{"id":25531,"date":"2018-07-17T13:05:58","date_gmt":"2018-07-17T17:05:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/college.unc.edu\/?p=25531"},"modified":"2024-07-02T16:55:57","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T16:55:57","slug":"south-time-capsule","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/?p=25531","title":{"rendered":"The South\u2019s Time Capsule"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cherokee language resources. Dean Smith\u2019s personal papers. A first-person account of an enslaved woman. For more than a century, UNC researchers and libraries have collected millions of southern artifacts and documents \u2014 making Carolina a hub for the study of the American South.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Carolina's
Carolina’s keepers of the South (left to right, back row first): Bryan Giemza, Chaitra Powell, Rachel Seidman, Steve Weiss, Elizabeth Engelhardt, and Malinda Maynor Lowery. (photo by Megan May)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Elizabeth Engelhardt<\/a> joined UNC\u2019s faculty three years ago because she had never written a book without the resources found at Wilson Special Collections Library<\/a>. \u201cWhether I was working in Texas, West Virginia, or Ohio, I always came to UNC,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd that\u2019s true for so many colleagues I know around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, Engelhardt chairs the Department of American Studies \u2014 a home for students passionate about the South. Its southern studies curriculum encourages both graduate and undergraduate students to focus on new definitions of southern cultures.<\/p>\n

\"Now
Now chair of the Department of American Studies, Elizabeth Engelhardt says her decision to apply for a job at UNC was largely influenced by the fact that she\u2019d always come to the Wilson Special Collections Library to conduct research. (photo by Donn Young)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

UNC graduate student Hannah Herzog, for example, studies the infusion of Holocaust survivors in the South after World War II<\/a> \u2014 an event that \u201cchanged the dynamics between African-American southerners and Jewish southerners,\u201d Engelhardt explains. \u201cThis shift helped deepen the possibilities of collaboration to break down Jim Crow laws.\u201d For the project, Herzog interviewed 15 Holocaust survivors from Atlanta, Birmingham, and Charleston.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you pair the word \u2018studies\u2019 with \u2018southern,\u2019 it\u2019s signaling a commitment to interdisciplinary scholarship, to multiple voices and multiple stories, to the stories of the South that haven\u2019t always been visible, but have always been present and are crucial,\u201d Engelhardt says. \u201cIt\u2019s looking at the idea of the South and the people who are moving through it and how they can help us understand who we are today and the possibilities moving forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

The future of southern studies at UNC, Engelhardt stresses, revolves around connections with communities. How can we work together? How can we learn from each other? \u201cThis is a moment for UNC to think about that 100 years of commitment to southern studies,\u201d she says. \u201cTo think about what has grown out of that.\u201d To do that, it\u2019s important to first understand where Carolina\u2019s passion for southern studies comes from.<\/p>\n

\u201cCarolina is, unquestionably, the center of the universe for southern studies,\u201d former UNC Chancellor James Moeser once confided to Carolina Arts & Sciences <\/em>magazine<\/a>. But why?<\/p>\n

UNC houses more than 20 million artifacts, 250,000 audio recordings, and 6,000 interviews documenting the South. It\u2019s home to the award-winning and first-of-its-kind Southern Oral History Program<\/a>, the record-producing Southern Folklife Collection<\/a>, social science game changer The Odum Institute<\/a>, and one of the oldest and, perhaps, most renowned archives of Southern materials in the world \u2014 the Southern Historical Collection<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It is these four institutes and more that draw scholars from around the globe to Carolina.<\/p>\n

The anchor<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 2016, Bryan Giemza spent a week driving nearly 700 miles across the state of Mississippi, meeting with multiple families to collect thousands of journals, photographs, and other manuscript materials for Wilson Library\u2019s Southern Historical Collection<\/a> \u2014 a process that hasn\u2019t changed much since the archive\u2019s beginning over a century ago. The collection was formerly founded in 1930 by J.G. de Roulhac Hamilton<\/a>, a UNC historian who envisioned creating what he called a \u201cgreat library of southern documents.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHamilton felt the southern story hadn\u2019t been adequately told,\u201d says Giemza, who directs the collection today. \u201cSo he famously went jaunting around the region is his faithful Ford. It was a time when material was very widely available and was considered, perhaps, not that valuable or interesting.\u201d So he canvassed the whole region \u2014 including the voices of not just the southern elite but former slaves, mill workers, and farmers.<\/p>\n

