NHPRC News
February 2024
Researchers using the Schomburg Collection, when it was the 135th Street Branch Library Division of Negro Literature, History and Prints, as it looked in 1938. Courtesy New York Public Library
Inside the Commission
Katherine Sibley named OAH Rep to Commission
We are delighted to welcome Katherine A.S. Sibley to the Commission as the representative of the Organization of American Historians.
Dr. Sibley is Professor of History and Dirk-Warren ’50 Sesquicentennial Faculty Chair (Social Sciences and Health Sciences), at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. She was a co-Founder of the First Ladies Association for Research and Education in 2021, and is currently editing a series on First Ladies with the University Press of Kansas. Also in 2021, she edited "Southern First Ladies: Culture and Place in White House History." Her two other books on first ladies are "A Companion to First Ladies" (2016), and "First Lady Florence Harding: Behind the Tragedy and Controversy" (2009). In her other area of interest, American communist history, she recently co-edited a work drawing on new findings in the Soviet archives: "Post-Cold War Revelations and the American Communist Party: Citizens, Revolutionaries, Spies." Her interest in archives is also reflected in her work with the Association for Documentary Editing’s Semiquincentennial Committee, and the twelve years she served with the Advisory Committee on Historical Diplomatic Documentation at the U.S. State Department (2005-2017). She also participated as a speaker in the Department of State’s Study of the U.S. Institutes Program in 2022 and 2023. She is the author and editor of three other books, including "Red Spies in America: Stolen Secrets and the Dawn of the Cold War" (2004) and "A Companion to Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover" (2014), and is currently writing a book on Michelle Obama’s role as first lady.
For a complete list of those serving on the Commission, go to https://www.archives.gov/nhprc/about/commission-members.html
250th Anniversary Around the Corner
Got plans for the Semiquincentennial?
In two-and-a-half years, we will be celebrating the 250th anniversary of the 1776 United States Declaration of Independence.
Now is the time to start planning your project in honor of the American Experience. The celebration is much more than commemoration of the 13 colonies that formed a union for independence. It is about the story unfolding from those days to these. The Commission is especially interested in projects that promote discovery and access to collections that explore the ideals behind our nation’s founding and the continuous debate over those ideals to the present day.
We are eager to learn more about records in your collections that speak to that ongoing story. Check out our Grant Opportunities at https://www.archives.gov/nhprc/announcement
Grant Opportunities
Important: You should contact us early on in the application process to discuss your project. We encourage you to provide a draft, which the program director will review and offer advice for revision before the final deadline. If you miss the optional "draft" deadline, we can still chat about your project.
Major Collaborative Archival Initiatives
For collaborative projects that will significantly improve public discovery and use of major historical records collections.
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Draft Deadline: February 15, 2024
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Final Deadline: May 8, 2024
Archives Collaboratives
For projects to plan and develop a working collaborative designed to enhance the capacity of small and diverse organizations with historical records collections.
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Draft Deadline: February 15, 2024
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Final Deadline: May 8, 2024
State Board Programming Grants
For projects that strengthen the nation’s archival network through activities undertaken by state historical records advisory boards.
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Draft Deadline: February 15, 2024
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Final Deadline: May 8, 2024
Publishing Historical Records in Collaborative Digital Editions
For projects to publish documentary editions of historical records. This program has two application cycles.
First cycle:
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Draft Deadline: February 15, 2024
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Final Deadline: May 6, 2024
Second Cycle:
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Draft Deadline: August 15, 2024
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Final Deadline: November 2, 2024
NEWS FROM THE FIELD
The Future of America’s Past
The NHPRC is proud to support a collaborative project of American Public Television, Field Studio, New American History, and PBS Learning Media for "Explaining Today: The Future of America’s Past," a multi-year professional learning and content development project focused on engaging grade 6-12 teachers and their students in exploring American history and geography through digital humanities projects and scholarship, gaining access to archival collections, primary sources and public documents via inquiry-based learning resources and open educational resources.
In “The Future of America’s Past,” historian Ed Ayers takes viewers to the sites of complex and evocative chapters in American history. Throughout the series, Ayers meets with public historians working to preserve the past, from National Park Service rangers to curators and community activists. He visits the sites — both familiar and unknown — of monumental events, and brings on guests who offer a range of perspectives.
The curriculum augments and intersects with the content of the PBS program, offering students a chance for more in-depth exploration of the primary source materials behind each episode. You can learn more about the project at https://resources.newamericanhistory.org/foapexplainingtoday
Transcribing Schomburg
The NHPRC, with funding from the Andrew Mellon Foundation, is supporting a partnership between Fisk University and the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture plans to create a digital edition on the work of Arturo Schomburg (1874-1938), a historian, writer, and activist, one of the most important collectors of Afro-Latin American cultural heritage in the United States.
