island, Georgia, 1966.
Diana Davies Photograph Collection,
Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archive and Collections.

During the early 1900s, Lydia Parrish--wife of artist Maxfield Parrish--began documenting folklife on St. Simon’s Island, where she was living at the time. She collected traditional songs, recorded memories of slave descendants, and helped with the formation of the Spiritual Singers of Georgia, which included member Bessie Jones (who would later lead the Georgia Sea Island Singers).

In addition to Parrish’s documentation, which was published in 1942 as The Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands, extensive fieldwork was conducted by folklorist Alan Lomax, beginning in 1935 when he first visited the island with writer and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston, and continuing through the late 1950s. Lomax made many recordings of the Spiritual Singers, and was told by Jones of her desire to “teach the chillun,” as she shared with him a wish to present Gullah culture more publicly. With Lomax’s help, Jones worked to solicit bookings for the singing group which, by this time, had been renamed The Georgia Sea Island Singers. With Jones as the song leader, the group was also comprised of Big John Davis, Peter Davis, Henry Morrison, Emma Ramsay and Mable Hillary. See footage (located in the Human Studies Film Archives) of the Singers from a 1964 performance in California.

Bessie Jones at the 1966 Newport Folk Festival. Diana Davies Photograph Collection, 
Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archive and Collections.

A loyal commitment to authenticity echoed within the group, and continued even through years of changing members. This dedication to and internal reminder of the power of a focused, collective voice aided the Singers in teaching and performing the slave songs, dances, games, and shouts of their ancestors with people around the world, engaging with audiences in an interactive way that demonstrated the engaging quality of the traditions. Throughout the years, the Singers performed at such events as the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, the Inauguration of President Jimmy Carter, the Poor People's March in Washington (where they acted as staff culture-workers), and the 1967 Festival of American Folklife. In addition, Bessie Jones appeared individually on Pete Seeger’s television show The Rainbow Quest, in 1966, and received a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1982—the same year she died of complications from leukemia, at the age of 82. Here are two songs from Jones’ 1962 performance at the University of California, Berkeley Folk Festival.

The legacy of the Georgia Sea Island Singers has continued into the present. Currently, the group is comprised of members of the Quimby family (read more here) who are keeping the rich Gullah tradition alive, performing every year for global audiences. Through their performances, the singers continue to offer insight into the history of their traditions and to emphasize the power of remembering the spirit and roots of a culture. Frankie Quimby, who was born and raised on the Sea Islands, has said: “I’m a firm believer that you can’t know where you’re going until you realize where you’ve come from. We have dedicated our lives to trying to preserve that rich heritage and culture that our ancestors handed down to us.” The Georgia Sea Island Singers, with their Gullah heritage, are a striking example of the resilience of human creativity and spirit. They demonstrate a powerful community dedicated to the living preservation of its history, and we are reminded to shout and stamp and clap--echoing voices of the past and celebrating a freedom to sing.

The Georgia Sea Island Singers performing at the Poor People's March, Washington, D.C., 1968. Diana Davies Photograph Collection, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archive and Collections.

To hear more from the Georgia Sea Island Singers, check out this Folkways recording:

Lest We Forget, Vol. 3: Sing For Freedom

Elizabeth Lalley, Intern

Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections