From the cover of Anna Madgigine Jai Kingsley: African Princess, Florida Slave, Plantation Slaveowner. Florida Collection, E444. K56 S33 2003.

From the book jacket of Anna Madgigine Jai Kingsley: African Princess, Florida Slave, Plantation Slaveowner by Daniel L. Schafer:

“Both an American slave and a slave owner – and possibly an African princess – Anna was a teenager when she was captured in her homeland of Senegal in 1806 and sold into slavery. Zephaniah Kingsley, Jr., a planter and slave trader from Spanish East Florida, brought her in Havana, Cuba, and took her to his St. Johns River plantation in northeast Florida, where she soon became his household manager, his wife, and eventually the mother of four of his children. Her husband formally emancipated her in 1811, and she became the owner of her own farm and twelve slaves the following year. For 25 years, life on her farm and at the Kingsley plantation on Fort George Island was relatively tranquil. But when Florida passed from Spanish to American control, and racism and discrimination increased in the American territories, Anna Kingsley and her children migrated to a colony in Haiti established by her husband as a refuge for free blacks. Amid the spiraling racial tensions of the antebellum period, Anna returned to north Florida, where she bought and sold land, sued white people in the courts, and became a central figure in a free black community. Such accomplishments by a woman in a patriarchal society are fascinating in themselves. To have achieved them as a woman of color is remarkable.”

Anna returned to Florida from Haiti in 1846 to fight for the control of Zephaniah Kingsley’s Florida properties. He had died in 1843, and his sister Martha McNeil had tried to have her brother’s will declared “null and void”. She did not want Kingsley heirs of African ancestry to inherit his estate. The Florida courts ruled in Anna’s favor, and she remained in Florida as the matriarch of the Kingsley clan until 1862 when she went North with her family to escape  pro-slavery. She returned in 1865 with her daughters to their diminished estates and wealth. Anna died in the spring of 1870 and was first buried in a family cemetery, but her final burial place is in an unmarked grave in the Arlington area of Jacksonville, Florida.  Anna was from the Wolof states of Senegal and was Anta Majigeen Ndiaye before she was captured.

Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Lukas Foss, and Irving Fine joke, argue, compliment each other, and agree to disagree, illustrating their points with musical examples. Behind the banter in this 1950 roundtable, one detects a rich mix of fellowship and rivalry.

Seated around two pianos after a busy day at the Tanglewood Music Festival, some of the country’s premier composers discuss what qualities, if any, make music specifically “American.” The group first addresses the influence of jazz; the general feeling is that it has been “assimilated.” There is much that couldn’t have been written without jazz, but that no longer sounds like it. Europeans, however, still find jazz the primary feature of American music.

Copland’s “open-air purity” is cited as another native strain. Bernstein lauds its “freshness and naïveté.” They all criticize each other’s piano playing. (“Wrong left hand!” “Wrong composer and wrong key!”) Bernstein suggests that the music of William Schuman is typically American, with its drive and optimism. Fine disagrees, claiming today’s young composers are more pessimistic. The influence of Stravinsky is debated. There’s a claim that a European composer “knows in advance what he’s supposed to write” because the traditions in various countries are so well established, whereas an American composer is, for better or worse, on his own. Bernstein, clearly the most media-savvy and at ease of the four, is asked to describe John Cage’s “prepared piano.” He indicates he can’t, then does so effortlessly, ruefully concluding, “that’s a little more articulate than I’d hoped for.”

Opera is the final topic broached. Marc Blitzstein’s upcoming production of “Regina” is praised by Bernstein, who finds it “terribly exciting and terribly American.” Foss’s new opera, “The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” based on the work of Mark Twain, is also described. Foss, who was born in Germany, is asked for his opinion of “an American sound.” All he can say is, “I never strive for it consciously.”

This is a first-rate discussion by first-rate musical minds. There’s no talking down to the listener. One senses the passion and commitment of the participants.  There’s also, though, a somewhat melancholy historical feel to the topic. What “future” were these ardent adherents fighting over? Does “American classical music,” in any sense they would understand, still exist?

