Mount Vernon Post 2

This past month I have been looking into how Mount Vernon has presented slavery in the past and how it has changed, so I could figure out how it could be improved. The first formal acknowledgement of the enslaved community at Mount Vernon was in 1928 when a memorial stone was place at the Slave Burial Ground by the Mount Vernon Ladies Association. This then progressed to the reconstruction of the Greenhouse Slave Quarters in 1962, but without much interpretation (Interpreting Slavery at Museums and Historic Sites, 23). In 1983, Howard University added a much more prominent memorial to the Slave Cemetery. The first Slave Life tour was then offered in 1995. According to my boss, however, the interpretation of both the Slave Cemetery and the Slave Quarters were neglected until a 2001 Washington Post opinion article, which mentioned that the Slave Quarters lacked interpretive signs and the cemetery was overgrown.

In Representations of Slavery: Race and Ideology in Southern Plantation Museums, Jennifer Eichstedt and Stephen Small analyzed the presentation of slavery in 122 former plantations between 1996 and 2001. Mount Vernon was one of the sites they visited, but they did not specify the exact date. Eichstedt and Small employed participant observation when they visited the plantations, so they did not engage the docents about slavery, they waited to see what would be included (Representations of Slavery, 18). Eichstedt and Small grouped the plantations into four different categories: symbolic annihilation, trivialization and deflection, segregated knowledge, and relative incorporation. Mount Vernon fell under segregated knowledge. Segregated knowledge is when slavery is presented, but the information is separate from the main, white-centric narrative. The house tour was very white-centric and seldom mention enslaved people. When it did, it was usually in the passive voice, for example, “the food was made here,” while in the kitchen. Slavery was discussed during the Slave Life tour, but these tours were only offered between April and October and required visitors to pay extra (174). Since the house tour was white-centric and the Slave Life tour was not included in the general admission price, visitors had to choose whether or not they were exposed to slavery. Eichstedt and Small found that only 10 to 20 percent of the total visitors take Slave Life tours (199).



When my boss started at Mount Vernon in 2008, slavery was still being presented as it was during Eichstedt and Small’s study. At the time, Mount Vernon was trying to find a new way to conduct the house tour and, in doing so, change how slavery was presented. Initially the house tour revolved around all of the items in the house and did not mention George Washington’s biography much. It then transitioned to focusing on Washington’s life, but neglected items in the house. It is now a combination of both, telling the story of Washington through the rooms and the items in the house. In 2013, my boss and the Director of Interpretation sought to incorporate slavery into the house tour as well. Historical interpreters are giving objectives for each room in the house, which they are required to discuss. My boss and the Director of Interpretation made one of the objectives for each room pertain to slavery. For example, in the kitchen, historical interpreters are required to mention the enslaved cooks, Hercules, Nathan, and Lucy. The Slave Life tour was also renamed the Enslaved People of Mount Vernon tour. Instead of being offered four times a day April through October, the Enslaved People’s tour is now offered year-round, four times a day April through October, and two times a day November through March. However, it is still not included in the general admission price. The original Slave Life tour was still very Washington focused. It discussed Washington’s relationship to slavery and how his actions affected the enslaved people. The current Enslaved People’s tour is much more focused on the individual stories of the enslaved. While Mount Vernon’s presentation of slavery has changed significantly, it still has a long way to go. I am curious to see if Eichstedt and Small would still put Mount Vernon in the segregated knowledge category, or if the changes have moved it towards relative incorporation.

Maryland State Archives Internship Part2

In my last post I detailed how my work at the Maryland State Archives had transitioned from database maintenance and construction to creating public facing content for the Archive’s website. Since then my tasks have largely consisted of the same work with some lessons picked up from that original piece.

 

When I last wrote about my internship I had just published my first narrative for Legacy of Slavery in Maryland: Judge Lynch’s Court database. I had discovered, researched, and then constructed a narrative for one of the few white lynching victims in Maryland, Joseph Cocking. When the page went live some friends reached out to me with some questions and assumptions based on the article. I was sort of taken aback by some of the assumptions that readers had come to based on the article. One person cited my narrative as evidence of lynching not being racially based, despite the evidence to the contrary on the site. They saw my article as an example rather than an exception.

