Contemporary Classical Collection of Dr. Jon Rieger Donated to Music Library
Posted: October 27, 2022 Filed under: Collections, donor, Ekstrom Library, Kentucky, Louisville, Music Library, New Items, People, University of Louisville, University of Louisville Libraries | Tags: classical music, contemporary classical music, donation, donor, Jon Rieger, Music Library, sociology, UofL Leave a commentUofL Sociology professor Dr. Jon Rieger, who died in 2020 at age 83, distinguished himself in many areas beyond a remarkable 60-year academic career, including as a pioneer in visual sociology, as a US Navy captain, as a board member and patron of Louisville community and arts organizations, and as the author of a seminal bodybuilding manual.
Beyond these achievements and closer to the hearts of the local artistic community was Rieger’s strong impact on their creative work and lives. He functioned as a mentor, sounding board, supporter, caring critic, and advocate for many local musicians, photographers, painters and dancers. His obituary captures the love and respect they had for a man passionately devoted to fine art in its multi-varied forms.
One of Rieger’s strong, lifelong passions was contemporary classical music, which led him to amass a vast collection of recordings in various formats. Some are extremely rare, perhaps singular, from such locations as Russia, China, Eastern Europe, and the Americas, many gathered abroad during his years of active duty in the Navy.
Due to Rieger’s generosity and the University Libraries great fortune, these recordings are now publicly available at UofL’s Music Library. The new Jon Rieger Collection contains around 7,000 recordings (circa 4,000 LPs, 2,500 CDs and some 200 cassettes). Due to the size of the collection, the library’s process of cataloging is ongoing, but all recordings are available for borrowing or enjoying on site.
“Many of the recordings were collected while he traveled the world in the Navy and sought out recordings from other countries,” said Music Library Director James Procell. “So what you see in this collection are some extremely rare recordings, many of which were never commercially available in the US. He ordered pressings of particular broadcasts he encountered on the BBC, Radio Netherlands or on other international stations, so it’s possible these are the only recordings.”
A true audiophile, Rieger created a sophisticated sound environment in his home with two massive speakers for high-quality listening, said Procell. “He enjoyed sharing this experience with others and would often invite friends over for listening sessions and parties.”
In 2015 after Procell became Music Library director, Rieger reached out to him to arrange the library’s acquisition of his collection “when he was done with it” (i.e. upon his death). He wanted it to go to UofL, but remain separate from the Library’s main holdings.
“Typically, we can’t do that for most individual donors, but since Rieger’s collection is so unique and distinguished and expansive, we agreed to create a separate area for it. Not many people collect these types of sound recordings anymore, or have these big physical collections, so this is particularly special.”
Procell also plans to create a separate listening area with comfortable seating and headphones, so that students, faculty, researchers and the public can come and enjoy the music and browse the stacks at their leisure. The Music Library will organize the collection by record label, following Rieger’s own printed catalog of works and method of organization, which he updated until 2018.
“Anyone can check out the albums even though not all of them are cataloged as yet,” said Procell. “All are browse-able and on the shelves.”
Procell has been aided in his curation of Rieger’s collection by Louisville cellist, songwriter, and storyteller Ben Sollee. In Rieger’s obituary, Sollee says that Rieger “built a family around his love of the arts . . . that he affectionately coined the ‘Tin Ear Society.’ This expansive family of dancers, musicians, composers, photographers, writers, visual artists and creatives were all connected by his mentorship, patronage, and radically honest critiques of our work. He helped us make better and more meaningful art. And, importantly, he never missed an opportunity to get us all together to enjoy Louisville’s bounty of performances. He taught us all, as both a sociologist and Big Brother, that great art is the product of and the fuel that grows thriving communities.”
“Jon was a huge supporter of the arts,” said Procell. “He financially supported causes he thought were important, including various arts organizations, and individual artists, photographers, dancers and musicians.”
“He was a very good friend of the Music Library and the School of Music and is missed by everyone here that knew him.”
