December 2014

Join Our Mailing List!
In This Issue
From the Director

New Acquisition: Harold Sylvester Papers

Addition Expands Hale Smith Papers

New Digital Hiphop Collection

Intern Organizes Business Records

Fine Arts Collection Travels the Nation

2015 Exhibition Schedule

Book Documents AMA School

Requiem: Thomas H. Wirth

Holiday Greetings
 

Find us on Facebook

 

Visit our blog

 

Follow us on Twitter 

From the Director

As we begin the holiday season and approach the end of the year, our thoughts traditionally turn to those who have helped to make the Amistad Research Center's progress possible. As this issue of e-Amistad Reports illustrates, the level of activity at the Center is high. Exciting new acquisitions have expanded the Center's collections, while digital projects increase the reach of those collections to a global constituency. The mentoring of student interns continues to aid not only Amistad, but the future of scholarship in African American studies and other relevant areas of inquiry, as well. In addition, portions of Amistad's fine arts collection continue to travel, broadening the audience for this outstanding resource.

 

These activities are coordinated by a dedicated and knowledgeable staff, but also through the generosity of supporters and donors. Readers of this newsletter are aware of Amistad's annual financial appeal, but this newsletter is a tremendous reminder of why the Amistad Research Center deserves your support. The outstanding projects recalled in this issue speak to the Center's efforts to fulfill its mission with passion and dedication. If you have not already done so, please consider making a 2014 donation to Amistad. You can visit Amistad's website or click the donation button below to make your contribution.  

 

Recalling the past year, we are extremely grateful for your confidence in us and consider it one of the things for which we have to be thankful. From all of us at Amistad: Peace, prosperity, and happiness during the holidays and throughout the New Year.


 

Interim Executive Director
Lance Query
Make a Donation
Center Acquires Papers of Actor Harold Sylvester
The newly arrived papers of Harold Sylvester.
From New Orleans to Hollywood and back to New Orleans, the Amistad Research Center is pleased to announce the acquisition of the personal papers of film and television actor, writer, and producer Harold Sylvester.

 

Spanning four decades, Harold Sylvester's career has included film roles in Corrina, Corrina (1994), Innerspace (1987), Uncommon Valor (1983), An Officer and a Gentleman (1982), and Sounder, Part 2 (1976); appearances on television shows ranging from Married...With Children to Hill Street Blues to A Different World; and the screenplay for the TV movie Passing Glory, a film that portrays the events leading up to the historic 1965 New Orleans high school basketball game between all-black St. Augustine High School and all-white Jesuit High School - a game in which Sylvester played, and a landmark moment in New Orleans civil rights history.

 

A New Orleans native, Sylvester attended Tulane University beginning in 1968 as a psychology and, later, theater major. He also parlayed his success as an athlete on the basketball court to become the university's first African-American student to receive an athletic scholarship. He graduated from Tulane in 1972 and moved on to become active in the Free Southern Theater before moving to Los Angeles to pursue a career in film and television in the mid 1970s. Since then, he has taken part in 17 feature films and over 400 television shows. Sylvester won an Emmy as Writer/Executive Producer of the TNT documentary On Hallowed Ground and made his directorial debut in 2005 with the feature film NOLA.

 

Production stills from Uncommon Valor.
The Harold Sylvester papers measure approximately 30 linear feet and include correspondence, film and television scripts, materials reflecting Sylvester's involvement with the Free Southern Theater and his Blue Bayou Productions, photographs, news clippings, and more. Amistad is delighted to add Harold Sylvester's papers to our collections, and pleased to bring the actor and writer's materials home to New Orleans.

 

The collection is currently being inventoried, and will be open for research in the near future. Inquiries regarding the collection can be sent to [email protected].
Addition Expands Papers of Composer/Arranger Hale Smith
Dizzy Gillespie, Hale Smith, and Benny Carter

Music-related holdings at the Amistad Research Center are as varied as music itself, ranging from jazz to classical and from spirituals to hip hop. Amistad is pleased to add to the papers of a musician whose own oeuvre has been described as "eclectic." Since 2004, Amistad has housed the papers of jazz and classical composer, arranger, performer, and teacher Hale Smith. A new addition to the collection was recently received, which greatly expands the collection and documents further Smith's career and collaborations.