I have always tried to stay aware of the fact that many things produced in the public history sphere cannot be controlled when it comes to interpretation. However, I felt as though I had not done an adequate job of educating readers of my narrative when it came to the larger context of the project which was lynchings in Maryland. I brought these concerns to my supervisor and moving forward, the John Diggs narrative and soon to be published James Carroll narrative now include a much more active narrative voice in an attempt to make certain points explicitly clear to readers.

This was a very educational process for me because it was one of the first instances where I was encouraged to really place my voice into a historical narrative. If I had to contrast this period of work with my first at the Archives then I would say that where I was practicing research and archiving in my first months here, this past month has been focused on clear writing and expressing my narratives better.

In the case of the John Diggs article, I included an explanatory footnote to tell readers that much of the information for the narrative was taken from a clearly biased source. As is the case with many of the lynchings during this period, reports were done by parties who saw the acts as justified. As such I included this, “The following cited Democratic Advocate article will be used throughout the narrative. The perspective of the article’s author and clear bias in conjunction with a limited amount of sources on the Diggs’ lynching is regrettable when constructing a narrative of events. Although this was common practice in reporting on lynchings during this time, the quotes and point of view of the source are still helpful in understanding the justifications that acts such as this enjoyed.”

Similar effects were done with specific word choice. “allegedly,” “accused,” and “assumed.” Finally, I had initially chosen John Diggs’ narrative as my next project because there was a very specific quote that I wanted to make sure I could expose readers to. That quote was the vow that the lynch mob made to ensure they would not reveal the identity of each other to law enforcement. “‘[W]e do solemnly swear never to divulge under any pretense or for any cause whatever, in any court of this State, whom we see or what we see here to-night, so help us God; amen.’ The mob repeated the words back in unison and then dispersed.”

Maryland State Archives 2

In the last post I mentioned a fairly large project that I got to  take lead on.  This was probably the most fun project I have been able to take part in during any of my internships and volunteer efforts.  The first time this project was brought up by my supervisor it did not seem like that big of a project. In fact, had everything been in order to begin with, it wouldn't have been. Originally, the project was simply going to be identifying a bunch court dockets by their accession number and then organizing them appropriately.  Over the years since the new archive building had been built in 1983, people had pulled these dockets and then just put them back on a shelf where space was available in the same section without regard to proper placement.  Mind you, these dockets are about 5-10 pounds each, so it's understandable that someone might not want to lift another three books just to put one under them all. Now imagine that over 25 years and things get out of hand.  

When my supervisor asked me if I wanted to handle this project, it seemed like it would be a fairly easy project to tackle, so of course I said yes.  Little did I know that there were much larger problems that would need to be dealt with.  The major problems started to show up on the third or fourth day of the project.  For the most part, everything seemed in order.  Accession numbers had been written on the inside cover of most dockets, so most were easy to identify.  The problem came up when I fond one docket without an accession number written in it, that when I went to the archive's database, showed up as one that I had already identified the day before on a spreadsheet that I had created for the project.  Thinking that I had just made a simple mistake, I went to check the one I had looked at the day before, and to my surprise the accession number written was right.  Confused by this, I started looking at the two side by side and realized that the date range of the one that had the accession number written did not match up to the archival guide.  A little worried by this, I went back to several of the other dockets that I thought were ok and noticed that like the other one, the date range in the guide did not match up with date range of each docket.  By that time I had already gone through over 250 dockets in one series.  When I brought this up with my supervisor, we expanded the project a bit and found out that the problem was fairly wide spread within the many series of dockets.

From what we could figure out, when the archive opened in 1983 all of the dockets were just pulled from the different districts as quickly as possible (each district got its own series number), assigned a quick accession number just to keep track of each one and wrote it on the inner cover. At some point between then and now, someone went back in the guide and arranged them chronologically, but never went to the dockets and wrote in the corrected accession number. By the time that we finished properly identifying the dockets, the project went from one series of 300 dockets, to more than 12 series with over 1300 dockets, all improperly identified and not arranged properly.  In fact, all 12 series were mixed in with each other, in no semblance of any order.

