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| Amistad Features Morial Collection |
 Commemorating the 30th anniversary of the election of Ernest N. "Dutch" Morial as the first African American Mayor of the City of New Orleans, the Amistad Research Center will present an exhibition entitled Selections from the Ernest N. "Dutch" Morial Collection. The exhibition will be on view in the Center's reading room Monday-Friday, 8:30 - 4:30, May 15 - August 15, 2008.
The collection chronicles the personal and professional life of this significant figure in New Orleans history and city politics. Born October 9, 1929, the son of Walter and Leonie Morial, "Dutch" grew up in the city's 7th Ward community. He graduated from McDonogh 35 High School and then earned a BS degree in Business Administration from Xavier University in 1951. In 1954, he became the first African American to graduate from Louisiana State University's Law School. Morial returned to New Orleans, married Sybil Haydel Morial in 1955, and embarked on a long career of judicial and political activism. Following service in the U.S. Army Intelligence Corps (1954-1956), he joined with New Orleans attorney Alexander Pierre Tureaud, and wife, Sybil, as litigants to desegregate New Orleans schools, taxi cabs, buses and street cars. In 1961, he helped organize the Dryades Street Boycott and the march of 15,000 African Americans from Shakespeare Park to City Hall.
During his storied career of judicial and political activism, "Dutch" emerged as a trailblazer, accomplishing a number of firsts. In 1965, Ernest N. Morial became Louisiana's first black Assistant U.S. Attorney. In 1967, he was elected Louisiana's first black state legislator since Reconstruction. His legacy of firsts grew when he became the first black elected Juvenile Court Judge for Orleans Parish (1970-1973); first black Judge, Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal (1972-1977); and in 1978 Morial was elected New Orleans' first African American Mayor.
The Morial Collection comprises 153 linear feet of archival documents, photographs, and multimedia detailing his ascendancy from the 7th Ward to become Mayor of the City of New Orleans, President of the United States Conference of Mayors, and member of the Executive Committee of the Democratic National Committee. The correspondence highlights a broad range of community involvements and relationships with people from New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward to the White House. It also documents the Morial family's community service and interracial collaborations, revealing a deep commitment to equal opportunity, public service and excellence.
The Morial papers are organized in seven series. The biographical and family series (1929-1995) includes photographs, correspondence and memorabilia from the Morial family: Sybil H. Morial and children Julie, Marc, Jacques, Cheri, and Monique. The campaigns and legislative series (1963-1988) contains correspondence, political advertisements, print media coverage, electoral strategy, litigation records involving various campaigns, finances, and election returns. It also details Morial's involvement in national politics.
The Mayoral series (1974-1985), contains documents from the transitional period of the Morial Administration through many of the daily operations of the office of Mayor during Morial's two terms. Files contain correspondence, reports, proposals, press releases, financial data, and minutes of meetings that detail his success in building a multiracial coalition to manage a city in transition. The papers document how his leadership secured $98 million in funding to construct the Ernest N. "Dutch" Morial Convention Center and led the city through an extensive period of construction projects including the Jax Brewery Development, the Riverwalk Development, the New Orleans Centre, and the 7,000-acre Almonaster-Michoud Industrial District.
The legal materials chronicle Morial's judicial activities from 1948-1977. Archival documents include opinions from the Court of Appeals, appointment books, correspondence related to judicial matters and materials concerning Louisiana law and service on the bench. The multimedia and collected items series (1935-1991) contain speeches, publications, films, videotapes, audiotapes, and awards.
The collection was preserved, arranged and described by archivists Clarence Hunter and Beatrice Owsley with assistance from Dr. Phillip Macleod and Dr. Michael Polushin under a grant to Amistad Research Center from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2002.