Libraries Archivist Joins Effort to Clean Flood-Damaged Materials at Appalshop in Whitesburg, KY
Posted: August 3, 2022 Filed under: Archives & Special Collections, Ekstrom Library, Kentucky, Librarianship / Archivy, Photographic Archives, University of Louisville Libraries | Tags: appalachia, appalachian history, Appalshop, archives, archivist 1 CommentUniversity of Louisville Libraries Archivist Heather Fox recently traveled to Whitesburg, KY to assist in cleaning and preserving damaged archives at Appalshop, an arts and education center focused on Appalachian culture. The organization’s building and contents were badly damaged during recent flooding in Eastern Kentucky where rainfall swelled the North Fork of the Kentucky River and inundated Whitesburg’s downtown.
The organization’s archive holds roughly 20,000 items, including oral histories, musical recordings, film, videotape, records and photos. Some of the film and videotape was seen in the streets following the flooding. Efforts to retrieve and clean archives will be slow and painstaking but necessary to preserve the rich historical record of Appalachian culture.
Fox, who directs Archives and Special Collections’ Oral History Center, joined a number of archivists from around the state who will assist in moving Appalshop’s video and film collection into freezer trucks, among other tasks.
If you need help or have help to give, go to appalshop.org/floodsupport.
Archives & Special Collections celebrates Julius Friedman with Exhibit and Gallery Dedication
Posted: July 7, 2022 Filed under: Archives & Special Collections, Art Library, Collections, Digital Collections, Ekstrom Library, Exhibits, Images, Kentucky, Louisville, Louisville History, New Items, People, Photographic Archives, Photographs, Primary Sources, University of Louisville, University of Louisville Libraries | Tags: art, artist, Julius Friedman, Louisville History Leave a commentEarly posters and other works by internationally renowned Louisville artist Julius Friedman are featured in the exhibit Graphic Pioneer: The Early Poster Designs of Julius Friedman, 1965-1980, hosted by Photographic Archives, part of UofL’s Archives and Special Collections (ASC). The exhibit opened with a reception on July 14 featuring the dedication and renaming of the Photographic Archives gallery in Friedman’s honor.
Friedman’s sister, Carol Abrams, donated the bulk of his artistic works to the Photographic Archives after his passing in 2017. Ms. Abrams states, “Julius loved to mentor students and fellow artists. In giving his work to the Archives and Special Collections, students can learn from his work.” Ms. Abrams also generously provided support to renovate the gallery, enhance storage for ASC’s photographic holdings, including Friedman’s work, and prepare the collection for research by the community. This preparatory work is ongoing, but the full collection is expected to be open to the public in 2023.
Beloved by the local arts community, Friedman was also highly regarded among international audiences. Perhaps best known for the posters “Fresh Paint” and “Toe on Egg,” Friedman created posters and other graphic works for a broad range of clients. Outside of his design work, Friedman created his own artwork through photography – often printing on unique surfaces like metals and fabrics – as well as sculpture, furniture design, collage, book art, and collaborative video. While this exhibit focuses on his early posters, the collection includes this broad range of media and formats.
“Julius Friedman was such a significant figure in our local arts scene,” said Carrie Daniels, Director of ASC. “We are delighted to serve as the home of his archive, and to present a slice of it to the community in this exhibition.”
Friedman was a graphic design alumnus of UofL and had a decades-long relationship with the University Libraries. His work frequently appeared in ASC exhibits, including a 2012 celebration of Photographic Archives’ 50th Anniversary, which featured Friedman’s photographic capture of a ballerina in mid-swirl. Friedman’s close friend, former Art Library Director Gail Gilbert, inspired one of Friedman’s later efforts, a project titled The Book. Gilbert suggested that Friedman create works of art from old books that otherwise would have been thrown away, and he ran with the project, taking old books, tearing them, twisting them, boring into them, reconstituting them and creating art. The Book consists of 130 photographs of that art.
Among ASC’s Oral History Center (ohc.library.louisville.edu) digital offerings are two recordings of conversations between Abrams and ASC archivist and local historian Tom Owen. In them, Abrams discusses her memories of growing up with Julius, her older brother and only sibling, and how she came to work alongside him in his studio and then gallery to exhibit and sell his work commercially. Abrams recounts observing her brother’s talent burgeoning in childhood and watching him become successful as an adult. She also talks about establishing a nonprofit foundation in her brother’s name to help young people pursue academic degrees in the arts, the Julius Friedman Foundation (juliusfriedman.org).
The exhibition will run through December 16 in the Julius Friedman Gallery, on the lower level of Ekstrom Library. For more information, contact Elizabeth Reilly (502 852-8730; elizabeth.reilly@louisville.edu).
