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Amistad is committed to collecting, preserving, and providing open access to original materials that
reference the social and cultural importance of America's ethnic and racial history,
the African Diaspora, human relations, and civil rights.
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Donation Supports New Staff Position
Foundation assists growth of education outreach program
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| Alan and Sherry Leventhal |
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With support from the Sherry and Alan Leventhal Foundation, the Amistad Research Center is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Anastacia Scott as the Center's new Leventhal Education Specialist. Dr. Scott will be responsible for launching Amistad on the Go!, the Center's new interactive print and digital education program. She previously held a part-time role with the Center to write and develop innovative curricula on the topics of Slavery & Abolition, the Reconstruction Era, and the modern Civil Rights Movement. Her new role will entail implementing the curricula in classrooms through Amistad on the Go!
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Recent Acquisitions Highlight Local & Global History
Donations expand Center collections
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| Big Chief Donald Harrison Sr. |
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Amistad's collections are international in nature, documenting individuals, organizations, and events from the local streets of New Orleans to those around the world. They often reflect efforts to break down barriers that have divided people and to bring diverse cultures and groups together. Four recent donations document cross-cultural traditions, international cooperation, the travails of slavery's legacy, and the pursuit of legal equality.
The family of Judge Revius Ortique, Jr. has donated an addition to the Ortique papers held at Amistad. Judge Ortique was the first African American to be elected to the Louisiana Supreme Court. The donation of the
Donald Harrison Sr. Family Papers documents the Mardi Gras Indian masking tradition in New Orleans, as well as recent trends in jazz music through the Harrison Family history. The
papers of William R. Hoagland document his work in the area of education in Liberia and Sierra Leone in the 1960s.
George Howe's 1859 memoir also documents aspects of the history of Liberia through the routes of the Transatlantic Slave Trade between the United States, Cuba, and the African continent and the resulting efforts of the American Colonization Society.
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Amistad Library Renamed the Banks-Hart Library
Willie Lee Hart donation honors memory of her mother, Gertrude M. Banks
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| Gertrude M. Banks |
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The Amistad Research Center was saddened to lose a wonderful friend and supporter last year. Ms. Willie Lee Hart passed away in July 2017 after many years as the President of the Chicago Chapter of the Friends of Amistad. Throughout her long association with the Center, Ms. Hart donated books and collections that greatly expanded Amistad's collections. Most notably, we are proud to house close to 300 books from her personal library. In addition to Ms. Hart's own collection, Amistad also houses a collection formed by her mother, Gertrude M. Banks, which largely documents notable African Americans from the Chicago area.
In honor of Ms. Hart, her interests as an avid reader and book collector, and though her request, Amistad will soon rename its library stacks the Banks-Hart Library after Ms. Hart and her mother.
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Grant Supports Collaborative Preservation Efforts
Amistad co-lead on Performing Arts Readiness grant from LYRASIS
As charter members of the recently-formed New Orleans Preservation Coalition, the Amistad Research Center and the New Orleans Jazz Museum are co-leads on a grant that will help launch the Coalition's efforts in the area of preservation education and disaster preparedness for performing arts and cultural heritage institutions in the New Orleans area.
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Conversations in Color now online
Public series features artists, scholars and activists in dialogue
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| Alicia Garza and Elizabeth Alexander following their January 2018 conversation. |
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Amistad's 2017-2018 Conversations in Color season is wrapping up, and based on the public response to recent Conversations, we are pleased to announce that all previous events in the series are now available for viewing through Amistad's Vimeo channel.
Amistad would also like to thank the Greater New Orleans Foundation for its sponsorship of the Conversations in Color series. Such community support greatly assists us in creating a dynamic and engaging series for all to enjoy.
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Celebrating Tom Dent
Digital exhibition explores life and work of New Orleans native
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| New Orleans poet/playwright Tom Dent |
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The Amistad Research Center has expanded its role in the Google Cultural Institute with a new digital exhibition that highlights the life of New Orleans poet, playwright, and oral historian Tom Dent. The exhibition, entitled
Tom Dent: 20th Century Renaissance Man, features poems, recordings correspondence, interviews, ephemera, and photographs from the Tom Dent papers. Dent had an extraordinary literary and artistic career, which included his roles as co-founder of the Umbra Writer's Workshop, the director of the Free Southern Theater, the executive director of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation, and the author of two books of poetry and a book on the Civil Rights Movement. The exhibition can be found at the link below.
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Young, Gifted, and Black
New blog series celebrates stories of HCBUs
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| The Famcean, newspaper of Florida A&M University. |
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The Amistad Research Center's new blog series celebrates the legacy of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). The blog series, entitled "Young, Gifted, and Black," debuted in January and features a new post every Monday on the Center's blog through April 30, 2018. Each week, Amistad is profiling a different HBCU from the Center's School Newspaper Collection. The collection consists of rare school newspapers and periodicals from African American community colleges, universities, and law and medical schools. Visit Amistad's blog for recent posts from the series.
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Staff News...
Reference Archivist Chianta Dorsey attended the Digital Library Federation Forum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in October 2017. She presented on the four forums that Amistad co-sponsored (held in 2016-2017) on "Diversifying the Digital Historical Record." The forums were funded by a grant provided by the Institute for Museum and Library Services.
Audiovisual Archivist Brenda Flora attended the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) conference this past December. The conference was hosted in New Orleans and Ms. Flora also had the opportunity to serve on the local arrangements committee. Ms. Flora participated in the roundtable discussion, "Recipes for Disaster: Helen Hill and Post-Katrina Media Advocacy," and screened video and film clips from several of ARC's moving image collections.
Archivist Jasmaine Talley will be presenting at the annual meeting of the Rare Book and Manuscript Section (RBMS) of the American Library Association with Jessica Perkins-Smith, Assistant Professor/Manuscripts Archivist at Mississippi State University, on "How Archivists Can Support the Study of African American History: From Two Different Perspectives." The RBMS Conference will be held in New Orleans in June 2018.
Christopher Harter
, Director of Library and Reference Services, is currently serving on the McDonogh #19 Museum Advisory Board for the Leona Tate Foundation. He is also a member of the local arrangements committee for the annual meeting of the upcoming RBMS Conference in New Orleans. His tribute article on small press/little magazine historian Len Fulton is forthcoming in Serials Review.
Reference Librarian/Cataloger Phillip Cunningham will also be attending the forthcoming RBMS Conference thanks to a scholarship received from the American Library Association.
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