Photo Credit: Photograph of Ernest Morial. From the Ernest N. "Dutch" Morial Collection. | |
| Heritage Trail Announcement |
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Lt. Governor Mitch Landrieu recently announced that the Amistad Research Center is part of the inaugural launch of the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail. The Trail is a collection of 26 sites around Louisiana that showcases the talents and culture of African Americans to the rest of the world. Amistad Research Center is one of ten sites in the Greater New Orleans area.
The Lt. Governor's office collaborated with the Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism to develop the statewide African American Heritage Trail, and it is one of only two in the nation. Lt. Governor Landrieu believes "that this trail will tell our unique story to travelers from across the nation and provide an insight into many of the key people and places that have shaped our state's past and present."
Amistad will benefit from being featured in the project's interpretive and promotional materials, which will include brochures, maps, and a special section at LouisianaTravel.com. The trail will also be marketed by the Office of Tourism and the Office of the Lt. Governor. |
| Preview of New Book on American Missionary Association |
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 A forthcoming book by Dr. Joe M. Richardson and Dr. Maxine D. Jones, both faculty in the Department of History at Florida State University, will provide a look at the contributions to African American education by the American Missionary Association from the late 19th to the mid-20th century. Education for Liberation: The American Missionary Association and African Americans, 1890 to the Civil Rights Movement will be published by the University of Alabama Press. According to Dr. Richardson, "The traditional view is that the North lost interest in securing freedom and equality for former slaves by the mid-1870s, but we show that a small minority of northerners, many of them members of the American Missionary Association, never abandoned African Americans even during the dark days of lynching and Jim Crow."
The book will examine the AMA as an important northern anti-racist movement which has not been adequately acknowledged in the historical literature. It details the Association's challenges to segregation, lynching and disfranchisement, as well as its maintenance of desegregated facilities in the segregated South. Richardson and Jones discuss the collaborative effort of the AMA, which began as a primarily northern white organization, and blacks as "a unique experiment of two races working together rather than whites simply assisting a disadvantaged people, an example of democracy in action." The book will also include original material on black students and their families, their struggles and sacrifices to attain an education, their reaction to white teachers, the increasing number of black teachers, southern white response to black progress, and the AMA's progressiveness in placing women and African Americans in positions of authority in its schools.
Dr. Richardson notes that, "This important addition to the knowledge of U.S. and African American history would have been impossible without the many magnificent research collections in the Amistad Research Center, and without the assistance of the professional and devoted Amistad Research Center staff."
Photo Credit: Emerson Institute faculty (Mobile, Alabama), 1922-23. From the AMA Archives Addendum. |
| UNESCO Transatlantic Slave Trade Education Project |
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The Amistad Research Center will participate in the UNESCO Transatlantic Slave Trade (TST) Education Project/USA National Meeting in New Orleans from June 23-28, 2008. The project was launched in 1998 to 'break the silence' surrounding the Transatlantic Slave Trade and improve the teaching of the slave trade by emphasizing the resulting suffering and the social, cultural, and economic impact on the Atlantic World. According to the project's Web site, this international endeavor seeks "to mobilize schools in Africa, the Americas/Caribbean, and Europe to develop new educational approaches while promoting an intercultural dialogue between young people."
In conjunction with the meeting, Amistad will present an exhibition of materials from its collections related to the transatlantic slave trade during the week of June 23. On June 25, Amistad will close to the public while it hosts poetry workshops conducted by Ghanaian poet, writer, and filmmaker Kofi Anyidoho and prize-wining poet and story-teller Nikky Finney with New Orleans school children.
The general public is encouraged to attend an event from 3-6 pm that day in the Chadwick Auditorium on the campus of Tulane University. Speakers will include Anyidoho and Finney, as well as Leif Svalesen, a diver engaged by the Norwegian National Maritime Commission to recover artifacts from the Norwegian slave ship Fredensborg, and Sylviane Diouf, Director of the Schomburg-Mellon Humanities Institute and author of Dreams of Africa in Alabama: The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Story of the Last Africans Brought to America.