Copland (1900-1990), the oldest of the four composers featured here, had already experienced great success with his “Symphony for Organ and Orchestra” (1924) as well as the famous ballet scores “Billy the Kid” (1938) and “Appalachian Spring” (1944). Born in Brooklyn, Copland studied in Europe. After a flirtation with jazz-oriented music, he focused on translating the essence of American folk music into a classical idiom. But there was nothing rustic or “primitive” about his compositional skills. As Steve Schwartz, writing for the website classical.net puts it:

To a great extent, Copland seems the product of two milieus: Paris and the United States. The States give him something not always at the front of his conscious mind – an imaginative landscape of expression, more than anything else. Along with George Gershwin, his music conveys the energy of New York and the visual power of skyscrapers. … Paris gives him a Stravinskian orientation and technique, as well as an elegance of expression – the ability to say the most with the fewest notes.

Bernstein (1918-1990) was the dominant force in American classical music for over 50 years. Starting from his early and sensational “pinch hit” performance as conductor of the New York Philharmonic, this prolifically talented performer and composer fascinated media and public alike. It’s clear, even in this brief talk, how charismatic and genuinely inquiring his mind was. In a field of specialization, this wide-ranging enthusiasm was often held against him. As The New York Times reported in its obituary:

…his hydra-headed success did not please all his critics. …Many regarded him as potentially the savior of the American musical, to which he contributed scores for “‘On the Town,'” “Wonderful Town,” “Candide” and “West Side Story.”  At the same time, others were deploring his continued activity in such fields, contending that to be a successful leader of a major orchestra he would have to focus on conducting. Still other observers of the Bernstein phenomenon wished he would concentrate on the ballet, for which he had shown an affinity (“Fancy Free,” “Facsimile”), or on opera and operetta (“Trouble in Tahiti,” “Candide”). Or on musical education. His television programs on such subjects as conducting, symphonic music, and jazz fascinated millions when he appeared on “Omnibus,” the cultural series, and later as star of the Philharmonic’s televised Young People’s Concerts.

Foss (1922-2009), while also a teacher and fine pianist, is remembered today chiefly for his compositions. The website of his publisher, Carl Fischer, describes how:

…whether the musical language is serial, aleatoric, neoclassical or minimalist, the “real” Lukas Foss is always present. The essential feature of his music is the tension, so typical of the 20th century, between tradition and new modes of musical expression. Many of his works – “Time Cycle” (1960) for soprano and orchestra, “Baroque Variations” (1960) for orchestra, “13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” (1978) for soprano and small ensemble, “Tashi” (1986), for piano, clarinet, and string quartet, and “Renaissance Concerto” (1985), for flute and orchestra – are landmarks of the 20th-century repertoire.

Fine (1914-1962), the final member of this quartet, died of a heart attack at the age of 47. Phillip Ramey, writing of the Library of Congress’s Irving Fine Collection, finds:

…an examination of Fine’s small but estimable output reveals a composer who was a perfectionist on the order of Copland and Stravinsky. His works are carefully calculated and detailed, their ever-increasing emphasis on melody tellingly allied with rhythmic suppleness, clean-sounding textures, and unobtrusive but integral counterpoint. 

 

Audio courtesy of the NYC Municipal Archives WNYC Collection.

Fans of the series “Mysteries at the Museum” on the Travel Channel may already have seen this recent short piece about the Clarence Birdseye field journals held in the Archives & Special Collections at Amherst College. As you might suspect, there is more to the story than what is covered in this 2-minute clip.

Birdseye 1910-11 Field Journal

Clarence Birdseye arrived at Amherst College in 1906, following in the footsteps of his father, Clarence Frank Birdseye (AC 1874), and his older brother Kellogg (AC 1902). According to Mark Kurlansky, author of Birdseye: The Adventures of a Curious Man (2012), Clarence developed a reputation as something of an outsider while at Amherst. Birdseye was already a dedicated naturalist as an undergraduate, and spent much of his time roaming the fields and streams around the college in search of interesting specimens. He also earned a bit of spare cash by trapping live rats and frogs to sell to research scientists and zoos. That reputation is reflected in the 1910 Olio:

The Olio (1910)

The quote that accompanies Birdseye’s picture — “I ain’t afeer’d o’bugs, or toads, or worms, or snakes, or mice, or anything” — is a fabrication of the Olio editors; the reference to Birdseye’s absence during junior year is the result of a reversal of the Birdseye family fortunes. Young Clarence could no longer afford the cost of college and did not return to Amherst after completing his Sophomore year in the spring of 1908.