The identification part took close to 3 weeks alone.  From there, we decided that what would be best for finding these would be to consolidate them all into one area of the archive, and then arrange them according to series.  Additionally, instead of just stacking 4 or 5 on top of each other, we decided to limit it to 2 books per shelf.  This meant that we had to rearrange and add shelves to each section so that you could only put 2 on a shelf by limiting shelf height.  We also had to move a bunch of archival materials to other sections so we could put everything all in the same place. Then once they were moved, we went to the guide and updated the guide with the new locations for those items.  

All of this sounds incredibly boring, however this was probably the best learning experience.  I got first hand experience doing literally everything an archivist does.  From assigning accession numbers, updating the guide, moving and storing items, and I even got to do some light conservation work on dockets that had been seriously damaged from red rot or other aging issues.  The whole thing lasted about 5 weeks, from start to finish. If you want to take a look at what some of the project entailed, there are a ton of pictures on the Maryland State Archive Facebook page, just look for the interns photo album from the summer of 2018.  There are one or two pictures on there that really show how big the project was.  Like I said, this was probably the best learning experience I have had during an internship or volunteership.  

Space Internship 3/3 - Final Thoughts

While the semester is almost over, my internship is far from over. While unpaid, and one that I would like to see if I could get grants for, just to aid in research costs, I have enjoyed it. With more papers ahead for me to assist with, there's plenty to do. And not just for me, but for other students in the department. The idea of a virtual internship, while new and exotic to those of us at the university, is an excellent way for historians in the History department to undergo programs they like, without having to fly across the country or to others. This would help save time in the long run, money, and could heavily promote interactions across the board. Of course, I'm thinking big picture, beyond just my own internship. Doctor Gangale himself would benefit from more assistants, as during the last pair of papers, we had to cut out the entire soviet union segments, due to the sheer wealth of information being too much for us to display without running into sizing issues. Sizing issues being that we didn't have the right technology to display all the information side by side, without having to make the print super small. And given the sheer amount of information at hand, due to the time periods being covered being chock full of countless unflown and flown missions, namely the 1960s to 1970s, it is a busy and exciting time. While one chapter of it ends, I look forward to the future, as its helped me gain a solid footing as a published historian, and I look forward to where that takes me.

Space Internship 2/3: Midway Progress

While I'm making this well after the effective midway point, consideration of where I was at, would be crucial. I ended up contributing one section to the two papers I was a part of over the summer, as they had to be submitted before school even started properly. Both papers were received well, and while I was unable to attend the conference where they were presented, I heard many good things. As a result of my efforts, I was asked by Doctor Gangale to keep working with him. More than that, I'm to assist him with his next two research papers, or even more papers down the line. While the internship was been free, it has been a learning experience, and given me an appreciation for the efforts put forth beforehand. There's more I'll document in the next post, as that deals with the post situation, and what my possible future plans are. Not sure if I'm missing something, but the newfound appreciation for the sheer amount of data points, as well as sorrow at lost missions from across the history of space flight, like the piece I worked on, namely that of the Dyna-Soar program by Lockheed Martin, that was shut down. Had that glider stayed, we might have had much cheaper space flight sooner. It just boggles the mind, really, to consider all the hidden historical gems.

Why Learn Digital Methods?

As I briefly spoke about in my previous post, I’m currently doing research and creating a report for the Priddy Library and the Universities at Shady Grove about the Digital Humanities and their digital tools and methods. Using the library as a launching point, the goal is to facilitate the addition of digital tools to different curriculum throughout the university programs. My research has led me to the beginning of what we now know as the digital humanities and how the field has grown and evolved over time. In many ways, the field reach a critical turning point in the mid-2000s when the first iPhones were released. We now live in a world where smartphones are the norm, but back then, we did not know how much the iPhone would change our cultural framework. For the digital humanities, it presented a new avenue of information and research, but it also created a question of the ecological effect of our technologies. 