\"\u201cWhen
\u201cWhen I think about my future goals it\u2019s to try to understand the collection better,\u201d Chaitra Powell says. (photo by Johnny Andrews, UNC Communications)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The first documents for the collection were gathered nearly 100 before its start, when former North Carolina Governor David Lowry Swain<\/a> became president of UNC in 1836. During his term, he created the North Carolina Historical Society, collecting important newspapers and manuscripts.<\/p>\n

Upon Hamilton\u2019s retirement in 1951, the collection was comprised of just over 2 million items. Today, it has more than 20 million. As Carolina\u2019s oldest archive, it is the foundation that other university centers and programs have built upon. \u201cThe Southern Historical Collection is and remains the anchor,\u201d Giemza says.<\/p>\n

And it continues to grow. Today, scholars aren\u2019t the only people using the collection \u2014 genealogists, community members, teachers, and countless others also take advantage of its resources.<\/p>\n

That open access is what\u2019s shaping the future of the collection, according to Giemza. Instead of the age-old tradition of the scholar researching a specific topic, he envisions a space for the community to share their personal histories \u2014 something he feels is often overlooked.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe collections are for empowering people through participatory research,\u201d Giemza says. \u201cWe want to give as many people as we can a stake in the conversation \u2014 to dissolve these columned walls and make the materials we have more accessible. It is their collective intelligence and energy and creativity that\u2019s helping the collection evolve into a community-driven archive.\u201d<\/p>\n

To push this idea forward, Giemza hired archivist Chaitra Powell<\/a> in 2014 to manage the African-American collections. She works closely with individuals and communities to curate their own archives, empowering them to preserve their histories in their authentic voices.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m interested in documenting history wherever it is \u2014 and where people feel comfortable,\u201d she says. \u201cWhether that means bringing it to the Southern Historical Collection, supporting community archives, or keeping materials with the owners, I can help with all of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Relationship-building and inclusivity are just as important today as archiving the materials, Powell points out. \u201cI think it\u2019s easy to flatten southern history into slavery, Jim Crow, Civil Rights, and the New South. There are so many things that happened in between and so many people who have made efforts to change and improve things. We have to examine the region from multiple points of view.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of the most meaningful documents to Giemza, for example, are the Robert H. Busyhead papers, unique Cherokee language materials he received from Shana Busyhead Condil. Protecting native materials and traditions entails earning trust and building long-term relationships, Giemza notes, adding that the family appreciated the materials would be used by students in American studies professor Ben Frey\u2019s Cherokee-language classes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re talking about a language whose native speakers number in the hundreds,\u201d Giemza says. \u201cAnything we can do to facilitate the transmission of a living history and culture and bring more attention to it \u2014 that\u2019s just very satisfying.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe collection is for the people, of the people,\u201d he adds. \u201cWe take up our charge \u2014 almost reverently \u2014 to preserve these materials over time, and to make sure the public has access to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The social scientist<\/strong><\/p>\n

During the same period Hamilton was collecting documents across the region, a UNC sociologist named Howard Odum was engaged in a similar project.<\/p>\n

More than a decade before Franklin D. Roosevelt declared the South as \u201cthe nation\u2019s number-one economic problem\u201d in his July 4, 1938 speech, Odum began studying it as such. In 1924, the UNC sociologist founded the Institute for Research in Social Science (IRSS) \u2014 today known as The Odum Institute<\/a> \u2014 to \u201cstudy the problems of the South, which were many,\u201d according to John Shelton Reed<\/a>, former UNC sociologist and The Odum Institute director.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe South had a per capita income which was roughly that of Mexico\u2019s today and half of that elsewhere in the U.S.,\u201d he continues. \u201cThe economy was in trouble, tied in with this system of tenant farming. There was plenty to study if you wanted to study southern problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