The thirteen manuscript volumes in the Clarence Birdseye Journals Collection cover the period from November 1910 through July 1916. For most of that time, Birdseye was in Labrador — a sparsely populated frozen land known for abundant fish and game, including animals valued for their furs. Furs, not frozen food, was where Birdseye imagined he could make his fortune.

Birdseye field journal, 1912.

Although furs were his primary interest, Birdseye’s voracious curiosity about the natural world led him to record his observations on all sorts of flora and fauna. The entry pictured above covers both dried trout and a description of molasses pie.

Birdseye field journal, 1912.

Birdseye was nothing if not methodical and he passed the long frozen evenings by preparing indexes to each of his field journals — a gift to researchers today.

In September 1916, while living in Labrador, Clarence and his wife Eleanor had their first child — a boy they named Kellogg. The demands of fatherhood may explain why Birdseye stopped keeping his field journals after July 1916. Birdseye’s observations in the frozen wastes of Labrador certainly influenced his thinking about food and freezing, but it would be nearly a decade before he turned those thoughts into a profitable technology.

US Patent 1773079

Birdseye spent most of the 1920s attempting to perfect a method of quick freezing foods, starting with fish and expanding into other areas. His patent for the machine shown here marks the beginnings of the modern frozen food industry.

Thanks to Jeremy Donald, our Faculty Technology Liaison Librarian, a “blog/share” button has been added to the all of the images in the Trinity Digital Collections to allow embedded sharing of images in blogs or websites. Below I have shared a photo from the Claude and ZerNona Black Papers, using the button:

Reverend Claude W. Black and the Lunch Bunch group, 2001

Link

A post on the blog of Elias Tzoc, a Digital Initiatives Librarian at Miami University, talks about the PHP and Java code he put together for this function, and I thought it would great to see if it would work with our collections. Happily, it does. If you use CONTENTdm and are interested in using this feature, Elias provides instructions for creating the “share-it” button.
The button provides greater potential for student and researcher access, as by clicking on the word “Link” below the image, it links back to the image in the Digital Collections, providing the information necessary to understand and properly credit the source.
The image seen here portrays a meeting of the “Lunch Bunch” (a monthly gathering of a variety of friends interested in local activism and social justice, and that Reverend Black met with from the 1960s at least until 2006). This particular 2001 meeting photo includes (from left to right) Arnold Flores, Herschel “Herky” Bernard, Reverend Black, Albert A. Peña, and Charles [surname undetermined].

These two 1947 broadcasts mark the start and finish of the Friendship Food Train’s U.S. journey, a project conceived to help the people of Europe get through the winter. 

Though largely a symbolic effort in comparison to the Marshall Plan, the Friendship Food Train put a human face on the United States’ effort to aid France and Italy after the devastation of World War II. Cities and towns contributed what they could at stops across the country. Reports from the train were broadcast to Europe, providing potent propaganda in what was soon to become a battle for the continent’s political allegiance. 

In the first recording — a brief announcement — the mayor of New York, William O’Dwyer, explains that the train has just left Los Angeles, bound for the East Coast, and will stop along the way to pick up donations of food. He specifies which foods will survive the eventual shipment overseas: flour, macaroni, spaghetti, sugar, dried beans and peas, and cans of evaporated milk.

The next recording is of a ceremony in front of City Hall celebrating the train’s arrival 11 days later. This is a more elaborate affair featuring the ubiquitous Grover Whalen introducing O’Dwyer. The audience seems to consist mainly of schoolchildren forced to sit through speeches by, in addition to the mayor, U.N. Ambassador Warren Austin, the well-known columnist Drew Pearson, the French consul-general, the wife of the Italian ambassador, and the Italian consul-general. Many calls for peace, universal brotherhood, and the rebuilding of Europe are made. (One would never know, from listening to this event, that the Italians had fought against the United States in the recently concluded war.) The proceedings are somewhat enlivened by the brass bands of the Police, Fire, and Sanitation departments playing the national anthems of the respective countries.