More information about the TST Education Project can be found at the TST-USA Web site or by contacting Sylvia Frey, Professor of History Emerita, Tulane University, at frey@tulane.edu. |
| Author Claims to Reveal Countee Cullen's Secret |
 Countee Cullen was one of the leading poets of the Harlem Renaissance. He earned his master's degree from Harvard University and later won a Guggenheim Fellowship to write poetry in France. He was briefly married to Nina Yolande Du Bois, daughter of the social critic W. E. B. Du Bois. This part of Cullen's life is well documented, but according to Shirley Porter Washington, Countee Cullen was always secretive about his early life, and there remains uncertainty about where he was born and how he came to be raised in New York City.
In her new book, Countee Cullen's Secret Revealed by Miracle Book: A Biography of His Childhood in New Orleans (published by AuthorHouse), Shirley Porter Washington makes a convincing case that she says solves, once and for all, the mystery of Countee Cullen's childhood.
She explains that Cullen's given name was James S. Carter, Jr. He was born into an African-American family in 1906 in New Orleans. His father was a dentist. His mother was a well-educated Christian. Shirley Porter Washington is his niece.
Cullen (the name he took from his adoptive father in New York, Rev. F.A. Cullen) ran away from home in 1918, according to Washington, and his mother didn't hear from him again until he sent her his first published collection of poetry, Color, in 1925. The book had an inscription: "To Mother: From her prodigical son. Jas. S. Carter." "The word 'prodigical' does not exist in the dictionary", says Washington. She believes that it was created by James/Countee, especially for his mother - a combination of prodigy and the bible's runaway (prodigal) son.
"My grandmother believed that this name (Countee Cullen) was his pen name," Washington writes. "She was unaware that he had changed his entire identity and had concealed, forever, his childhood and birth place where he had been so lovingly nurtured by her. He had, essentially, abandoned his real family in New Orleans, Louisiana, and told many lies about who he was and where he was born."
Shirley Porter Washington earned her undergraduate degree from Xavier University of Louisiana in 1954 and master's degree from Loyola University of Louisiana in 1964. She taught elementary school for 12 years and was a high school guidance counselor for 18 years. This is Washington's first book. She felt compelled to write it so that "the mystery of Countee Cullen's childhood could be disclosed and, consequently, his life and poetry better understood by literary historians."
Washington spent a great deal of time conducting research at the Amistad Research Center and acknowledges the entire staff in her book. She gave thanks for "implacable assistance" in giving personal time, attention, and professional advice. Amistad's collection of Cullen's papers provides one of the most extensive documentations of his life and career. The collection includes correspondence, manuscripts, photographs, teaching materials, a fragment of a diary, news clippings, and other documents.
Photo Credit: Photograph of Shirley Porter Washington provided by the author. |
| Chicago Friends Conduct Church Archival Training Workshop |
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The Chicago Friends of the Amistad Research Center conducted their seventh annual church archival training workshop on March 29, at the Hall Branch Library, 48th and Michigan Avenue. This year's program was entitled "The Church as a Preserver of Our History and Protector of our Heritage."
Since inception, the workshop has grown in attendance and support. It has become a valuable resource in aiding churches and other community organizations to begin planning and implementation of measures for the organization and permanent preservation of historically significant documents and artifacts.
History Professor Art T. Burton, of South Suburban College, South Holland, Illinois, was guest presenter. Burton has made appearances on BET, BBC, CBC, the History Channel, and Voice of America Radio offering his expertise. He is also the author of several books giving historical account of African American and Native American gunfighters on the western frontier during the period 1870-1907. |
| Recent Donation to the ARC Library |
 The Center has received an addition to its library holdings through a donation by Director Emeritus Dr. Clifton H. Johnson. Dr. Johnson's donation of more than 200 volumes from his private library contains numerous works on the Harlem Renaissance, including works inscribed by Ida Cullen, widow of poet and playwright Countee Cullen. These works and others complement the Center's Countee Cullen Papers and its library holdings on the Harlem Renaissance. The collection will be cataloged within the coming months and will be available to researchers interested in Cullen and many of his contemporaries.
