Making History at the Nation's Capitol

The view from my window

Reporting on True Crime as a History Major

 

Baltimore City Circuit Court 

This August, I began working as an intern for Baltimore Witness, a journalism website that reports on the rates of violent crime in the city and criminal trials in the Baltimore City Circuit Court. As a history major who happens to have a passion for exposing the reality of true crime, I jumped at the opportunity to begin working weekly as a reporting intern this Fall. The main components of the internship are sitting in on court cases as a member of the press and diligently recording the events of each proceeding or jury trial.

The next step is inputting the case into the Baltimore Witness database, to ensure the crime statistics the publication is gathering are accurate. Finally, I write daily articles on each case that I cover from an unbiased and impartial perspective. Each piece is published on the official website and is posted to social media outlets to promote journalism on lesser known cases and proceedings in Baltimore City. 

This has been my first venture into the judicial world and into the field of journalism, so I found myself having to justify how this internship has any relevance to the field of history. I argue that reporting on the criminal justice system in one of the most infamous cities in the country is incredibly relevant to public history. So much of history and the discourse of social science is based on the veracity of ones research and the accuracy of data, as well as the establishment of a sound methodology when it comes to sourcing material. 

The stakes of my research, and all of the research done here at Baltimore Witness by its editors, data analysts, and reporters, are pretty high. Baltimore Witness is often one of the only, if not the only, publications present during an average day of hearings at both of the circuit court houses. It's our responsibility to promote unprejudiced work and handle cases with care. 

Through my analysis of the murder trials I cover and my hands-on exploration of crime statistics, I'm starting to gain a better understanding of the legal factors and historical precedent that have been set within the Maryland judicial and penal systems. 

Just last week, I was able to get a bird's eye view into the wildly popular Adnan Syed case when his infamous 1999 murder conviction was overturned. That same week, I was the sole reporter in the courtroom on multiple murder trials that had not received the same degree of attention from the public. The sociological factors that inform crime also inform which defendants get press coverage, thus reinforcing historical archetypes regarding race, gender, crime, and society as a whole. 

I've found it immensely rewarding to report on unknown cases and to develop a better understanding of the mechanisms within the flawed justice system through a more nuanced lens. 

My aim here, in addition to accurate reporting, is to learn more about how crime data and news has been collected and disseminated over time to the civilians of Baltimore. My work with Ashleigh Joplin, the senior editor at Baltimore Witness, has also taught me how to develop a more intersection and interdisciplinary approach regarding my work as an intern and how I can apply this experience to my research as history student at UMBC.

At the moment, I'm developing a framework for a research project about crime and gender through my work with the organization and the data points I can reference within the archives of the website. This way I'll be able to compare and juxtapose my sources to show how elements of crime have shifted over the past few decades.

Below are a few of the articles I've written over the past month based on my court reporting: 

https://baltimorewitness.org/prosecutor-calls-expert-dna-analyst-to-testify-after-murder-defendant-rejects-plea/

https://baltimorewitness.org/murder-victim-was-dragged-to-her-death-by-boyfriend-prosecutor-says/

https://baltimorewitness.org/jury-begins-deliberation-in-2019-execution-style-murder/

It's Not Rocket Science...Right? Madelyn Pollack #1

When I first told people I would be interning at NASA for the summer, a frequent response I got was, “Are you going to be an astronaut?” As amazing as I imagine that experience would be, my involvement with NASA was at a totally different level. My time was spent with the History Office, learning about — you guessed it — the history of NASA and the events that contributed to its inception.

In my job as an intern, the word “history” carried a lot of definitions and responsibilities. History was the crafting of “On This Day” @NASAHistory social media posts. History was laughing (a lot) at the disbelieving and exacting trolls on those posts. History was reading manuscripts, combing for any standout issues in pieces at various points in the History Division’s lengthy publication process. History was making personal connections with professionals in the public history and space history fields. History meant historical research and historical writing, but a whole lot of science to go along with it, too.

Despite being at an institution well-known for its contributions to STEM (sound familiar, UMBC?), there was a lot of value in being a contributor with a humanities background. It enabled me to break beyond the limits of single-field work. I might be a history major, but my history experience with NASA was unquestionably interdisciplinary. It’s true that I’m not a rocket scientist, but I now have a better understanding and appreciation of the sciences and the individuals who use it to change the world.

My favorite part of my NASA internship is that I got to learn something new every single day. I entered into the summer with the knowledge that Galileo was an astronomer and Pluto was no longer a planet, and not much else. As such, I treasured everything I absorbed, because there was no academic pressure on me to learn: I was learning for the sake of learning, and I loved that.