The Friendship Food Train was the brainchild of Pearson (1897-1969), who first suggested the idea in his column, “Washington Merry-Go-Round.” Pearson, as the website thefriendshiptrain1947.org explains:

…loathed the thought of Communism in Europe. He believed that the United States could surpass the Communists in sending food to the desperate, hungry Europeans. Announcing his idea of sending food across the Atlantic in his broadcasts and columns on October 11, 1947, Pearson asked Americans to donate food from their homes, kitchens, gardens, and fields. Five weeks after Pearson’s announcement, in November 7, 1947, the Friendship Train began its unprecedented odyssey across our country. Beginning in Los Angeles, where there was a terrific send-off, and ending in New York City with another extraordinary celebration. Although the train traveled through only 11 states, every state contributed by sending its boxcars or trains to meet the Friendship Train at a junction or by sending trucks to the train.

As Pearson emphasizes in his speech, this entire project was organized and funded by private interests. There was no government involvement whatsoever. On the West Coast, Jack Warner mobilized the film community to help. The railroads offered free use of their cars and tracks. Various unions contributed their labor. Pearson’s call, whether motivated by ideological or philanthropic aims, certainly struck a chord throughout the country, even in communities without any obvious ties to the countries in need. In Iowa, the Ames Daily Tribune announced:

From all indications the Friendship Train goal of $10,000 or its equivalent in food to be shipped from here will be surpassed. … This amount includes $1,673.76 collected by the women of Ames in a house-to-house canvas. A philanthropic individual, Siegfried Olson, farmer, plans to sell a team of horses at the Ames sales barn Wednesday, with the proceeds going to the Friendship Train. …Sales of the “Westend [sic] News,” a publication put out by a group of neighborhood children in Ames regularly, sold for 2 cents a copy instead of a penny this week. The children explained the increase was to benefit the Friendship Train.

Pearson’s involvement did not end with the ceremony presented here. He accompanied the shipments of food to both France and Italy, presiding over its distribution, following up on his idea of mixing foreign aid and diplomacy, ensuring by means of labels on all items as well as banners unfurled at every stop that the people of Europe knew where the largesse was coming from.

The people of France reciprocated in 1949 by sending the Merci Train, which retraced the path of the Friendship Train, distributing gifts of thanks from French citizens, including, the Kansas Historical Society reports:

…pottery, porcelain, crystal, woodwork, church bells, bonnets, costumes, historical documents, musical records, books, and letters written by schoolchildren. French people contributed their own possessions in many instances, sometimes attaching a personal note.

Many of these gifts, fine examples of local craft, are now on display at museums across the country.

Audio courtesy of the NYC Municipal Archives WNYC Collection.

Virginia Woolf’s ‘fun side’ isn’t really a revelation if you’ve read novels like ‘Orlando’, but new Woolf material is always welcome!

‘“It seemed stupid to have a real author so close at hand and not have her contribute,” he said of the project. Woolf agreed to get involved, and wrote or dictated a series of supplements – illustrated by Quentin – for the newspaper between 1923 and 1927. The booklets describe the escapades, characters and antics of Bell and Woolf’s family, as well as their household servants and members of the Bloomsbury Group.’

As a student in the Master of Library and Information Studies degree at UBC, I never thought that I would get the chance to work in an archives, so when the opportunity came up I jumped at the chance. My professional experience project at the Archives was to catalogue the preservation and conservation collection that was housed in the Archives lab. Although it may not seem obvious, the Archives has a small library of books and journals, which is used by archives patrons in the reading room and by Archives staff. The collection includes items that are of interest to people studying the history of Vancouver and the local industry and culture as well as professional materials for both the archival and preservation staff. It was my pleasure to work with this fascinating collection of books and serials.

Books on the shelf with Library of Congress bookmarks ready for labeling. Photo by Allison Hasselfield.