            Perhaps in the next blog post I’ll get more into how the digital humanities adapted to the technological change and the questions that it needs to pose in order to grow, but for now, I’d like to talk about the importance of the digital humanities and its tools for the current and future crop of students. Today’s world is undoubtedly inundated with various technologies and it is becoming less likely that future employers will not require its employees to have some existing technological skills before they are hired. As this blog is about history at UMBC, I’ll focus on the need for history students to have some knowledge of things like data visualization and skills in certain software. As history students, we are, for the most part, not being taught how to use any of these programs and are not being prepared for future employment. We are largely being taught traditional academic theories rather than being prepared for using our history backgrounds for modern employment opportunities.

            I’ll attach an example from a recent job posting regarding contracting work at a museum in Washington D.C. As you will see, they require existing knowledge of certain software platforms and how to manage certain digital assets. Gone are the days where historians simply sit in a dimly lit library, researching for hours on end. In the modern market, we, as historians, need to be able to adapt technology for digital scholarship. Not only would it simplify many of our current processes, but technology has opened up new avenues of possible research. Also, universities provide the unique opportunity of providing technological learning to students who would not be able to afford to learn this on their own. If we don’t find a way to procure this knowledge during our university learning, we are being let out at a disadvantage in the employment market. My hope is that my research and report will provide a spark for not only the University of Shady Grove, but also for all its partner universities, including UMBC, to begin to invest in the digital humanities. 

Veterans Day at the V.A.

Hello! Jennifer here again. I am still enjoying my digital internship with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs as a writing and editing intern. In my last post, I spoke more in depth about the various aspects of my internship and what I do on a day-to-day basis, but today I wanted to dive in to a specific project and show you some of my work.

One project I specifically worked on was updating the Teacher’s Resource Guide for Veterans Day 2018. I wanted to share this because it is different from our usual Veteran of the Day blog posts that take up most of my time. First, a little bit about the guide, and then I’ll tell you what I did to work on it. This is a guide which provides information to teachers and students nationwide about Veterans Day. It lays out information on how to hold a school assembly and then offers general information on veterans’ service organizations, America’s wars, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, as well as scholarships and information on how to properly respect the flag. This is basically the go-to guide for educators as a catch-all of important things to know about Veterans Day.

This project was sent out as a last minute to-do on a Friday afternoon, with a deadline of Monday morning. Thankfully, I am often able to take my time to sit down over the weekends and complete work since the internship is exclusively online. I accepted the work not knowing that it would require me to do more than my usual writing and editing, but also a bit of graphic design and extensive formatting in Word (which I am horribly rusty on). However, I forged onward.

I began by reading the 15 page document from start to finish, fixing minor spelling and grammar errors along the way. While I did this, I also learned a great deal about Veterans Day and the traditions surrounding it. For example, I found out that England and France also created a tomb for an “Unknown Soldier” following World War I, and every year on November 11 (then known as “Armistice Day”), all these countries would show gratitude at that tomb at the same time. This was done in a movement of remembrance and in hope that World War I would be the last world war (which unfortunately, it was not, but that part I already knew!).

After the text editing, I realized that some of the graphics needed to be updated for 2018. A picture of President Obama needed to be replaced with a current one. Any graphic that noted “2017” needed to be changed. I considered asking for a graphic designer to help, but it was the weekend and I also wanted to impress my supervisor. It took a lengthy amount of time, but I figured out how to change the graphics (using Paint… very high tech!). I replaced the necessary photos and managed to reformat a couple pages of the document to fit the new images.

In the end, I am glad I took this project on by myself. Although I didn’t hold all the necessary skills when I began, I was able to teach myself with a little effort and came out of it with new skills. Working on this guide is the epitome of public history as it is one form of where history comes together to meet the public. Veterans Day is an important day to remember those who served our country, and putting together this guide helps make that importance accessible to teachers and students in a way they can understand. Perhaps you will run into it yourself!

Below is the front page of the guide, which I helped to create:

Special Projects for Hogan Campaign

Special Projects for Hogan Campaign

During the course of the internship, I mainly focused on one project. The project was to create a regional field plan. I outlined a community- based approach on how to interact with voters, and volunteers. Our field’s greatest resource was our volunteers. By engaging with our volunteers on a personal one- on- one level, and organizing them locally, the goal was to persuade and turn out more Hogan voters than ever before. The objective was to mobilize an aggressive data-driven and output- focused call and canvass plan, utilizing volunteers to target Maryland likely voters. Turn out targets include ID’d supporters, persuaded swing voters, and low vote propensity Republicans. To supplement those efforts our goal was to dramatically increase the number of registered Republican voters across the state, with focused efforts in targeted counties, especially, Montgomery County.