Although my internship was done completely virtually, I had the opportunity to go downtown to Headquarters a handful of times due to my proximity. You can bet I was nervous, but physically being at the place where some of the magic happens was a really special experience.

For my next post, I’m going to talk about my research experience, and how I turned a decidedly STEM topic into a historical research project.

Evelyn Yuen Blog #1: Landing an Internship at the Heart of Washington D.C.

Throughout the academic year of 2021-2022, I interned at the Museum of the Bible. The positions I interned for were Museum Education and Communications. These two positions were very interconnected and vital to successfully running a museum. 

As a person of faith, I have always heard of the Museum of the Bible. During my search for internships last summer, I learned that many of the Smithsonian museums had already ended their fall internship applications. Therefore, I began to search for volunteer opportunities instead. Eager to step into the museum world, I applied for several docent positions at museums of various scales in Washington D.C. The Museum of the Bible was one of them. Perhaps a week after sending my docent applications, the Museum of the Bible followed up with me. It wasn’t until meeting their manager of volunteers and interns did I realize that they were also looking for a Museum Education Intern. Not quick sure about what Museum Education stands for, I decided to give it a try and learn about it. So I turned in all the paperwork that the manager asked for, got interviewed, and began my internship at the Museum of the Bible. 

My second internship with the Museum of the Bible was an extension of my first one. At the end of my Museum Education internship, the same manager reached out to me to see if I wanted to stay. I decided that I would be interested in interning in the marketing and communications department. I turned in the paperwork for the second internship and began my next intern position in the marketing and communications department. 

The scope of work for these two internships was widely different, but they share many similarities in terms of the content of work. As an Education intern, I helped with educational efforts that directly reached the audience. To simply put, I ran the “education station” at the museum, developed content for educational activities, and shadowed museum educators during school tours. As a Communications intern, I helped mainly with curating social media content by selecting artifacts to post about and did informal competitor analyses to figure out some best practices done by other museums. 

Throughout the six and a half months interning at the Museum of the Bible, I grew a lot professionally and understood museum practices so much better. This experience is eye-opening to learn how private museums position themselves in the museum world and reach their audience. 

Corey Fitzpatrick Blog #3: A Room Full of Empty Carts

As my time in the History Office at the Food and Drug Administration nears an end, I sit alone in my office and stare at an entry for the latest artifact I have accessioned into the collection. I’m surrounded by a few rows of at least twenty blue locker cabinets, two stacked on top of each other at a time so that the tops reach a few feet over my head. Theses are the lockers that safely store over 25,000 individual artifacts, all related to the history of the FDA. 

I take pride in the fact I have contributed to this fascinating collection of pharmaceuticals, foods, devices, and quackery.

I twist in my swivel chair and stare at an empty metal cart on the other side of the room. At the beginning of my internship a few of these metal carts were stuffed with countless cardboard boxes. Inside those boxes were over 1500 artifacts, some big, some small, some sturdy, some delicate, some ordinary, others outright bizarre. Each artifact represented a product the FDA has regulated throughout its history. Each of these artifacts has its own story to tell. And, as of now, each artifact has been categorized, cataloged, photographed, labeled, and safely stored in those blue locker cabinets.

Before I started this internship, I knew next to nothing about the history of the regulation of foods, drugs, medical devices, and quackery. I remember way back when I was offered the job, I muttered something to the effect of “Am I qualified to do this?”

If you had told me that year ago that my time volunteering at the FDA History Office would bloom into me handling artifacts such as Yerkes Palatable Preparation Tonic and Stimulant for All Ages, or a Victor X-Ray tube from the 1920s, or an energy drink simply named “Cocaine” (the drink makers claimed it was 350% stronger than a Red Bull!)–well, I probably would not have believed you. I can’t ever fully express how much I appreciated my time here. This internship has only reinforced my desire to continue with a career in Public History. The fact that I could work with my hands, physically handling these objects and see the progression of my labor has been a rewarding experience. (Not to mention, I will never be able to look at a food or drug label the same without scrutinizing its contents!)

In truth, the greatest skill that I have developed during my internship is confidence. The great thing I’ve learned about Public History is that it requires a mishmash of skills–some skills that sit outside the world of academia. At times it requires out-of-the-box thinking, a strong level of communication (with the public and fellow workers), and a mind fitted towards presentation–all those skills requiring a level confidence in oneself (or at least the veil of confidence!)