In the beginning, my days of cataloguing at the Archives began with a stack of books. My job was to find catalogue records for these books in other libraries, and copy the information that I found into the Archives database. The copy-cataloguing process may seem a bit mundane, but in reality there was always a rogue element that made things interesting. The books themselves, for one, touched on fascinating subjects. There were general books about preserving books, art and archival materials; books about bookbinding and making paper; books about photographic processing, digital printing, and scanning; and books about methods for pest-control, to name just a few.

A few unlabeled conservation books. Photo by Allison Hasselfield.

Beyond the interesting subject matter, there were often situations where I discovered slight variations and errors in other catalogue records, and remedying these appealed to my detail-oriented mind. The cataloguing process began to feel a bit like detective work (or at least an investigative process), and being involved in decisions about what to include in a catalogue record made it all the more engaging for me. I had to consider what the Archives’ needs were in a catalogue record. This sometimes meant being more concise when choosing subject terms and more verbose when describing the uniqueness of the inscribed copy in hand.

A tape measure to ensure an accurate physical description of books, and scissors and book tape for the labeling process.

Once the (close to 200) books had been catalogued in the Archives database, I labeled them with the proper Library of Congress call number, secured the labels with book tape, and put them in their proper place on the shelf. I used book tape since it will hold labels in place but not damage the books if the tape is removed. Putting books on the shelf was the final step of restoring order to the physical universe, and it gave me a very librarian-ish sense of pride and purpose.

Neatly labeled books on a shelf. Photograph by Allison Hasselfield.

The next task for my professional experience was to catalogue the serials in the library collection.

Serials sign at the end of the vintage orange shelf. Photograph by Allison Hasselfield.

When I got to the Archives, all of the serials were shelved together in three bays at the end of the library collection. Although a few of them were in the database, most of them were not, and the journal titles were not organized by Library of Congress call numbers. Additionally, some of them still had labels from the days when the Archives library was organized according to the Dewey Decimal System. Most of the serials had no labels at all.

The serials section: beautiful. Photograph by Cindy McLellan.

Cataloguing the serials in the database was a painstaking process, since each record included a high level of detail about the library holdings. It involved a lot of counting (and re-counting), paying meticulous attention to which issues the Archives had and which were missing, and formulating detailed (but coherent) notes in the catalogue record. This challenge appealed to me greatly.

Overall the most satisfying part of my experience at the Archives was when all the serials were catalogued, and I set about putting them on the shelf in order of call number. This shelf shift involved physically moving shelves around in order to accommodate serials of different heights, placing the serials optimally, and then stepping back to admire my own handiwork.

Me, admiring the serials section (right). Photograph by Cindy McLellan.

Working at the Archives was a unique experience for me as a library student, because I got to see the kinds of fascinating archival work that is done there. I was also fortunate to work on a project that both related to my aspirations as a future librarian and prepared me for taking advanced Cataloguing and Classification this term. I’m happy to say that I contributed to cleaning up the library collection, making more resources accessible to Archives staff and patrons. I really enjoyed working on this project and I hope that it is not the last time that I get to see the inner workings of an archival organization.

The violent anti-American demonstrations occasioned by Vice President Richard M. Nixon’s recent trip to Latin America are the subject of this 1958 International Interview with Edward W. Barrett, dean of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.

Barrett has just returned from Latin America, where he received a far more friendly reception than that given Nixon. America’s foreign policy is discussed, as well as the difference between how the Eisenhower administration is perceived as opposed to ordinary citizens. Barrett makes many sharp observations, although he does at one point fall back on attributing the uproar to the local population’s natural “buoyance and enthusiasm and excitability.” 

Barrett was an assistant secretary of state under Truman and hints that he is uncomfortable with the current administration’s more aggressively anti-Communist, pro-dictator attitude toward Latin American and South American countries. While he contends the riots were organized by dissident groups, including Communists, he also lists three issues causing the unrest that these groups were able  to capitalize on. The first is economic. America is in a recession and is buying less from its neighbors, causing economic hardship, particularly in Chile. The second is political, as in the case of Venezuela (the United States gave asylum to the universally despised strongman Pérez Jiménez). A third, more general, cause for dissatisfaction, is that the United States has been paying less attention to the region for the last few years. There is a feeling the United States is taking Latin America for granted.

