Preface
This Guide is a result of grant support that I
received from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and Public Policy
as a Fellow of the Virginia Center for the Humanities, but the motivation
and the need were established and recognized by historians, archivists, and
manuscripts curators long before that. The definition of an archivist is one
who cares for records, the person charged with both the preservation of the
record and the dissemination of the information contained in the record.
Historically this responsibility charged to the archivist has led to the
gathering of records primarily belonging to that class of people best
prepared by society to chronicle events: the public official, the landowner,
the educator, the business and industrial leader. When in the 1960s
historians began to question and change their own traditional approach,
archivists changed their collecting strategies to correspond to new
historical and sociological research and began to look to nontraditional
sources for archival records. This new vigor led to a major effort to
collect material on the history of Afro-Americans, but that endeavor, though
sustained by many institutions, has never garnered the amount and quality of
material about Afro-Americans demanded by the historian. The effort to
collect archival material documenting the history and culture of
Afro-Americans must continue; at the same time existing collections that
contain a wealth of Afro-American material must be examined and described.
Additionally, Afro-American materials in institutions, such as historically
black colleges, where they have long existed but have received little
publicity, must be described. I have tried in this work to search for new
sources but also to examine collections that may have been overlooked as
source material documenting the contribution of Afro-Americans.
The importance of original source materials to historians is obvious.
Afro-American historians, especially those writing about American slavery,
have long sought and used original source materials. Prominent historians
such as John Hope Franklin, Stanley Engerman, Eugene Genovese, John
Blassingame, Winthrop Jordan, Nathan Huggins, and Herbert Gutman have relied
on these materials to write their story of American slavery and the history
of the Afro-American. How could John Hope Franklin have written his
biography of the black historian George Washington Williams if he hadn't
access to manuscript materials on the man? In fact, Franklin points out that
some of his information came from contacting libraries mentioned by Williams
in his preface to History of the Negro Race. These
libraries were able to check their own archives and uncover correspondence
with Williams. The importance of original source material has been noted by
business, witnessed by the recent and continuing endeavor by the University
Publications of America to microfilm and make available original materials
on the subject of plantation slavery in the American South. This is a
massive project with a definite financial and staffing commitment, and the
end product is extremely expensive but judged worthy of the expense because
of the value of the materials on American slavery both for research and
pedagogical reasons.
The academic need for materials on American slavery is self-evident. In
addition to slavery, other topics, such as civil rights and voting rights,
and other histories, such as local, regional, and comparative studies, can
be written from materials that not only document Afro-Americans but are
generated by them. For example, the papers of Luther Porter Jackson, the
noted black historian and educator, at Virginia State University are
obviously ripe for research. Another more recent area of interest is
Afro-American genealogy. The "Roots" phenomenon excited much interest in
black genealogy, and now, after the initial media outburst, there remains a
strong interest. Another important need for this work has been expressed by
the archival/library profession: more and more library/archive users demand
subject access to such materials. This subject access will eventually be
satisfied when the massive amount of cataloging data of archives and
manuscripts is entered into computer data-bases. But this eventuality is far
in the future. As an interim measure, the compilation and publication of
subject guides serve to answer the urgent demand, especially for
Afro-American materials.
I initially contacted twenty-six institutions in Virginia, including college
and university repositories, black institutions, public libraries, and
private institutions. My search began in the National
Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections where I examined every
entry on all Virginia institutions. Comparing those entries with the Directory of Afro-American Resources revealed the
deficiencies of that twenty-five-year-old guide. As an example, the Directory lists 20 collections relating to
Afro-Americans in the Virginia Historical Society; I was able to identify
173 during my visit. Most of the institutions contacted were manuscript
repositories; their collections are family papers and derivative in nature,
that is, whites writing about blacks. Most of these collections revealed
Afro-American strength in two areas: materials on slavery and materials on
the civil rights era. In the beginning of the project the shortage of
materials in other areas led me to consider whether the search should be
limited to slavery and civil rights, but I decided against that approach,
because I knew that Afro-American materials outside of those two areas exist
and need to be publicized.
Several types of records were examined.
- 1. Plantation records. Although predominantly records kept by slave
owners, these sometimes include letters from former slaves or, as in the
University of Virginia collections, letters from former slaves who had
emigrated to Liberia.
- 2. Church records. Both black and white churches are included; most of
the original source materials on black churches have come from white
religious organizations.
- 3. Bible records. Many slave-owning families registered the births and
deaths of their slaves in their family bibles.
- 4. Diaries and travel journals of the South. Often there is comment on
the institution of slavery or individual slaves.
- 5. Photographs. Slave-owning families would sometimes have household
slaves photographed.
- 6. Medical records. These were kept both by slave owners and by
itinerant doctors.
- 7. Records of black institutions, especially educational ones.
- 8. Autograph letters of well-known Afro-Americans.
- 9. Collections of Virginia politicians during Reconstruction and in
the Constitutional Convention of 1902 when Virginia blacks were
disfranchised. These collections also may contain material generated by
Afro-Americans, because these lawmakers might have tried to contact an
influential moderate black leader such as Booker T. Washington to enlist
support.
- 10. Papers of educators in the South. Educators in the first part of
the twentieth century studied the Afro-American, often traveling to and
corresponding with black institutions and educators. A prime example is
the collection at the University of Virginia of the Papers of Jackson
Davis, a white member of the Virginia General Board of Education who
traveled extensively in the South in the 1920s investigating black
education.
- 11. Business records. Often laborers were recorded separately by race.
- 12. Collections of civil rights groups. In Virginia the papers of the
local groups involved in school integration are especially pertinent.
- 13. Afro-American authors. Such papers are sadly lacking in Virginia
repositories.
- 14. Papers of black families. These are mostly in black institutions,
but they do exist elsewhere.
- 15. State and local government records. State records are in the
Virginia State Library and Archives, but often local government records
are kept in other institutions.
The collections here are arranged alphabetically by their respective
repositories. The collection description, date range, and size refer to the
whole collection. The abstracts sometimes are based on a necessarily brief
examination; this is especially true of the larger collections which often
contain more Afro-American material than is described. Unless otherwise
indicated, all place names may be assumed to be in Virginia. If the
collection is available on microfilm, the microfilm number has been noted.
This work does not purport to be definitive; it is based solely on the
research and interpretation of the compiler. I wish to thank the Virginia
Foundation for the Humanities and Public Policy for providing the grant
support to accomplish my work and the University of Virginia Library's
Faculty Research Committee for granting me additional time to complete the
effort.
Michael Plunkett
Curator of Manuscripts
University of Virginia
Library