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| Amistad Tours Reflect a Diverse Audience |
February is always a busy month at the Amistad Research Center. This year, the Center hosted tours during Black History Month for local elementary and middle school students from Waggaman Alternative School and Audubon Charter School, as well as a group of young adults in New Orleans as part of the Christian volunteer organization, Mission Year. Tours continued into March and April with school groups from Samuel J. Green Charter School and McMain High School.
The Center also hosted a gathering with civil rights veteran and former CORE Field Secretary Ronnie Moore, who spoke with members about his Cornerstone Builders Program, a pilot program sponsored by AmeriCorps. Amistad houses Moore's papers, which detail his involvement in voter registration and other civil rights activities. His talk related his experiences in Memphis after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and included a viewing of the CORE-produced film Louisiana Diary, which details voter registration efforts in Plaquemines Parish during the early 1960s.
Tours for out-of-state visitors included visits by Denison College (Denison, Ohio), Manley Career Academy (Chicago, Illinois), The Community College of Baltimore (Baltimore, Maryland), and the Peoplestown Youth on The Move Program (Atlanta, Georgia). Sherise Brown, Coordinator of the Peoplestown Program, sent a note of thanks following the group's visit:
On behalf of the Atlanta Peoplestown Youth on The Move, we would like to thank you for your wealth of information on the Amistad Research Center. We really enjoyed the tour and your hospitality.
Sincerely,
Sherise Brown |
| A Note of Thanks to ARC Volunteers |
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 Since the start of 2008, Amistad has been very fortunate to receive the assistance of a number of volunteers who have helped unpack and sort new collections, inventory holdings, and lend a helping hand in a variety of ways at the Center. The time and efforts of these individuals and groups have been invaluable to the Center in helping to process manuscript and archival collections and to improve access to the Center's holdings.
Amistad would like to thank faculty and student groups from Defiance College, Rhodes College, Case Western Reserve University, as well as volunteers from the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, who have visited the Center over the past few months. We would also like to thank Jean Jones and Sister Maura O'Donovan for their continuing assistance, and Loyola University history student Elizabeth Hollmann, who is completing an internship with Reference and Library Services.
Photo Credit: Students from Rhodes College in Memphis, TN, volunteered at Amistad during the week of March 3. Photo by Brenda Square. |
| Requiem |
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R. Eugene Pincham
June 28, 1925 - April 3, 2008
Justice R. Eugene Pincham, noted civil rights attorney, trial judge, appellate court justice, and outspoken activist who abhorred injustice, died on April 3, 2008.
Judge Pincham was born in Chicago but moved as an infant with his mother and older brother to Athens, Alabama. He attended LeMoyne College in Memphis, Tennessee, and then transferred to Tennessee State University, where he received his undergraduate degree in 1947. Pincham continued his studies at Northwestern University School of Law and later received his Juris Doctorate Degree from Northwestern in January 1951.
African American attorneys received few if any offers from law firms in 1951. The Chicago Bar Association had been integrated only six years earlier. Pincham became the founding partner in the law firm Evins, Pincham, Fowlkes, Strayhorn and Cooper. He tried thousands of cases across the country and appealed hundreds of cases before the Illinois Appellate Court, the Supreme Court of Illinois and the United States Supreme Court. In 1976, he was elected Judge of the Circuit Court of Cook County, and in1984, he was elected Justice of the Illinois Appellate Court. There he set an unprecedented record of writing dissenting opinions against racism and injustices in the legal system. Many of his dissents have now been adopted as law.
R. Eugene Pincham was a loyal supporter and advocate of the Amistad Research Center and Chicago Friends of the Amistad Research Center. His name is given to the Justice R. Eugene Pincham Continuing American Dilemma Lecture Series that is hosted annually by the Chicago Friends of Amistad. | |