Libraries hire new project archivist for Julius Friedman collection
Posted: April 26, 2022 Filed under: Archives & Special Collections, Books, Collections, Digital Collections, Digital Scholarship, donor, Ekstrom Library, Exhibits, Kentucky, Librarianship / Archivy, Louisville, Louisville History, New Items, People, Photographic Archives, Photographs, Primary Sources, University of Louisville Libraries | Tags: archives, Collections, donors, JuliusFriedman, philanthropy Leave a commentA trove of work by Louisville artist Julius Friedman (1943-2017), including a diverse mix of graphic design, books, commercial art, and photography, was recently donated to University of Louisville’s Archives and Special Collections (ASC), by Friedman’s sister, Louisville philanthropist Carol Abrams.
And now Friedman’s work will soon be preserved, organized, cataloged and available for public viewing thanks to additional funding from Abrams which allows ASC to hire a project archivist.
“It’s a rich and unique group of materials and there are so many different types,” said Haley-Marie Ellegood, who will serve a one-year term as archivist for the Julius Friedman Collection. “He worked with widely different formats – there is graphic design, posters, photography, and at the end of his career he got into bookmaking. He was moving into video production when he died.”
A recent Indiana University graduate with a Master of Library Science, Ellegood specialized in archives and records management and worked in the IU Archives. In addition to researching, cataloging, and preserving the collection, Ellegood will help select items for an exhibit of Friedman’s works to be held in mid-July in ASC’s gallery.
“He really loved working for nonprofit groups and he mostly worked for free,” said Ellegood. “He wasn’t really into making money, but he created annual reports for corporations and was able to charge a fair fee for it. That type of payment apparently funded his work for nonprofits.”
Friedman was well known for his commercial photography, graphic design, and iconic posters, including “Fresh Paint”; “Ballerina Toe on Egg” for the Louisville Ballet; and “Ice Cream in French Horn” for the Louisville Orchestra.
In addition to many of Friedman’s iconic posters, the collection includes much of his photography, and graphic design for menus, postcards, stationery, event programs, and flyers. Other materials include some of his written work, including a few notebooks and some correspondence. ASC has had a relationship with Friedman going back decades. Although the Filson Historical Society has a small collection of Friedman’s art, ASC holds the largest part of the collection.
Ellegood says her love of archival work grew out of her love of history, her subject major as an undergraduate. “I love learning about important people in historic places and from historic times. And I enjoy making information accessible to people, so they can appreciate it.”
Processing Friedman’s collection is an exciting first professional project after graduate school for Ellegood. “His art really makes you think about what’s going on, it’s not what you would expect. You wouldn’t expect a ballerina to balance on an egg. It challenges your preconceived notions.”
Awards Honor University Libraries Employees
Posted: April 18, 2022 Filed under: Archives & Special Collections, Art Library, Ekstrom Library, Kentucky, Kornhauser Health Sciences Library, Law Library, Librarianship / Archivy, Louisville, Music Library, People, University Archives & Records Center, University of Louisville, University of Louisville Libraries | Tags: awards, libraries employees Leave a commentThree University Libraries employees have been honored with awards for outstanding performance and merit, and for contributions to the Louisville community.
John Burton, Acquisitions Specialist with Technical Services won the University of Louisville’s annual Outstanding Performance Award honoring exceptional service in staff. Burton has worked for the Libraries for over 30 years, having begun as a libraries student assistant, and later with Technical Services, and has experienced first-hand the transformation of the library profession and its services, including the transition from an analog card catalog to digitized online collections. As Acquisitions Specialist, Burton is in charge of finding and evaluating items to add to the Libraries’ physical and digital collections.
The award comes with a cash award of $1,000, an acrylic plaque, and public mention on the University website and UofL Today.
Fannie Cox, Outreach and Reference Librarian, has been chosen for the University of Louisville Distinguished Faculty Award, which recognizes “the excellent service of the University of Louisville faculty and the significant impact that service has on the university and beyond.” The awards are given annually to faculty for exceptional service in five categories: service to UofL; service to the profession; service to the community, the commonwealth and/or the region; national/international service; career of service.