Asked about the recent rapturous reception given to Leonard Bernstein by the region, Barrett agrees that cultural exchanges are valuable ways to build understanding and good will. A former newspaperman himself, he then turns the tables on his questioners and asks how the United States is perceived in Europe. The general feeling is that there is a sense of disappointment and “slight disillusionment” with the United States in Switzerland and Italy. France presents a special case because of resentment over the United States’ position on North Africa. 

Barrett laments that too many American diplomats “ride the cocktail circuit rather heavily,” though he notes that some do go to labor rallies and other, less sheltered, events. When asked if the solution to Latin American dissatisfaction is more foreign aid, he worries about giving money indiscriminately, saying “more careful systematic attention” must be paid to such projects. He calls for the U.S. tone to be “less moralizing, not to be so holier-than-thou.” 

Nixon’s rude reception seems to have come as a complete surprise to most Americans. Never before had a high-ranking U.S. leader been the object of such raw outrage. As the website history.com recounts:

The trip began with some controversy, as Nixon engaged in loud and bitter debates with student groups during his travels through Peru and Uruguay. In Caracas, Venezuela, however, things took a dangerous turn. A large crowd of angry Venezuelans who shouted anti-American slogans stopped Nixon’s motorcade through the capital city. They attacked the car, damaged its body, and smashed the windows. Inside the vehicle, Secret Service agents covered the vice president and at least one reportedly pulled out his weapon. Miraculously, they escaped from the crowd and sped away. In Washington, President Eisenhower dispatched U.S. troops to the Caribbean area to rescue Nixon from further threats if necessary. None occurred, and the vice president left Venezuela ahead of schedule.

While the Eisenhower administration blamed the demonstrations on Communist organizers, many both in and out of government echoed the concerns expressed by Barrett in this talk. The Harvard Crimson interviewed Thomas McGann, an assistant professor of history, who:

…emphasized that disillusionment of students and liberal intellectuals has arisen especially as the result of U.S. support of the dictatorial regimes. Even passive American support of the status quo has served to alienate these groups. Latin American students take an active part in the political life of their nation, McGann said. They are both more progressively oriented and more anti-American than the population of these countries as a whole. Student Federations have been active in opposing dictatorial regimes, often in the face of harsh brutality by the government.

Ironically, these demonstrations benefited both sides. The anger shown by the populace did lead to a reconsideration of American foreign policy, with renewed emphasis on aid and trade. And Nixon, as The New York Times recounted in its obituary, played up his role in the encounter for all it was worth:

…Mr. Nixon’s 1958 trip in South America turned out to be one of the “Six Crises” he would recall in his book. He managed sessions of crowd-mingling and argumentative discussion in Venezuela and Argentina with few problems. But in Peru crowds of students and others had been worked into an anti-Yankee, anti-Nixon frenzy by speakers and signs. When a rock thrown from a crowd in Lima grazed the vice president’s neck and hit a Secret Service agent in the teeth, Mr. Nixon shook his fist at the crowd and asked, “Are you afraid to talk to me? Are you afraid of the truth?” He leapt onto the trunk of his car, shouting: “Cowards! Are you afraid of the truth?” In a later confrontation someone spat in his face. “I felt an almost uncontrollable urge to tear the face in front of me to pieces,” he wrote later. “I at least had the satisfaction of planting a healthy kick on his shins. Nothing I did all day made me feel better.” Such confrontations paid off in public acclaim. On his return to the United States, he was greeted by cheering crowds as a conquering hero.

These encounters, in addition to his famous Kitchen Debate with Khrushchev, cemented Nixon’s reputation as an expert on foreign affairs, which he would use to advantage in his 1968 campaign for the presidency.

Audio courtesy of the NYC Municipal Archives WNYC Collection.

Note: Some poor audio quality due to condition of original recording.

Hall-of-famer Monte Irvin talks about his time in baseball during a round table discussion led by host Walter James Miller.

