primary sources

• 
• SOURCE: Contingent
  4/5/2021
  

  The Strange Case of Booker T. Washington’s Birthday

  by Bill Black

  A history teacher's saga of the verification of a seemingly simple fact shows that sources may not always be reliable, and that our knowledge of many facts is the product of historians' labor. 

• 
• SOURCE: OU Daily
  4/6/2021
  

  'This is still being suppressed': OU professor's book of recovered photos preserves history of Tulsa Race Massacre

  by Ari Fife

  Oklahoma University historian Karlos Hill has published a photographic history of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, working to bridge images often created by hostile whites to the experiences of Black survivors. 

• 
• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  3/31/2021
  

  Working with Histories that Haunt Us

  by Marius Kothor

  The author responds to a recent essay on the traumatic aspects of archival research. As a political exile from Togo, her identity and experience converged with subject matter she couldn't study at a remove. 

• 
• SOURCE: Mother Jones
  3/30/2021
  

  One Man’s Quest to Crack the Modern Anti-Immigration Movement—by Unsealing Its Architect’s Papers

  John Tanton donated 25 boxes of documents related to his work with anti-immigration advocacy organizations beginning in the 1960s. The gift stipulated that much of the collection be sealed until 2035. An immigration advocate says that Tanton's connections to right-wing anti-immigrant groups and the pro-eugenics Pioneer Fund means the university should unseal the papers now. 

• 
• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  3/26/2021
  

  The Art of Black Letter-Writing: A Conversation with Daphne Muse

  by Joshua Clark Davis

  Teacher, writer and activist Daphne Muse has kept up correspondence with an incredible who's who list of Black artists, writers and organizers. Historian Joshua Clark Davis discusses this archive with her. 

• 
• SOURCE: Asian American Writers' Workshop
  3/25/2021
  

  Exploring Black and Asian American Lesbian Archives: Aché and Phoenix Rising

  Two newsletters by and for queer communities of color in the Bay Area are a primary source for understanding how Black and Asian American lesbians created and maintained community. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  3/21/2021
  

  Letters Found In An Attic Reveal Eerie Similarities Between Adolf Hitler And His Father

  A trove of letters discovered in an Austrian attic are a rare primary source about the parents of the Nazi leader. 

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  3/15/2021
  

  The Race to Collect COVID Ephemera Before It’s History

  "Last year, on March 13th, as Americans began to restructure daily life in response to covid-19, one curator, Rebecca Klassen, had an idea."

• 
• SOURCE: Library of Congress
  3/17/2021
  

  Visit the Library of Congress's Irish-American Resources

  The Library of Congress has a dedicated page for documents related to Irish and Irish American history.   

• 
• SOURCE: Art & Object
  3/15/2021
  

  Understanding a Political Cartoon: Nast & Reconstruction

  Dr. Kimberly Kutz Elliott and Dr. Beth Harris take a close read of Thomas Nast's 1874 political cartoon, "The Union As It Was—Worse Than Slavery." (H/T to the Twitter feed of Kevin M. Levin!)

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/10/2021
  

  Your Loved Ones, and Eerie Tom Cruise Videos, Reanimate Unease With Deepfakes

  Emerging technology has captivated many with facial animations based on old photos, but it raises serious questions about the integrity of source materials and the news media, and about the way the technology could further destabilize trust in the news. 

• 
• SOURCE: NPR
  3/2/2021
  

  Reading A Letter That's Been Sealed For More Than 300 Years — Without Opening It

  A new digital technique can allow researchers to virtually read letters, folded by the senders to thwart tampering, without having to open or damage the artifacts. 

• 
• SOURCE: Hyperallergic
  3/1/2021
  

  An Invaluable Black Public Broadcasting Archive Is Now Accessible Online

  The American Archive of Public Broadcasting is a repository of interviews and broadcast content dealing with the spectrum of African American history and political activism. 

• 
• SOURCE: WAMC
  2/17/2021
  

  Behind The Former Slave Narratives Captured By A New Deal Program

  Writer Clint Smith: "the narratives are full of those moments that remind you of the personhood of these people who in so much of our teaching of history are sort of these silhouettes or these abstractions."

• 
• SOURCE: National Security Archive
  2/12/2021
  

  Lawsuit Saves Trump White House Records

  The lawsuit also required the preservation of WhatsApp messages from figures including Jared Kushner. 

• 
• SOURCE: Perspectives on History
  1/22/2021
  

  Please Stop Calling Things Archives: An Archivist's Plea

  by B.M. Watson

  "As many historians currently use the word “archives,” they seem to imply that an archive is the natural state in which primary sources arrange themselves after being discarded or left by their creators."

• 
• SOURCE: Associated Press
  1/16/2021
  

  Will Trump’s Mishandling of Records Leave a Hole in History?

  Historians and potential prosecutors are concerned about the White House's noncompliance with the Presidential Records Act, but the truth is that the act is toothless. 

• 
• SOURCE: Vice
  1/12/2021
  

  Archivists Are Mining Parler Metadata to Pinpoint Crimes at the Capitol

  Before it was removed from Amazon Web Services, researchers archived a significant number of the posts on Parler, the network favored by many on the far right. That data could prove useful in figuring out what happened around and inside the Capitol on January 6. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Hill
  12/23/2020
  

  Democracy, History and the Presidential Records Act

  by James Grossman and Richard Immerman

  It's time to update the Presidential Records Act to clarify the kinds of materials that must be preserved and create real penalties for destroying them. 

• 
• SOURCE: Governing
  12/21/2020
  

  Has Twitter Changed How History Will See This Era?

  Carole McGranahan, a professor of history and anthropology, says that social media need to be taken seriously as sources of insight into the actions of prominent and anonymous people alike, and need to be preserved as sources.