The first project I worked on this summer as a Research Assistant with Dr. Musgrove was the documentation of Black summits and conventions. While the focus of the project highlights Black Power resurgence during the 1980s and 90s, the roots of this era began in the late 1960s. Starting in 1966, the new epoch of Black Power revolved around a series of national and state conventions and summits in order for Black leadership and activists to discuss and set a political agenda that would address the contemporary issues of Black America.
The bulk of my work consisted of reading from secondary sources in order to record information pertaining to Black leadership and activists' attempts in organizing for national and state conventions and summits. Besides scouring a large number of books, I searched numerous primary sources, reading contemporary newspapers, articles, and magazines as well as scanned video footage of news broadcasts and documentaries. All of these sources had to be synthesized and recorded into a series of datasets on google docs and google spreadsheets. For the conventions, each dataset consisted of recording pertinent information surrounding its activity: name of conference, location, date, organizers, attendees, quotes, purpose and demands, efforts toward achieving goals, and archives to primary sources or video coverage. Each entry had to be properly footnoted in order to be confirmed later by Dr. Musgrove if needed. One thing we have all learned as History majors is that sloppy note-taking and inconsistent footnotes can get a writer into a lot of trouble. Plagiarism is not only universally frowned upon, but it is illegal. After each convention was recorded and uploaded, I would begin work on another convention and the process of reading and recording would begin all over again. Often, when reading for one convention in a secondary source, I would gain insight or new information into a different summit. In this case, I often had three or four google doc tabs open on my computer in order to quickly access the document I needed. Organization is definitely key.
One of the most enjoyable and rewarding parts of the research was when I was searching the internet for primary sources and archives. The research databases we have access to as UMBC students is quite impressive and I will miss them dearly after I graduate. JSTOR if you’re listening… I need the hookup. Anyway, enough shameless promotion. I was able to discover key archives that held collections of Black convention information. My work as a graduate research assistant in UMBC’s Special Collections has taught me the importance of utilizing archival institutions and how to navigate their finding aids in order to quickly assess what documents are on file. Part of what makes a great research paper, book or project are the sources that one uses. Finding primary sources in the form of records, personal papers and journals, video and audio recordings, and material objects can bring that project to another level, setting it apart from your contemporaries.
After these google docs are transferred into spreadsheets the next step is to take the completed series of projects and upload the information into a newly created website. With the help of the UMBC Geography department and a web designer, Dr. Musgrove will be able to capture the history of Black Power resurgence, spanning four decades, for the public to view. In 2021 Dr. Musgrove launched http://blackpowerindc.umbc.edu/, a web-based map of Black Power activism in the nation’s capital between 1961 and 1998. This will not be so much a continuation of that project, but another much needed piece to the puzzle.
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