As community outreach and reference librarian, Cox has forged relationships with numerous organizations and individuals working to help under-served communities in Louisville, particularly in the West End. She leads the Outreach Program within the Libraries, which offers instructional support to community members, helping them develop informational literacy and critical thinking skills. She has been with the Libraries for 22 years.
Cox and Burton were honored at the 2022 Faculty and Staff Excellence Awards Reception on Monday, April 18 in the Student Activities Center ballroom.
Additionally, Weiling Liu, Head of Office of Libraries Technology, was one of five individuals selected to receive the Jewish Family and Career Services’ MOSAIC (Multicultural Opportunities for Success and Achievement In our Community) Award. The MOSAIC Awards “honor immigrants and refugees from around the globe who have made significant contributions in their professions to the Louisville community.” The 2022 nominations were open to individuals who, “regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, gender, or country of origin, have fulfilled their dreams of self-sufficiency and made an impact in our community” according to Liu’s award letter.
Liu has worked with the Libraries for 23 years. As the Head of OLT, she manages and directs a department responsible for all aspects of library technology systems and libraries technical support. In her history with the University Libraries, she oversaw the migration of the library catalog system and the implementation of Ekstrom Library’s noted Robot Retrieval System. She has been a member of state, national and international library professional associations. In addition, she is a life member of the Chinese American Librarians Association (CALA), a non-profit international organization of librarians. Professor Liu also serves on the Association of Chinese Americans in Kentuckiana (ACAK) board and was president from 2018-2021.
The MOSAIC award ceremony and dinner will take place on Thursday, May 26, 2022 at the Muhammad Ali Center in downtown Louisville. In addition to Liu, this year’s award winners are Dr. Faten Abdullah, Jose Neil Donis, Dr. Juan Gustavo Polo, and Frank Schwartz.
Louisville history of racial oppression and activism revealed in new online resource
Posted: March 7, 2022 Filed under: Archives & Special Collections, Art Library, Books, Collections, Databases, Digital Collections, Digital Scholarship, Ekstrom Library, Images, Kentucky, Kornhauser Health Sciences Library, Louisville, Louisville History, Photographs, Primary Sources, University of Louisville Libraries | Tags: archives, information literacy, Photographic Archives, racial justice, research 2 CommentsBy Rebecca Pattillo
University of Louisville’s Archives and Special Collections (ASC) has published a new resource, Uncovering Racial Logics: Louisville’s History of Racial Oppression and Activism, a website that provides access to documents, oral histories, photographs and other materials that tell the story of Louisville’s history of racial oppression and activism.
The site is focused on education, policing and housing, “areas in which we see institutional racism at work, producing unequal access to resources, freedoms, and opportunities as part of ongoing U.S. racial stratification,” according to the site’s introduction. Funded by the Cooperative Consortium for Transdisciplinary Social Justice Research (CCTSJR) and the Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research, the collaborative project was created by faculty members across multiple departments for an interdisciplinary look at the “racial logics” of Louisville via primary source materials housed in ASC.
Dr. Carrie Mott, UofL Assistant Professor of Geographic and Environmental Sciences and one of the site’s creators, said the goal of the project was to provide access to useful information to anyone interested in learning about Louisville’s history around racial justice.
“We also wanted to provide a tool that would help people see the amazing archival resources housed at ASC,” said Mott. “From prior research and teaching with archives at UofL, I knew of the wealth of resources we have here at UofL. But we recognized many people on campus as well as in the larger Louisville community do not understand how to use archival resources, why they might be useful, or know how to access them. The website was an opportunity to provide some resources in terms of actual scanned documents, but also to help people learn that UofL has a lot more where that came from for research on Louisville’s racial history.”
Rebecca Pattillo, ASC Metadata Librarian and site co-creator, said “Working on this project allowed ASC to make some of our materials available digitally. The site also directs visitors to our robust online digital collections, where they can explore some of the materials referenced in greater depth.”
“One misconception about the archives is that they are only available to UofL affiliated people, when actually we are open to anyone in the community,” said Pattillo.
The site features scanned archival documents including pamphlets, newspaper clippings, oral histories, correspondence, and photographs, with contextual and historical information about each document and the larger collection to which it belongs. In addition to scanned documents, the site also highlights oral histories, story maps, and other resources addressing Louisville’s racial history.