Miller was an American literary critic, professor, writer, and host of WNYC’s Readers’ Almanac, so it seems apropos for him to begin this baseball-themed episode with a quote from Jacques Barzun:

Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and reality of the game.

To Miller, the sport is a progenitor a of uniquely American folkway. “…baseball gives America its mythology,” Miller says. “We don’t have one except for silly little stories like Paul Bunyan and here we have a living mythology.”  

Although the ostensible purpose of this roundtable is for author Anthony J Connor to discuss his book Baseball for the Love of it: Hall of Famers Tell it Like it Was, the real draw is Irvin, who does nothing to dispel Millers’s understanding of the sport.  Indeed, Irvin’s stories have all the elements of mythmaking: larger than life characters, exotic locales, adversity, and eventual triumph.

Irvin was the fourth black player to enter the major leagues, playing for the New York Giants beginning in 1949. But before joining the majors, Irvin was a talented player in the Negro leagues, spending most of his career in the New York area for the Newark Eagles.  His team would play in storied stadiums all over the metropolitan area: Rupert Stadium in Newark, Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City, and the Bushwick Brooklyn Ballpark, where the team would get a 500 dollar flat guarantee per game.  “You could get a full meal for 35 cents…those were the good old days,” Irvin says.

Irvin recalls playing with the great Josh Gibson, one of the most imposing hitters he had ever seen. Irvin describes him as the perfect player – a power hitter who also had a high average at the plate. “He was power personified when you saw him…A lot of people would come to the stadium just to see him strike out, which he didn’t do that much.” Gibson died at the age of 34 and never got a chance to play in the integrated major leagues.

Irvin recalls a pitcher, Nick Stanley, that played for the New York Black Yankees.  Irving mentions how, whenever Stanley played a team in the majors, he’d get to the mound and fake a spit ball. “He’d stand up on the mound and make believe he’s putting spit on the ball,” Irvin says, “and then throw the darnedest curve you’ve ever seen.”  There was a lot of ‘tricky pitching’ in the Negro leagues, and major league players were often intimidated by the prospect of facing an experienced Negro League pitcher.    

And of course there is mention of early MLB executive “Branch” Rickey (played by Harrison Ford in an upcoming Jackie Robinson biopic), who saw an untapped source of talent in the Negro league.  Rickey eventually helped break the baseball color barrier by signing Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.

At the end of this episode, Irvin talks about the push to integration of the majors, which he credits to two factors.  Firstly, after WWII there was a general feeling that segregation needed to end:  America had just fought a war against fascism in Europe, and African Americans had sacrificed greatly in that war. Secondly, the war had drained much of the existing talent in the major leagues: white players who may have been healthy before the war came home older and not necessarily ready to return to the game at a high level. 

Monte Irvin was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1973. He lives in Houston, Texas.

“What Is Modern Photography?” is the question posed at this symposium hosted by the Museum of Modern Art’s Edward Steichen. An all-star panel of photographers, including Margaret Bourke-White, Walker Evans, Irving Penn, and Ben Shahn, give (or refuse to give) their individual, often contradictory, definitions of the controversial medium. The gathering provides a great snapshot of  the state of the art in 1950.

Steichen, curator of MoMA’s photography department, introduces the speakers (in alphabetical order), giving a brief history of their career and an appraisal of their work. The spectrum is impressively wide, ranging from advocates for the purely abstract and “poetic” to those photographers who work exclusively in fashion and journalism.

Margaret Bourke-White states that photography’s aim is “to tell the truth.” But this requires research to inform the picture-taking. She cites her experiences documenting the plight of South African gold miners and the subjection of women in India.

Harry Callahan, though not present, is lauded by Steichen, who notes that “his unerring sense of pattern is an integral part of his photography and not a thing by itself.”

Walker Evans balks at the term “modern,” pointing out that “all photography is the product of a modern invention.” But he does agree that a good picture “usually shows a relation to its period,” as can be seen in the works of Atget and Matthew Brady.

Louis Faurer is broader in his attitude toward the medium, stating that “photography determines the entire pattern of my existence.” He searches for that “fraction of a second that often holds the answer to the complexities of life.”