 

Born on June 29, 1925, in Cleveland, Ohio, Smith began studying piano at the age of seven and played mellophone in high school. At the age of 16, he attracted the attention of Duke Ellington, who had been shown one of Smith's compositions and offered advice to the young composer. Smith arranged music for shows touring Army camps in the U.S. South during World War II. Afterwards, he returned home and enrolled in the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he studied under Marcel Dick and Ward Lewis. In 1952, he won BMI's first student composer award for his "Four Songs". Smith moved to New York in 1958 and found work as an editor and consultant for music publishing houses while performing in New York City. In 1948, he married Juanita Hancock, with whom he raised four children: Robin, Michael, Eric, and Marcel.

 

Hale Smith also taught at the C.W. Post campus of Long Island University and at the University of Connecticut. His compositions include "The Valley Wind" (1952), "Contours for Orchestra" (1961), "Ritual and Incantations" (1974), "Innerflexions" (1977), and "Dialogues and Commentary" (1990-1991). Known for straddling the jazz and classical worlds, Smith collaborated with or arranged works for Langston Hughes, Dizzy Gillespie, Kathleen Battle, Jessye Norman, Chico Hamilton, Ahmad Jamal, and others. He described himself in The New York Times as "one of America's most famous unknown composers," but he was loved and respected by a variety of performers and fellow musicians.

 

Notebook containing list of phonograph records, presumably collected by Hale Smith.

The recent addition to the Smith papers includes correspondence (1958-2010) regarding projects, presentations and performances, greetings from fellow musicians, and correspondence amongst family members; photographs; programs, announcements, and invitations of performances by Smith, performances of his works, and tributes to him; and news clippings, press releases, publications, and writings by Smith (1953-2006). Also included are minutes for the New York State Council of the Arts, weekly planners and address books, copyright files, audio reels, music scores, books of poetry, and contracts. Correspondents include musician/poet/publisher Russell Atkins, musicians Dizzy Gillespie and Eric Dolphy, and poets Langston Hughes and Ted Joans.

 

The Center is currently organizing the Hale Smith papers, and this important addition will be included in the final online finding aid, which will be available in the near future as part of a grant from the Patrick F. Taylor Foundation. A special thanks, as well, to Juanita Smith for her continued support of the Amistad Research Center and this most recent donation.
New Digital Collection Documents New Orleans Hiphop

The Amistad Research Center is pleased to announce the opening of its latest digital collection -- the NOLA Hiphop and Bounce Archive. The collection currently holds over 40 extended oral history interviews with New Orleans rap and bounce pioneers, including Mannie Fresh, Mystikal, KLC, DJ Jubilee, Ms. Tee, 5th Ward Weebie, Nicky da B (1990-2014) and many more, and will eventually include materials from Alison Fensterstock and Aubry Edwards's Where They At exhibit, which was covered by The New York Times and includes 50 photographic portraits and audio interviews with New Orleans rappers, DJs, producers, photographers, label owners, promoters, record store personnel, journalists and other parties involved in the New Orleans hiphop and bounce scene from the late 1980s through Hurricane Katrina.

 

The NOLA Hiphop and Bounce Archive is the result of a collaboration between the Amistad Research Center, the Tulane University Digital Library, interviewers Holly Hobbs and Alison Fensterstock, archive community consultants Truth Universal and Nesby Phips, videographer/tech advisor Joe Slack, and production assistant Colin Meneghini. The NOLA Hiphop and Bounce Archive is the culmination of over two years of interview work focusing on telling the stories that haven't yet been told and documenting the stories of the pioneers and legends who created New Orleans hiphop. In addition to the online collection, the Amistad Research Center is pleased to house the original interviews in the NOLA Hiphop Archive Project Collection and the Where They At Collection.