In the outline, I stated overall volunteer infrastructure goals for each county. For example, statewide influencers had a statewide network of Hogan and GOP supporters. These individuals were readily available to meet with our field staff. The community stakeholders had a network of volunteer prospects that they were able to share with our field staff. There were also team leaders, who were natural leaders that emerged during volunteer recruitment processes, and were trained to assist in a similar capacity to our paid staff but at a more local level.

            There was also a research aspect involved in the project. We also geographically focused on counties where we analyzed the number of Republicans. For example, Washington County, located in Western Maryland, is a strong Republican county. Their current government is of a Republican majority. The goal was to focus on converting the remaining Democrats into Republicans by inviting them to local GOP events. I also researched the county government such as the county executive and county chairman. I also researched the state’s attorney, clerk circuit court, and register of wills, main sheriff, and leader of the orphan’s court. Republicans held all positions. I also researched the economic state of the county as well as its past election results. As a result, Washington County always voted Republican.

installation progress, making arms! - BMI internship Part 2

Installation progress, making arms! - BMI internship Part 2

We have also made some significant additions to the installation and a few changes.  I am working with a consultant to produce the text and refine the look of the window.  The BMI currently has a director of exhibits and another staff person who occasionally writes text but does not have a curator, thus I am working with the consultant.   

It has been decided to keep the installation in the window for almost a year as opposed to completely changing it in about 6 months.  The back wall will have a large mural composed of photographs taken from the BMI photograph collection of women at different jobs over the 20^th century.  I have chosen about 40 photographs for this and will be working with a graphic designer to create this mural.  The mural and text panels will stay the same but we will change out the clothing in about 6 months, so I have chosen a second group of garments to be placed in the window.  It is not good for textiles to be on display for too long as they are subject to fading and the fibers breaking down.

Almost all the garments have been chosen.  A few accessories will probably be added as each dress form and garment is prepared.  I have started the process of fitting out each dress form to fit the garment chosen for it.  I learned about a new way to make arms for the forms out of  - wait for it -      pool noodles!   The material they are made of is inert and can be cut to easily attached to form and to create elbows. 

I forgot to take a picture before we (volunteer Connie Matricardi assists me in getting these forms ready and is indispensable to the process) started so I had to pull the stockinette back to show the condition of this form.  The form dates from the early 1900s and while the basic form and stand are in quite good shape, the cover, made of a kind of flexible cardstock-type material, is in very rough shape. It is very torn and, in some places, gone completely.  Connie and I used packing tape to secure what we could, removed some older tape, covered the form with a layer of batting, and then covered the whole thing with 12” wide circular stockinette.

Additional batting was added to fill out the bustline so it would properly fit the dress.

I cut the top of the pool noodle so it would lay in the right position, cut a notch to create the elbow, taped the arm in position, covered it with stockinette and we then sewed each arm to the stockinette covering the form.

We stitched the stockinette in place to create a nice smooth neckline, cut the end of the left ‘arm’ to fit into the pocket, and choose a piece of embroidery work to hang over the right arm.  I had to take a piece of twill tape, tie it around the end of the arm, fish it through the opening between the buttons of the dress, and pin it to the form to keep the arm in place. So the embroidery piece also hides the twill tape.

We finished a 2^nd form last week, so we only have 3 to go!

The Problem Cast; Baseball by the Beach Internship #2

           Podcasting is a digital media that has only recently come about.  With the advent and popularity of the original iPods a new medium to spread news and stories was created.  Podcasts, in their simplest form, are prerecorded episodes of shows or other content that tried to tell a story.  The best way to think about them is to think of podcasting as the modern-day equivalent to radio shows and radio serials.  In fact, it was a podcast that took its name from old radio serials that really broke open the medium.  In Fall 2014, the podcast Serial was released, and with it the podcast craze took off.  According to a CNN story, Serial is the fastest podcast ever to reach 5 Million downloads and has an estimated 40 Million downloads by the end of 2014 and with the series second and third season, in 2015 and 2018 respectively, that number has only grown.[1] 