Site users may explore the topic of both secondary and higher education in Louisville to learn about the push for equal pay among Black and white teachers in the late 1930s and early 1940s, the city’s move to desegregate schools via court-ordered busing in the mid-1970s, integration of the University of Louisville in the 1950s, and the founding of the Black Student Union and the Department of Black Affairs in the late 1960s. In addition, learn about Simmons University, one of Kentucky’s two HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities), and Louisville Municipal College, the only Black liberal arts college in the state which operated from 1931 through 1951, when it merged with a newly integrated UofL.
Another topic explored is the history of policing and police violence throughout the city. An example is the story of Fred J. Harris, a Black man who lost an eye after being beaten by police in 1979, and the work of the Kentucky Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression to seek justice for Harris by demanding accountability from the police force.
Housing and Urban Renewal is another focus of the Uncovering Racial Logics project. Select archival materials highlight the narrative of Louisville’s history of racist housing policies and practices, including the construction of racially segregated federal public housing projects in the aftermath of the destruction of neighborhoods and displacement of communities via Urban Renewal. These materials also reveal resistance to and organizing among the Black community and white allies to fight against racist housing policies and discriminatory practices. One such well known housing project is Beecher Terrace, which is explored via the papers of its long-time manager, Earl Pruitt.
Rounding out the project is an extensive, albeit not exhaustive, list of resources for further research. You can explore interactive maps that detail the history of racism within city planning and zoning, as well as redlining within Louisville. In addition is a list of community resources that highlight local organizations that work to empower and improve life for Louisville’s diverse citizens. Also included is a list of UofL Resourcesthathighlights on-campus organizations and committees that work towards racial and social justice, as well as minority affinity groups.
This project was created by Carrie Mott, Rebecca Pattillo, Melanie Gast, Anna Browne Rebiero, Joy Hart, Kelly Kinahan, and Catherine Fosl, with additional assistance from undergraduate and graduate research assistants Cat Alexander, Elizabeth Frazier, and Ben Harlan. Additional technical assistance was provided by Cassidy Meurer and Terri Holtze. Special thanks goes to UofL’s Cooperative Consortium for Transdisciplinary Social Justice Research (CCTSJR) and Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research (ABI) for funding and supporting this work, as well as our community partners.
Archives and Special Collections collects, organizes, preserves, and makes available for research rare and unique primary and secondary source material, particularly relating to the history and cultural heritage of Louisville, Kentucky and the surrounding region, as well as serving as the official memory of the University of Louisville.
James Everett Recalls Beecher Terrace and ‘Old Walnut’ in the ‘40s
Posted: December 15, 2021 Filed under: Archives & Special Collections, Collections, Digital Collections, Images, Kentucky, Louisville, Louisville History, People, Photographic Archives, Photographs, Primary Sources | Tags: Archives & Special Collections, Louisville History, Oral History Center, Photographic Archives, Primary Sources 2 CommentsBy Tom Owen, Archivist for Regional History, Archives & Special Collections
of Howard Breckinridge
Howard Breckinridge of Plano, Texas, a longtime friend of our Archives and Special Collections and a fountain of information about West Louisville history, told me that his eighty-eight-year-old cousin James Everett also had keen memories of Louisville’s African American community in the 1940s. Everett and his parents were among the first residents of the brand-new Beecher Terrace public housing project on Muhammad Ali, and he spent his entire youth enjoying the bustle of the ‘Old Walnut Street’ business district. I jumped at the chance to capture those memories on tape since Beecher Terrace is being totally redone as a mixed-income community. At the same time, the wisdom of the destruction by Urban Renewal of that segregated commercial district immediately west of downtown in the late 1950s is being reopened for debate.
The problem was James Everett, an Indianapolis resident, was in poor health and under Covid protocols it was unwise for me to travel. Heather Fox, director of ASC’s Oral History Center, stepped into the breech, downloading an app to my cell phone that allowed me to record an almost one-hour interview with James Everett which as a digital file has been added to our massive collection of 2000 oral histories, gathered since the early 1970s and including many from the African American community.