Gjon Mili emphasizes the technical aspect. For him, “life is movement.” A photograph, by freezing time, can “reveal an instant  that has more meaning to us than if we had actually ourselves witnessed the whole event.” He illustrates this with an anecdote about covering a Joe Louis fight.

Lisette Model, though not present, in a statement says she sees modern photography as a contest between “shock value” on one side and “sincerity, reason, and truth” on the other.

Wright Morris, better known now as a writer but then a respected photographer as well, warns about the growing interest in technique. He points out that no one ever asks him what typewriter he writes his books with. He presciently complains about photography’s increasing intrusion into people’s privacy, and suggests it is becoming “a public menace.”

Homer Page explores the state of documentary photography, praising the new direction young documentarians have taken as being “more intimate, personal, and subjective.” He applauds their tendency to “ask questions rather than answer them.”

Irving Penn approaches the question from the perspective of a working fashion photographer. For him, modern photography is about communication with a wide audience. “The end-product…is the printed page, not the photographer’s print.” The modern photographer is “not a snob.” He goes on to connect this approach to that of Daumier, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Goya.

Ben Shahn brings a much-needed note of levity to the proceedings, claiming not to be a photographer at all and referring to a book he and Walker Evans talked about writing, to be called How and What Not to Photograph. Modern photography, he proposes, “is any photography taken now.” Except if it’s good, in which case it’s timeless.

Charles Sheeler, fittingly, examines the relationship between photography and painting. He points out that, “if all the discussions of the question, ‘Is photography art?,’ were laid end-to-end they would extend from here to nowhere.”

Frederick Sommer (not present) submits a statement saying that photography is, for him, “a searching poetic statement.”

Aaron Siskind looks for a photograph to supply order in a world that is subject to “change and dissolution.” There are three elements in his view of photography: the objective world that has been photographed, the sheet of paper it’s printed on, and the experience that brings the two together. His at-times-esoteric subject matter may well have subjective or unconscious meaning, but he is only concerned with how it exists in the picture.

Weegee is not present, but Steichen reads some excerpts from his books. A photograph, for him, is “a page of life.” He goes on to say that he has abandoned his crime reporting and human interest photographs. He has moved to Hollywood and played a street photographer in several movies. “The greatest bit of casting since ‘Lassie.'”

Edward Weston is, Steichen confides, “a very sick man.” He reads from previously published writings, where Weston speaks of photography as “seeing with intention, reason,” and points out that “the possibility for mass production of original work I have long thought is one of photography’s  most important potentialities for the artist.” Steichen then asks the audience’s permission to send a telegram on behalf of the symposium, bearing their “warm salutations.”

At this point, a discussion is due to start among the various speakers. Unfortunately, the broadcast ends just as this section begins.

Audio courtesy of the NYC Municipal Archives WNYC Collection.

Note: Some poor audio quality due to condition of transcription disc.

Mystery Seaside Town

Some of the old photographs and glass plate negatives in our archive have no labels and we are having trouble working out where they were taken. Do you recognize this British seaside town? The glass plate photograph was taken in about 1910. Was the photographer standing on a pier to take the picture? How much has the seafront changed since this picture was taken?

The Congregational Meeting House, Witney c. 1930. Photo: Stuart Piggott

Another mystery – solved. We knew that this photograph, taken by archaeologist Stuart Piggott in c.1930, was of a building in Witney, Oxfordshire, but where? One of our volunteers did some sleuthing, and discovered that it is the old Congregational Church, built in 1828, and demolished in 1976 to make way for a supermarket. Thanks, Roelie!

Congratulations to the team from Oxford Spires Academy! They won the second Paul Jacobsthal Public Speaking Competition held at Christ Church College, Oxford last week. A big congratulations, too, to everyone who took part. The standard was, once more, incredibly high.

Special thanks to the students from Chenderit School who worked s0 hard to organise the event – great job! – and to Christ Church for looking after the teams. Extra thanks to  inspirational teacher Johnathan Briggs, and to everyone who contributed to the workshops.

The Chenderit organisers introducing the competition. Photo: Megan Price.