One of the first steps in providing access to his work is through transcribing his documents. This past Wednesday on the occasion of Schomburg's 150th birthday, the library named for him in Harlem hosted a Transcribe-A-Thon to honor his legacy.
Learn more about it via this story on CBS New York at https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/schomburg-center-namesakes-150th-birthday-transcribe-a-thon/
Georgia Folklore Archives
In the mood for a good ghost story? How about a tale about living in a haunted house, including seeing a ball of fire, the appearance of a ghost woman, and finding a grave under the house?
In this 1969 recording, David Turner interviews his aunt, Ruby Ellis (pictured) who tells a story about a White girl who Native Americans captured and raised, renaming her Morning Star. Ellis then tells a version of Bluebeard, who stored the bodies of his wives in a little red house. The recording also captures ghost stories from Turner's nephew Mike Smith, and from his parents Vivian and William Turner. Have a listen at
https://album.atlantahistorycenter.com/.../p17222c.../id/255
These stories are part of one of the largest audio-visual collections at Atlanta History Center is the John Burrison Georgia Folklore Archives, which includes more than 1,600 recordings. Housed at the Kenan Research Center, it contains interviews conducted by Georgia State University students enrolled in Dr. John Burrison’s folklore course on topics including crafts, storytelling, superstitions, jokes, remedies, songs and ballads, and traditions as part of the Atlanta Folklore Project.
Funded by the National Recording Preservation Foundation, the Digital Library of Georgia, and the Georgia Historical Records Advisory Council (through an NHPRC regrant), the Center hopes to soon digitize half the collection.
You can read more about it at https://www.atlantahistorycenter.com/.../preserving.../
Archives Collaboratives: Mapping New York
We confess to having a crush on the Chrysler Building. This view takes in part of the East River, and it is one of many images of the iconic landmark from the Museum of the City of New York. If you are similarly smitten, you can see many other perspectives from the Urban Archive tool at https://www.urbanarchive.org/urbanarchiveny
With support from the NHPRC's Archives Collaboratives program, Urban Archive has captured 91,273 images across 34,977 locations in three cities around the world, crafted 6,445 detailed posts, assembled 565 stories, created some wonderful curriculum, and sent hundreds of New Yorkers on historical scavenger hunts in NYC.
The NHPRC Archives Collaboratives program provides funds for organizations to share resources to make access happen. Not all of them are as big as the Urban Archive, so check out the opportunity at https://www.archives.gov/nhprc/announcement/collaboratives
Major Initiatives: People, Religion, Information Networks and Travel
Clockwise from top left: An Anabaptist from Amsterdam, a Quaker from Amsterdam, an East Frisian Anabaptist, and a Quaker woman preaching. Drawn by Louis Fabricius Dubourg (1693–1775). From the Pitts Theology Library, Emory University
A Major Initiatives grant from the NHPRC went to People, Religion, Information Networks, and Travel, or PRINT, an initiative housed in the history department at the University of Central Florida. PRINT seeks to visualize and make accessible the connections among Anabaptists, Quakers, and Pietists as many left Europe for life and religious freedom in the Americas. Drawing on roughly 3,000 letters written between 1630 and 1730, PRINT will bring together manuscripts from repositories in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany and the United States.
This project is a collaborative effort to trace the communication networks of early modern European religious minorities and the ways they shaped the dynamic patterns of migration in the Atlantic world. PRINT is building partnerships with archives who hold the original documents and with citizen scholars to digitize, transcribe, and translate the correspondence.
You can join in these efforts and find more information about the PRINT Project and its initiatives at chdr.cah.ucf.edu/print.
Public Engagement: Picturing Iowa
The boys are gathered for the 1921 sliding contest. They are the McMurray boy scout troop, based in Webster City, Iowa, one of the first troops established in the United States. Led by scoutmaster Murray McMurray, and later by his two sons John and Charles, the Webster City boy scout troop offered an especially disciplined, competitive, raucous and joyous boy scout experience for hundreds and hundreds of Webster City boys across seven decades. For more information on the McMurray Boy Scout Troop see this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcy04V4MGIo.
Through an NHPRC grant to the University of Northern Iowa, the project aims to develop, test, and promote a new embeddable Exhibit Tool to become part of a suite of capabilities built into Fortepan.us, a digital archival platform, that displays thousands of digital-only collections chronologically, geographically, and thematically.
Funded through a Public Engagement grant, the project is one of several that brings people together with archives to make access happen and engage local communities to work with historical records. The Connecticut Digital Library and five partner sites – the Great Plains Action Society, the Anamosa State Penitentiary Museum, the Cedar Falls Public Library, the Clinton Public Library, and the Kendall Young Library – will embed and test the Exhibit Tool. Find out more at https://fortepan.us/about/
“FI0010747,” Webster City, IA, 1921 by McMurray, Doug/Fortepan Iowa, “https://fortepan.us/categories/all/FI0010747,” CC-BY-SA 4.0
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