In our interview last July, Everett recalled the family move to Beecher Terrace when he was eight as a God-send—a new comfortable home with central heat, indoor plumbing, and hot and cold running water which trumped in every respect their former rental in Louisville’s Black Hill neighborhood at Eleventh and Magnolia. He also remembered ‘Beecher’ as a safe, pleasant community where children were admonished by other parents if they got out-out-of-line and there were plenty of things for kids to do. For him, the lengthy ‘Old Walnut’ business district, which bordered his home on the south and stretched from Sixth to Thirteenth and beyond, offered a potpourri of possibilities: a favored donut shop, movie theaters, cleaners and tailor shops, pawn shops, dry goods and drug stores, cafes, and taverns and much more. (Some of the venues were Black owned.) At one point, James tells how as a teenager he snuck into the locally famous Top Hat Nightclub without being ejected by Frankie Maxwell, the watchful manager. On Derby Day, he said, ‘Old Walnut’s’ sidewalks were filled with fashionably dressed visitors—some not even headed to the track—and a large parade filled the street on Thanksgiving Day prior to an annual Central High School rivalry football game.
One especially warm memory involved Mr. Davidson, James’ teacher at Central, who met eight or ten male students in the neighborhood and led them on a lengthy Saturday hike through Downtown Louisville, across the Second Street bridge, and down the Indiana shore to the Falls of the Ohio. Praising this youth mentorship, Everett told of wading into the shallow pools at the Falls to catch carp with his hands and stopping for lunch on the way back to Beecher Terrace. The last third of our interview is a chronicle of James Everett’s years in the Air Force, his brief return to Louisville, and a permanent move to Indianapolis where, after a decade of job changes, he was employed by Ford Motor Company twenty-eight years until his retirement.
Sadly, a couple of weeks ago, Howard Breckinridge texted that James Everett died on November 13. How happy I am that Heather Fox made possible a phone interview that will be preserved in our ASC Oral History Collection. Now we hold forever the memories of a childhood and youth of an elderly Indianapolis resident spent in the 1940s in Louisville’s Beecher Terrace housing complex along that once-vibrant ‘Old Walnut’ business district.
Muhammad Ali: A Transcendent Life: A Celebration in Virtual and Onsite Exhibits, Opens January 25
Posted: January 25, 2021 Filed under: Archives & Special Collections, Art Library, Books, Collections, Databases, Digital Collections, Digital Scholarship, Ekstrom Library, Events, Exhibits, Images, Kentucky, Kornhauser Health Sciences Library, Louisville, Louisville History, Music Library, People, Photographic Archives, Photographs, Primary Sources, University Archives & Records Center, University of Louisville Libraries, Videos | Tags: equity, humanitarian, Muhammad Ali;, racial justice, social justice 1 CommentOn January 25, 2021, UofL’s Muhammad Ali Institute for Peace and Justice and the University Libraries will commemorate Muhammad Ali’s social justice legacy with a series of virtual and onsite exhibits titled Muhammad Ali: A Transcendent Life.
The exhibits honor Muhammad Ali’s connections to Louisville, his unique contributions to civil rights and social justice movements, and his inspiring global legacy. Transcendent Life will engage the UofL campus and community and show how Ali’s legacy as a global humanitarian and champion for social justice impacts peace and justice advocacy today.
The multimedia exhibits will begin a phased opening on January 25, the week after his 79th birthday on January 17. The first exhibit showcases Ali as a Humanitarian and Peace Advocate. In February, a virtual exhibit will honor his civil rights record. Subsequent exhibits emphasize his boxing and athletic background and his involvement with Islam.
Multimedia exhibits launching January 25 include a display in Ekstrom Library of a rare book of Ali photos , while a virtual exhibit features a story map of public art and monuments titled “Muhammad Ali: An Extraordinary Life in Louisville and Beyond.”
To include all voices in the celebration, exhibit organizers invite University and Louisville community members to record and upload video/audio memories or thoughts for a tribute titled “Standing Up For Peace.” Contributors may share uploads to this video tribute and archive through June 2021 via: louisville.libwizard.com/f/ali-stand-up-for-peace.
A symposium titled “Standing Up For Peace – Celebrating Muhammad Ali’s Social Justice Legacy” is planned for Spring 2022, Ali’s 80th birth year. The symposium’s focus will be national and global racial justice and human rights issues, featuring nationally recognized speakers, UofL student contributions, and excerpts from the video archive. A series of break-out sessions will bring together community organizers and justice advocates to design action agendas to stand up for peace in their communities.