Odum recognized that taking on this feat would involve more than surveys of the textile industry, tenant farming, and race relations \u2014 because, during this time, pioneering works on Southern culture were abuzz. He soon transformed his efforts into a university-wide project, involving faculty from various departments including criminology, demography, government, and southern history.<\/p>\n

He also helped found, in 1922, the UNC Press \u2014 the first of its kind in the South \u2014 which, in its first decade alone, published 31 books written by faculty and students within the IRSS.<\/p>\n

The ears<\/strong><\/p>\n

Where Odum sought to address the problems of the region, the Southern Oral History Program<\/a> (SOHP) showcases the people working toward solutions. The program began in 1973, when scholars first started to embrace the study of social history \u2014 a concept founder Jacquelyn Dowd Hall agreed with and strived to share through the voices of everyday people, not just the upper class.<\/p>\n

\u201cJacquelyn wanted to find and help create a usable past,\u201d Rachel Seidman<\/a>, current director of the program, says. \u201cFrom the beginning, she wanted to interview people about their own participation in the social movements of the time and the things that activists and others could build upon to help move the world in a better direction.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"In
In the summer of 2017, undergraduate students Sydney Lopez (left) and Liv Linn completed an internship with SOHP Director Rachel Seidman (right). (photo by Donn Young)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Today, the SOHP houses more than 6,000 interviews with all kinds of people \u2014 from farmers-turned-cotton mill workers, to African Americans during Jim Crow, to a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian. But these artifacts are just one part of the legacy of this type of program. The other, according to Seidman, is the analyses that Hall, her students, and others have done based on these interviews.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of that has profoundly reshaped the oral history field,\u201d Seidman says. She points to the program\u2019s Long Civil Rights Movement Initiative<\/a>, which challenges the narrative that confines the Civil Rights Movement to the South, to one turbulent decade of overthrowing state-sanctioned segregation. It features more than 1,000 interviews that tell the story of a longer movement, one that began in the 1930s and spread throughout the nation and even the globe. \u201cThat work has reshaped the way people think, talk, teach, and write about the Civil Rights Movement,\u201d Seidman stresses.<\/p>\n

The legacy of the SOHP has also continued, in part, from the 1993 founding of the Center for the Study of the American South<\/a>. Today, the center oversees the SOHP and strengthens its mission through yearly lectures, symposia, art and music events, and its award-winning, peer-reviewed magazine, Southern Cultures<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Malinda Maynor Lowery became director of the Center for the Study of the American South in July 2017 after serving as director of the Southern Oral History Program. (photo by Jon Gardiner, UNC Communications)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cSouthern Cultures <\/em>reaches an audience of people who are interested in the region not so much for how the communities can serve scholars, but how scholars can elevate and inform community-driven stories,\u201d Malinda Maynor Lowery<\/a>, director of the center, explains. \u201cSo when you look at the articles for the last 25 years, you see how communities narrate and take ownership of the South\u2019s problems. And how they celebrate people\u2019s survival and traditions.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Spring 2018 issue, for example, features an article about the Louisiana Shrimp & Petroleum Festival \u2014 \u201cthe biggest contradiction one would imagine,\u201d says Lowery, chuckling. The story details the intersection of the dying shrimp trade and the destructive oil industry \u2014 and how the community has coped with the shift. It discusses what it\u2019s like to be from this region and \u201cembrace the powerful convergence of the city\u2019s divided past and its hopeful present.\u201d And how the community reckons with that and uses it to promote positive change.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt contradicts the stereotype,\u201d Lowery adds. \u201cIt makes us understand who the necessary voices are in the region for us to listen to. Voices the mainstream media does not necessarily pick up on because they don\u2019t conform to their stereotype. The SOHP is actively involved in gathering, collecting, and conserving people\u2019s methods of change, while Southern Cultures <\/em>is actively involved in speaking back, elevating the voices that need to be heard, that originate from those communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

But voices are just one part of the story. Culture is also largely defined by music and art \u2014 and that\u2019s where the Southern Folklife Collection takes the lead.<\/p>\n

