#dcaap

While working with photographs can be a visually stimulating, photographs in large numbers that have been mixed together present a unique challenge. In the Scurlock Studio Records, AC618 at the National Museum of American History, NMAH, we had many boxes of portrait photographs of men and women, weddings, and group events that needed the photographs of each individual or event to be matched with its corresponding photographs. A similar situation occurred with the photographs of jazz events in the Floyd Levin Jazz Reference Collection, AC1222, at NMAH, taken by Floyd and Lucille Levin.

Matching photographs of individuals and events may seem fairly easy at first glance but it is actually incredibly tedious and time consuming. We had thousands of photographs and after seeing several hundred portrait sittings, minute facial features and clothing become very important in telling the difference between individuals. However, there is never enough space to layout all of the photographs and finding where you put a stack of photographs for an individual. When looking at weddings or events, the details of the buildings, clothing, and decorations become significant in telling one pink wedding a part from another pink wedding. 

With the jazz events held almost every year at the same location and with the same people attending, the buttons, rarely clear in the photographs, are sometimes the biggest clues in distinguishing one year from another. The process is the equivalent of playing a multilayered game of memory with the questions: Have I seen this person or event before? Where are did I put the rest of the photographs? being asked over and over. Of course, there are other ways to match photographs and other issues that complicate the process. For example, the individuals in the Scurlock portraits may have been photographed with different changes of clothing or at different times; now, the minute features of the face are important for determining if you are looking at the same person or a different individual. While processing the Levins’ photographs, we used date stamps on the back of the photographs to match events. However, this technique was only useful for the initial matching of photographs, because we quickly realized the Levins owned and used multiple cameras at events. As a result, the visual clues in the photographs were significant for matching differently sized and date stamped photographs for a single event with one another.

While the process was incredibly tedious and time consuming, the end result of a group of photographs of an individual being together or being able to look through an event leaves you with a very satisfying and accomplished feeling.

Charlotte Holloman was a concert singer, Broadway performer and voice teacher that gained national recognition for her artistic talents and philanthropic deeds. Her collection is filled with sheet and audio music. The vast majority of the records included in Charlotte Holloman’s collection are music recordings ranging in genre from Calypso to Opera. Yet, Buried in Holloman’s collection were the ABC recordings from the day that President Kennedy was assassinated. Those interested in and/or doing research on Kennedy, his assassination, and media representation of crucial moments like this one will undoubtedly find them interesting and well worth listening to. One of the many enjoyable things about processing the African American history collections at these repositories is finding the unexpected gems or items that are not typically associated with the historical figures. Such findings demonstrate how multifaceted these figures’ interests, lives and contributions were.

Charlotte Wesley Holloman Papers, Washingtoniana Archives, DC Public Library

Mark Hanna Watkins was an Afro-American linguist and anthropologist. He is remembered as the first known Black American to receive a Ph.D. in anthropology, and also the first American to write a grammar of an African language. Around 1930, he co-wrote A Grammar of Chichewa: A Bantu Language of British Central Africa, by which he set a standard and structuralist format for others to follow. Among numerous other papers, he also wrote “Bantu Languages” (pictured above) which was published in the Encyclopedia Britannica, 14th Edition. Watkins later became a professor of anthropology at Howard University, where he taught from 1947-1972, with a primary focus on African languages including Swahili and Yoruba. In addition to teaching, he served as Director of the African Language and Area Center while working to foster relationships between Africans and African American students at Howard. Above is a photograph of a Swahili class listening to guest speaker, Thomas Okelo-Odongo of Kenya, with Professor Mark Hanna Watkins observing.

The Mark Hanna Watkins papers are housed at Howard University’s Moorland-Spingarn Research Center.  

Thanks to collaborations with DCAAP and the GW library’s digital services unit, the GW university archives is bringing to light a previously obscure cache of documents that confirms the presence of enslaved laborers at the college prior to the civil war, and describes the college’s rationale for expelling a student who attempted to assist those enslaved men gain their freedom.

The year was 1847, the student’s name was Henry J. Arnold, and his crime was providing Abram, an enslaved man owned by an employee of the college, with $14 and a letter for an attorney with the intention that Abram would file a lawsuit to win his freedom. While the Arnold Case, as it was called, was not completely unknown in the history of George Washington University, it has been largely forgotten in both scholarly and common memory, and has never received the thorough historical examination it deserves.

The documentation, which has been reprocessed by DCAAP staff as a stand-alone collection, consists of drafts and copies of letters written by Columbian College’s then-president, Joel S. Bacon, to Arnold, his family and others who inquired or appealed to him about the matter. Without this critical documentation, the story of enslaved people at Columbian College may have been lost to history entirely or deemed apocryphal.

Speeches Nelson Mandela gave while he was visiting in the United States in October of 1994. 

The first speech Nelson Mandela gave upon his arrival to the United States in 1994  was his speech located on the lawn of the White House. He was invited by President George H. Bush. The second speech was at the Joint Press Conference with President Bill Clinton. This meeting was about the changes that must must occur in the South Africa government. And the third speech he gave was when he won the Hunger Prize Award. He also received a Honorary Degree at Howard University in the area of African Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences (COAS).

Among the some 250,000 photographic prints within the Scurlock Studio Records Collection at the National Museum of American History are a certain number of “hand-colored” photos that were painstakingly detailed by Addison Scurlock and his sons, Robert and George. Most popular from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th (Kodak introduced Kodachrome color film in 1935), hand-colored prints were typically created with watercolors, oils, crayons or pastels and were very popular among the middle classes in the United States as affordable and stylish gifts. A skill that required great attention to detail, George Scurlock apparently developed a “special expertise” for this practice as he maintained an “artist's eye for color and composition” (“George H. Scurlock Dies at 85; Photographer to Black Society,” The Washington Post). Besides being an example of the superior craftsmanship of the studio, these photos also stand out as some of the most beautiful within the collection. The Scurlocks make note of the colors to be added to their black and white print of Mr. and Mrs. George Neal: “Tie, blue and yellow; make dress color of coat; pink hat; take blue off coat.”

Things are really moving along here at the National Museum of American History! After nearly six months, we’ve been able to make our way through the some 250,000 photographic prints in the Scurlock Studio Records Collection. Complicated not only because of its sheer size, this collection was also particularly problematic as many of the prints had duplicates scattered throughout the dozens of page boxes we found them in. To make matters even more complex, many of the individuals in these prints still remain unidentified as we’re nearing the end of this initial processing phase. Against all odds, we’ve consolidated of all these prints and sorted them into their various series and subseries and are now ready to put them in their archival boxes!

A “before” picture of unidentified portraits that we matched to their duplicates.

Wedding pictures as far as the eye can see!

A work in progress: processed and alphabetized folders.

The (almost!) finished product.

In the Scurlock Studio Records at the Archives Center, AC0618, there are a number of portraits of debutantes and post-debutantes. The LINKS, Incorporated, Chapter of Washington, D.C., sponsored the debutantes and the debutante ball. The photographs document an important occasion for young women, typically between the age of 16 and 21, and their families because the ball is considered their introduction to society. In addition, the ball provided a social outlet for families to mingle and connect with one another.