The Muhammad Ali: A Transcendent Life commemoration will include:
- An exhibit in Ekstrom Library of rare archival resources on Muhammad Ali including the massive volume Greatest of All Time: A Tribute to Muhammad Ali with additional photographs by Howard L. Bingham and Lin Caufield. The Archives and Special Collections exhibit will be held in the first floor cases of the west wing of Ekstrom Library, across from the circulation desk through February 26.
- A Digital Storymap titled “Muhammad Ali: An Extraordinary Life in Louisville and Beyond” featuring public art and monuments to Muhammad Ali in Louisville: storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/a28b07b8238847de994dd6165877a1b6. This is a collaboration between University of Louisville, the Muhammad Ali Institute for Peace and Justice, the Bridwell Art Library, and the Center for Geographic Information Sciences.
- UofL’s Music Library display will feature original music and other recordings by and about Muhammad Ali. He was an eclectic artist who acted on Broadway and released several recordings.
- Did you know that the song “The Greatest Love of All” sung by Whitney Houston is about Muhammad Ali? The 1977 version was performed by George Benson as the theme song of the The Greatest, a film about Muhammad Ali.
- The Bridwell Art Library will display books highlighting artists who photographed or depicted Muhammad Ali in their work.
- The Kornhauser Health Sciences Library will feature innovations in Parkinson’s Disease treatments as well as Muhammad Ali’s contributions to advance this research.
- A Research Guide will feature several Digital Timelines of Muhammad Ali’s life focused on: his Boxing Excellence; his Spirituality and Islamic Faith; his work as a Humanitarian and Peace Advocate; and his actions as a Social Justice and Civil Rights Icon. The timelines connect Muhammad Ali’s life with key moments in global and U.S. history. The Research Guide will feature additional resources from University Libraries and the Muhammad Ali Institute. https://library.louisville.edu/ali
- The Standing Up For Peace Community Engagement Video Series will ask our community to share their thoughts about this question: “What can we learn from Muhammad Ali about standing up for peace today?” This audio/video collection of community contributions will be available to the public. Upload here: louisville.libwizard.com/f/ali-stand-up-for-peace
- Spring 2022 – SYMPOSIUM – “Celebrating Muhammad Ali’s Social Justice Legacy – Standing Up For Peace.” This symposium/conference will focus on how Muhammad Ali can inspire the world to stand up for peace today on national and international racial justice and human rights issues. We are seeking funding and will collaborate with other UofL offices and academic units, student groups, and community groups.
- Related Scholarship: Fannie Cox and Enid Trucios-Haynes will submit a proposal to present this collaboration and its outcomes at a national library conference.
Hilton H. Brown’s Diary: A Young Man’s Chronicle Finds A Permanent Home
Posted: December 16, 2020 Filed under: Archives & Special Collections, Collections, Kentucky, Librarianship / Archivy, Louisville, Louisville History, New Items, People, Photographic Archives, Primary Sources, University of Louisville, University of Louisville Libraries | Tags: archives, archivist, archivists, crescent hill, diary, hilton brown, Louisville, St. Marks Episcopal Church Leave a commentBy Tom Owen, Archivist, Archives and Special Collections
Almost fifty years ago, a young couple moved into a Victorian home in the Crescent Hill neighborhood and a few years later discovered a set of diaries in their attic that had been written over a half-century earlier by a young man who lived in their old house when it was the manse for St. Marks Episcopal Church. Leafing through the sixteen small diary notebooks, they determined the diarist was Hilton Brown, son of the rector of that Frankfort Avenue congregation from 1921 to 1934. Early on, the couple tried unsuccessfully to locate Brown or his kin but continued to lovingly care for their abandoned property throughout the decades even through a downsizing. Now, getting along in years, they are looking for a permanent home for the diaries, asking their son to bring them to me for evaluation for our Archives and Special Collections.
Before I opened the neat black box containing the diaries, I set out to find out more about Hilton Brown, his life and time. In a five hour search, l got a goodly number of hits under his name in the Courier-Journal (historical) database, learning that the family had relocated to Louisville for his Dad’s church job when Hilton was around fourteen, that young Brown had played football at both Male High School and at the University of Louisville, and that the diarist later married and remained in the city at least until just after WWII before moving to Chicago. Then thru Ancestry.com, I determined that Hilton was born in 1907 in Florida and died in the Tampa area at age 69 in 1976. Expanding on his UofL connection, I turned to our University history holdings where I found in our Digital Collections multiple photos of him in our Thoroughbred yearbooks from the late 1920s and several mentions of him in our online student newspapers from those years: the Cardinal News and the UofL News. Finally, I located in our collections a biographical card file on UofL athletes who earned sports letters in the 1920 to 1950 years where I learned more details about Brown’s football career.