The culture collector<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cBlues, bluegrass, country, Cajun, zydeco, gospel, folk, R&B, soul, southern hip hop \u2014 and everything in- between.\u201d Steve Weiss<\/a> recites these music genres with a familiarity similar to counting or saying the alphabet. Like he\u2019s said it a thousand times before.<\/p>\n

More than 1 million sound recordings reside in Wilson Library\u2019s Southern Folklife Collection<\/a>. While the collection heads toward digitization, the backrooms on the fourth floor of Wilson Library still overflow with shelf upon shelf of 45s and 78s, cassettes, videotapes, photographs, and more.<\/p>\n

\n

The collection began in 1968 when UNC folklore professor Dan Patterson compiled a teaching collection for his class on American ballads. What was then known as the N.C. Folklore Archives more than doubled in size in 1983, when UNC purchased Australian John Edwards\u2019 personal collection from UCLA.<\/p>\n

\u201cJohn Edwards was completely taken with American country music,\u201d Weiss, the collection\u2019s curator, says. \u201cHe started collecting it in the 1950s in Australia, and was corresponding with a lot of early country artists in America who were pretty tickled to get a letter from the other side of the world.\u201d He also befriended other collectors across the globe, a group of which created a scholarship for Edwards to study American folklore in the United States.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, he died in a car accident before he could come. He was 30 years old.<\/p>\n

In his will, Edwards stipulated the collection be given to his friend Eugene Earle, a collaborator in the states. The money Earle and others gathered for John\u2019s scholarship went to preserving the collection at UCLA. In 1989, just five years after UNC\u2019s acquisition, the Southern Folklife Collection officially launched at Carolina.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a pretty crazy story,\u201d Weiss says. \u201cWe\u2019ve had a global aspect to our collection since its inception.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, scholars, musicians, producers, filmmakers, and museum curators \u2014 from the British Library, to the Smithsonian and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame \u2014 utilize the materials in the Southern Folklife Collection. Weiss recalls a particular moment from the early 2000s, when the string band group Carolina Chocolate Drops camped out at Wilson Library to learn more about the repertoire and styles performed by older musicians. In 2010, they won a Grammy Award for \u201cBest Traditional Folk Album.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThese materials are a really rich and unique documentation of our culture that often isn\u2019t documented in other ways,\u201d Weiss says. \u201cAnd we keep coming back to them \u2014 for enjoyment or history or to learn older traditions. I think all of Carolina\u2019s collections inform the past and the present, and enrich the future.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Elizabeth Engelhardt is the John Shelton Reed Distinguished Professor of Southern Studies and chair of the Department of American Studies within the UNC College of Arts & Sciences.<\/em><\/p>\n

Bryan Giemza is director of the Southern Historical Collection within the UNC Libraries and adjunct associate professor in the Department of American Studies and the Department of English and Comparative Literature within the UNC College of Arts & Sciences.<\/em><\/p>\n

Chaitra Powell is the African-American collections and outreach archivist for the Southern Historical Collection within the UNC Libraries.<\/em><\/p>\n

John Shelton Reed is the former William Rand Kenan Jr. Professor in the Department of Sociology within the UNC College of Arts & Sciences, as well as the former director of The Odum Institute. He is also a cofounder of the Center for the Study of the American South and a founding editor of Southern Cultures magazine.<\/em><\/p>\n

Rachel Seidman is director of the Southern Oral History Program and holds adjunct appointments in history, American studies, and women\u2019s and gender studies within the UNC College of Arts & Sciences.<\/em><\/p>\n

Malinda Maynor Lowery is director of the Center for the Study of the American South and associate professor in the Department of History within the UNC College of Arts & Sciences.<\/em><\/p>\n

Steve Weiss is curator of the Southern Folklife Collection within the UNC Libraries and adjunct instructor within the UNC School of Information and Library Science.<\/em><\/p>\n

Story by Alyssa LaFaro, Endeavors<\/a> magazine<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cherokee language resources. Dean Smith\u2019s personal papers. A first-person account of an enslaved woman. 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