 

Join us in celebrating the launch of this new digital resource on December 11th, 6-8 pm, at Cafe Istanbul, 2372 St. Claude Avenue in New Orleans. Interviewees Truth Universal and Nesby Phips will be performing.

Graduate Intern Aids Center in Organizing Black Business Records
Amistad regularly features news about our internship program in e-Amistad Reports. In this issue, we are pleased to feature our current graduate intern, Pamela Walker, who reports on the connections between her work at the Center and her own research interests.

Mourners gather outside the Collins Funeral Home following the service for Medgar Evers.
As a graduate student in the history department at the University of New Orleans, my research focuses on the interracial epistolary relationships between African American women in Mississippi and northern white women during the Civil Rights Movement and examines how the domestic realm was an acceptable space for the female participation in the movement.  For the past five months, I have been assisting in the reprocessing and rehousing of the Collins Funeral Home Records, Mississippi's oldest black-owned funeral home founded in 1903.  After the death of founder Malachi Collins in 1939, his wife and daughter, Mary Collins and civil rights activist Clarie Collins Harvey, ran the funeral home.  Under the leadership of Clarie Collins Harvey, the Collins Funeral Home had a significant impact on the Civil Rights Movement in Jackson, Mississippi. The funeral home records provide an illuminating perspective on the role of black businesses during the Movement. The arrangement and description for this collection will be complete in early December and the updated finding aid will be added soon after.
Fine Arts Collection Continues to Travel
General Toussaint L'Ouverture by Jacob Lawrence, 1938.

Art lovers and friends of the Amistad Research Center in the Cleveland area still have time to view Jacob Lawrence's Toussaint L'Ouverture Series at the Cleveland Museum of Art. The 41-piece series on L'Ouverture and his role to free Haiti from colonial rule is currently on display through January 4, 2015. 

 

This is just one opportunity to view works from the Center's Fine Arts Collection throughout the United States. The Tellfair Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia, will display nine works of art from William H. Johnson, Ellis Wilson, Malvin Gray Johnson, Bruce Nugent, Gwendolyn Bennett, Lois M. Jones, and Charles Cullen as part of The Visual Blues exhibition, which was on display at the Louisiana State University Museum of Art earlier this year. The works will be on view at the Tellfair from January through June 2015. The Toussaint Series will again travel to the Taft Museum of Art in Cincinnati, Ohio, in the fall of 2015, and a painting by Gwendolyn Knight will be on display at an exhibition on Black Mountain College at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston beginning in October 2015. 

Amistad Announces 2015 Exhibition Schedule
Visitors have until December 19th to view Amistad's current exhibition celebrating the lives and work of two Mississippi activists, Clarie Collins Harvey and Fannie Lou Hamer. Selections from their personal papers, which chronicle their activism, will round out the Center's 2014 exhibition schedule. However, 2015 will offer a diverse range of exhibitions, as well.

Art in Service to Her People: Celebrating Elizabeth Catlett
January 6 - April 24
2015 is the centenary of the birth of printmaker and sculptor Elizabeth Catlett. To mark the occasion, the Amistad Research Center will celebrate her life and work in an exhibition of her personal papers as well as her works of art from the Center's fine arts collection.

The Things We Do For Ourselves: African American Civic Leadership in the Crescent City
May 4 - August 28
New Orleans is a city with a rich history of African American leadership, which will be explored through materials gathered from various personal and business records at the Center. Leaders in the areas of business, education, and civic engagement will tell their stories as part of this exhibition.