I was now ready to consider the historical value of the sixteen Brown diaries, spreading them out in chronological order across a table. The first one was unnumbered and in faded pencil, its entries made over a period of just several months in 1921 by a teen who had just moved to town from Florida. The other fifteen little notebooks were much more legible in ink and sequenced by a roman numeral on the cover, a few cover containing inscriptions that described how the author thought his life had gone during the period within. One read: “in which I have many doubts” and another: “containing many reflections and disappointments.” While there were a few gaps—at least one while Brown worked at a summer camp—those volumes spanned the years from late 1924 to late 1930 chronicling in significant detail a final high school year, four years at the University of Louisville, and entry into the workforce. Several of the volumes contained pages listing the diarist’s male friends with comments about their personality and character or lists of young women and his interest or success in dating them. One entry about date eligibility had “married” written beside many of the names indicating that the list might have been amended retrospectively.
After leafing through several pages in each small volume, I concluded that Archives and Special Collections should accept the couple’s offer to donate the Hilton Brown Diary largely because of their connection to our university. Brown arrived at UofL at a pivotal time, just months after undergraduate students were moved to Belknap Campus following the renovation of the old buildings of the city’s Louisville Industrial School of Reform, an orphanage/reform school, for collegiate use. The bulk of the diary entries cover those four years in which Brown was deeply involved in UofL’s student life on the new campus. The daily notations record the personal introspection and sometimes poignant discomforts as well as the mundane activities of a privileged late-adolescent white male student who spent substantial energy arranging his next dates with multiple young women while longing for a more permanent relationship with an elusive coed named “Gert.” Finally, my appreciation for this window into youthful life in the 1920s was heightened by the seeming ease that Brown and his friends had in acquiring alcohol during national Prohibition. The Hilton Brown Diary finds a permanent home among hundreds of other collections that shed light on the history of the Louisville region and the University of Louisville; clearly, rescuing from obscurity one young man’s 1920s diary does not a history make but, viewed alongside other documentation, a fuller and increasingly more accurate story of our community and university’s past emerges.
“Unearthing” 19th Century (illegal) tricks to support anatomy instruction
Posted: October 29, 2020 Filed under: Collections, Digital Collections, Digital Scholarship, Kentucky, Kornhauser Health Sciences Library, Louisville, Louisville History, People, Photographs, University of Louisville Libraries, Videos | Tags: anatomy instruction, cadavers, grave robbers, grave robbing, halloween, human anatomy, medical instruction, medical science Leave a commentBy Mary K. Marlatt
The difficulties of obtaining “material” for instruction in gross anatomy forced frustrated medical faculties of the 19th century into illegal activities. From the earliest days of modern medicine, men called resurrectionists provided cadavers for study by medical students and their teachers, but despite an urgent academic need for cadavers to study human anatomy, the only legal manner to obtain a body was through the execution of a convicted criminal. Execution only provided a minimal number of bodies per year – not nearly enough to fill the need of medical schools.
So how did UofL faculty obtain enough bodies for the hundreds (sometimes thousands) of medical students in Louisville during this period?
Kornhauser Health Sciences Library has in its collection several first-hand accounts documenting how this macabre task was accomplished. One tale is told in the diary of Charles Hentz, a student at UofL from 1846-1848, who assisted Dr. George Wood Bayless, then Demonstrator of Anatomy, on his forays into the cemeteries of Louisville.
There is also the story of Simon Kracht, janitor at the medical school from 1871-1875, whose duties including building maintenance and grave robbing. Kracht and a student were arrested in December 1872 when they were found unloading four bodies from the back of a wagon into the medical school.
Finally, in 1887, David W. Yandell, MD, son of the first Dean of the Medical School, recounted to a reporter his personal recollections of procuring specimens for the dissecting room. You can learn more about this “grave” historical topic by visiting the display case in the library, just across from the service desk.
Please take time to watch this silent short film, “The Real Body Snatchers,” to learn more.
University of Louisville Libraries News 