I started listening to the show in the fall of 2016, and from that moment on I have been glued to the feed of not just Serial, but also the hundreds of other podcasts that available to listen to.  It was while I was listening to a podcast one day I started to think about how I could get involved, have my own podcast and what I would talk about.  Eventually I came up the idea to launch a show dedicated to the Hyannis Harbor Hawks, the collegiate summer league team I interned with this summer and in the fall of 2017, I pitched them the idea.  After several months of waiting to hear back, I got some good news.  The team had signed off on the idea, we were a go.  And thus, my internship for the summer of 2018 really began in January. 

When you are starting a podcast there are a handful of things you have to think about, like how will I record this? What equipment do I need? Where can I get it and how much will it cost? How do you get your podcast listed online?  And perhaps the biggest one I faced, how do I do this?  Like most people of my generation was my stop was Google, and that turned out to be very helpful as there are dozens of guides on how to get started and what equipment you would need.  Most of the guides said something different, but they all agreed on one thing, to host a show and to do it well you had to get your show listed on iTunes, and to do that it cost money.  In my initial pitch to the Harbor Hawks I had made the point that starting a podcast did not cost any money, therefore there was no reason not to try it.  Now I had to go back to the team and tell them I need almost $200 just to get the show off the ground.  Now $200 may not sound like a lot of money, but the Harbor Hawks are nonprofit business that has tighter profit margins that one would think for one of the best summer league teams in the country, so I was worried.  This is a similar position that a lot of public history and history related organizations find themselves in, ideas knocking at the door but all requiring money, and some, like my show, with little chance of making it back.  Now in early May, I went back to the team and pitched them on the idea for the second time, this time asking for the money, and to my shock and surprise they handed it over no problem and the show was rushed into production.

One of the other big problems I ran into when starting the show was coming up with a name, and then once you do come up with a name how do you create a logo and get people to listen to the show?  The original name we had for the show was “Hawk Talk the Podcast”, named after another YouTube show the team already produced, but after doing some research and talking to other people that proved to be way to confusing so we were back to step one.  Eventually, and after months of thinking inspiration struck, the show was now named “Birds the Word” after the Harbor Hawk bird mascot, and I was finally able to move onto the next problem, how do I create a logo for the show?  The answer for this came from my mother, who used a site called Canva to create the graphic design work she does for her volunteer position with the local youth baseball league.  With Canva and mouse in hand I was able to create a professional looking logo for the show in as little as five minutes and finally I was able to move onto the very last problem. 

I had managed to find the equipment needed for the show, raise the money needed to fund the show, and had a name and cool logo, but now I had to focus on the hardest part; what exactly was I going to talk about and how would I get people to come on the show?  Upon reaching this point in the process I reached out one of my professors at UMBC Shady Grove, Dr. Melissa Blair, who had taught my public history class that was a key experience that led to the podcast idea.  Dr. Blair advised me to do two things, go back and read an article she had presented in class written by noted oral historian Donald Richie about how to do oral history, and to research the Oral History Association (OHA) and follow their guidelines for interviewing and creating the show, which relied almost exclusively on oral history.  Not only did I follow this advice (I have my deeply annotated copy of the article to prove it) but I also became a student member of the OHA and developed my interviewing craft around the guidelines I found therein. 

The podcast and the interviews therein are far from perfect, not every interview had a historical bend to it or told a story just how I thought it would, but each interview was unique, and in the end created an oral history was previously there was none.  There are now oral records available for public consumption about the Harbor Hawks 2018 season, the personal stories of those I interviewed and how they ended up with the team, and commentary about what exactly this team and the Cape Cod Baseball League in general mean to those on the Cape, those who play in it, and who get their start there.  Birds the Word is available wherever podcasts can be found and has just recently been approved for three more seasons, starting this spring, to take a deeper dive into the history of the team that we were unable to cover this summer. 

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[1] CNN, By Amy Roberts. “The ‘Serial’ Podcast: By the Numbers.” CNN. Accessed October 31, 2018. https://www.cnn.com/2014/12/18/showbiz/feat-serial-podcast-btn/index.html.