Innerflexions: Reflections on the Life and Work of Hale Smith
September 7 - December 18
Hale Smith described himself as "one of America's most famous unknown composers." This exhibition will explore the influence Smith had on the music world through his numerous collaborations with other musicians and poets, as well as his own work as an arranger, composer, and performer. 
New Book Documents AMA-Founded Trinity School
  

Holding the Fort: A History of Trinity School in Athens, Alabama, 1865-1970, by Charlotte S. Fulton, is a history of Trinity School in Athens, Alabama. Trinity was established immediately after the Civil War by Mary Fletcher Wells, a northern missionary who came South to tend wounded Union soldiers and stayed to educate freedmen. Sponsored by the American Missionary Association, Trinity remained in operation for more than a century, becoming a public school in the 1950s. From 1865 until its closure in 1970, Trinity was Limestone County's only high school for black students.

 

Trinity alumni have consistently excelled throughout its history and to the present. In the late 1870s, alumna Patti Malone sang with the Fisk Jubilee Singers on a world tour. Trinity's faculty was integrated from 1893, when alumna Lavinia Harris joined the teaching staff. By the turn of the century, virtually every African American school and church in Limestone County was being led by Trinity alumni. By 1910, at least two alumni - William Alexander Collier and Noah Franklin Turner - had graduated from Meharry Medical School and were practicing medicine. In that same decade, alumnus George Ruffin Bridgeforth was teaching at Tuskegee Institute alongside George Washington Carver and under president Booker T. Washington. Holding the Fort details the stories of generations of dentists, lawyers, judges, journalists, military officers, musicians, and entrepreneurs who credit their success to Trinity School.

 

Proceeds from Holding the Fort go to Athens-Limestone Community Association for the restoration of the school site, which also was the site of an earthworks Union fort. ALCA is a 501(c)(3) organization whose aim is to create a connection between the history and future of Athens and Limestone County through quality programs and stimulating activities. To order Holding the Fort, send a check for $47 (includes postage and handling) to ALCA - Holding the Fort, P.O. Box 1476, Athens, Alabama 35612.
Requiem: Thomas H. Wirth (1938-2014)

In October, the Amistad Research Center lost a dear friend, supporter, and collaborator with the passing of Thomas H. Wirth. At the time of his death, Tom was serving as the editor of Amistad's Countee Cullen Correspondence Online Project, a project for which he had provided leadership and financial support for a number of years. In addition, Tom had been a vocal advocate of the Center, and his wit, charm, and knowledge of the Harlem Renaissance are remembered by staff, past and present.

 

Dr. Thomas H. Wirth was an independent scholar of the Harlem Renaissance, a book collector, and a publisher, who served as a faculty member at historically black colleges, including South Carolina State College, Southern University, and Mary Holmes Junior College during his career. He also taught at Richard Stockton State College in New Jersey, where he became an organizer and founding president of Local 2274 of the American Federation of Teachers. He served for 25 years as the senior staff representative for the consortium of locals that negotiates and administers statewide faculty contracts.

 

Tom met, and became the heir of, Harlem Renaissance writer and artist Richard Bruce Nugent. Tom and Nugent collaborated to found the Fire!! Press, which published a reproduction of FIRE!!, a landmark Harlem Renaissance publication to which Mr. Nugent contributed, as well as books by African-American writers. Tom edited a book of Nugent's work, Gay Rebel of the Harlem Renaissance (Duke, 2002) and his novel, Gentlemen Jigger (De Capo, 2008). Tom founded the Thomas H. Wirth Collection of African-American Americana at Chicago State University and contributed significant materials to the Amistad Research Center, Yale University, and to Emory University.

 

Tom also edited the newsletter of Men of All Colors Together (MACT), a multi-racial, multicultural organization of gay and bisexual men committed to addressing and combating racial discrimination in the lesbian and gay male community. Donations may be made in his name to the New York City LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., New York, N.Y. 10011. 
Holiday Greetings from the Amistad Research Center
Snow at Amistad
The Friendship of those we serve is the

foundation of our progress,

and in that spirit we say simply, but sincerely,

thank you and best wishes for a

joyous holiday season and a New Year

of peace and goodwill.

 

From the Staff of the Amistad Research Center