My time at the FDA definitely involved some on-the-job training and there were a few mistakes along the way. I learned how to organize a large collection of artifacts and the ability to quickly navigate the systems that house all the information. (Also, this internship has allowed me some prime dinner party talk about all the quackery I’ve encounter) To my supervisors at the FDA, I will be eternally grateful. Dr. Swann and Dr. Burrows are experts in their fields and the fact they valued my contributes means the world to me. As I leave my internship at the end of June, I take with me many fond memories and many skills that I hope to use in the future–wherever my career takes me.

Thanks to everyone for reading about my internship journey. Now don’t mind me, but I’m off to my next Public History adventure!

Although, COVID Fraud still awaits!

(Also, if anyone is interested in reading about the creation of the FDA, I recommend The Poison Squad: One Chemist’s Single-minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century by Deborah Blum.)

Spring 2022 Internship: Special Collections Part III

 As the Spring 2022 semester draws to a close, my work in UMBC's Special Collections department with the Lewis Hine collection of photographs continues. I have previously described the scope of my digitization work and its importance, especially at a time when travel and access to material is limited. 

The digitization is nearing the halfway point - since beginning my internship in March, I and another student have photographed the back of almost two thousand of the approximately five thousand prints in UMBC's Hine collection. I will keep photographing them over the summer; others on the team in Special Collections have already begun some of the rehousing work associated with the project and the NEH grant. Just as my work is preserving the prints' contents digitally, the rehousing work will help to protect the physical media. I may have an opportunity to help with that part of the project later in the summer. 

I have gained some interesting new skills through this internship. In addition to clarifying my understanding of the mechanics of copy stand photography, I have gained some wonderful insight about the work that goes into digitizing records for research use. As a student and researcher who often relies on digital versions of the sources I use for my own projects, it is helpful to be on the other side of the desk, to understand all of the moving pieces involved in a request to scan or otherwise document some record in an archive. 

A portion of my work feels very mechanical: add the print's metadata to the project spreadsheet, place the print on the copy stand, take a photograph of its verso [its back], crop the resulting image, and save the new digital photograph in the database drive. Other aspects of my work, though, are fascinating and unusual just like the best research problems and projects that I enjoy outside of this internship. What's the best workflow for this task I need to complete? What states and cities will we visit with today's section of Hine prints? They are organized based on their object number, rather than their subject matter, so it's possible for one session of digitization to involve a whirlwind tour of as many as five or six destinations.

Hine spent a lot of time documenting mill workers in New England, fishermen, crabbers and oyster shuckers along the coast, and agricultural workers in the deep south. Given the diversity of industry in many of the places Hine visited, it seems surprising (and sad) that despite his travel to cities and areas which have majority Black populations, there are vanishingly few Black subjects in the prints I've encountered so far. As Hine's work looks at child labor, the oversight seems especially egregious. Where are the Black children toiling long hours in factories, or in the fields? Is this gap in his subject an intentional one on Hine's part, or just an accident? 

I do not have those answers. 

The Hine collection is fascinating, even for someone like me who has very little free time. On their surfaces, the prints are often blurry, chaotic images of a single child or group of children looking small and proud and defiant. The contextual information from Hine on the back of each print is also important, in a different way. I am eager to continue digitizing the backs of these images through the summer! 

Maryland Center for History and Culture Internship Part 3: Final Reflections

     Towards the end of my internship, I had been almost entirely focused on transcribing an interview of Esther McCready. This had been a very time consuming and at times difficult task, but ultimately very rewarding. This was the most notable project I had worked on due to Esther McCready's significance in the civil rights movement in Baltimore. 

    Esther McCready had been the first black woman to attend the University of Maryland School of Nursing. It had been her legal case in 1950 which was responsible for the desegregation of the school. In her interview, she describes her experiences dealing with the legal issues of her attending the school as well as her experiences of discrimination during her time there. 

    Transcribing her interview served as an excellent way to round off my internship. It had served as a way for me to learn both an extremely interesting and important part of Baltimore's history and how to properly transcribe oral histories, and the difficulties that occur in the process. Transcribing the hour long interview had taken several days of patient listening. Many of the issues I had experienced was due to the low quality nature of the interview, as it had been recorded from a phone call. I spent hours listening and re-listening to the same paragraphs in order to make sure I had been correct. Despite the challenging and sometimes frustrating process, the satisfaction of completing the work and contributing to project had made it worth the time. 

It would be fairly shortly after my completion that my internship at the Maryland Center for History and Culture would end. Due to the COVID-19 epidemic my time working in person had been limited, yet the staff had made sure to be accommodating during such a difficult time. My brief internship at the MCHC had been overall a great experience that exposed me to some of the work done by those at the center, as well as great pieces of Maryland history.