This week’s blog post is by Dr. Debra Newman Ham, a former Archivist at NARA and the editor of the original Black History Guide. Ham is currently a professor of history at Morgan State University

After I graduated as a history major from Howard University in 1970, I spent the summer working as an intern in the special programs and exhibits division at the National Archives.  When I left for graduate school at Boston University, NARA arranged from me to work part-time at the Kennedy Presidential Library which, at that time, was located in the Regional Record Center located outside of Boston in Waltham, MA.

I finished my master’s degree at Boston University in 1971 and NARA hired me to work fulltime in DC in 1972.  I worked as the assistant to the Black History Specialist, Robert Clarke.  By the time I arrived, the staff was already planning the National Archives Conference on Federal Archives as Sources for Research on Afro-Americans.  Participants included scholars such as Mary Frances Berry, Alex Haley, Herbert Gutman and John Blassingame.  The conference took place June 4-5, 1973. This predated Haley’s publication of Roots and Gutman’s study, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom.  The proceedings of this conference are available in a volume edited by Clarke, Afro-American History:  Sources for Research (DC: Howard University Press, 1981).

NARA had promised the scholarly community that there would be a series of research guides made available to facilitate research and record accessibility.  By the time of the conference, several interns and I had prepared a list of black servicemen in the American Revolution and a list of free black heads of family in the 1790 census.  We distributed these lists as handouts to the conference participants.

After making Haley’s acquaintance, he invited me and several other researchers to help him with his Kinte Library Project, which was supposed to result in genealogical center for African American materials.  The center never happened but several of the genealogists and historians who worked with Haley including myself founded the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society in 1977.  That organization is still alive and well and has a national and several local chapters.  For information about the society on the web, go to aahgs.org.

I subsequently left Clarke’s office to work in the NARA industrial and social branch.  There I prepared finding aids for the Social Security Administration, the Office of Economic Opportunity and the Department of Labor.  The labor publication was a special list of documents relating to black workers.

In 1978, I was promoted to work exclusively on the preparation of a guide to civilian records for African American history.  Clarke was assigned to the military records.  I explored civilian records in DC and Suitland over five year period and then worked on the publication of the guide.  I was assisted by dozens of patient and not-so-patient archivists and technicians.

Finally, the work, Black History: A Guide to Civilian Records in the National Archives, was published by the National Archives Trust Fund Board in 1984.  The guide won awards from both the SAA and MARAC.

I am most pleased about two things.  The guide is still in print and steps are now being taken to update it.  I earnestly believe in the public’s right to know and I believe that one of NARA’s roles should always be to facilitate researcher access to the nation’s records.

Today’s blog post is by Netisha Currie, Archives Specialist in the Textual Processing Division of the National Archives

A small portion of the millions of records at the National Archives are considered to be of such historic or intrinsic value that researchers are restricted from physical access to these materials. These materials are specially protected in the central and regional facilities of the National Archives and are kept in areas of restricted access which we refer to in College Park as the Vault. The Vault contains documents and artifacts from military and civil record groups (RGs), and donated collections. Some of these records pertain to African Americans in history and would be relevant to historical research.

One document in the Department of Justice records (RG 60) that has always struck me as particularly interesting is a letter from William Syphax to President Andrew Johnson written May 11, 1865 (ARC ID 6782945). Written shortly after the end of the Civil War, Syphax relates the case of his parent’s land at the Arlington Estate (later to become Arlington National Cemetery) to the President. He claims that the plot of land his family has lived on for more than forty years was left to his mother, Maria, by George Washington Parke Custis – the original owner of the Estate. During the Civil War, parts of the Arlington Estate were confiscated to be used as a cemetery, and thereafter the Government acquired the entire estate in a tax sale. Facing eviction from their home, William Syphax was forced into action and wrote his letter to President Johnson. In 1866, a year after this letter was written, Congress approved an Act for the Relief of Maria Syphax, corroborating the family’s claim to the land and saving the Syphax home. This letter serves as an important document in the history of freed African Americans and illustrates the bonds of the African American family.

Letter from William Syphax to President of the United States

In the records of the Department of the Treasury (RG 56), the Vault has two personnel files of notable African American employees. William Johnson (ARC ID 5751997), who came to Washington, DC with Abraham Lincoln, was appointed to the position of laborer in 1861; and Solomon Johnson (ARC ID 6705920) was appointed a position in 1864. Both men were recommended for their appointments personally by President Abraham Lincoln.

Letter from Lincoln to Secretary of Treasury on Behalf of William Johnson

Cover of Letter from Lincoln to Secretary of Treasury

As the child of a federal employee who ended up as a Government worker herself, these personnel files are familiar and fascinating to study. Included are generic form letters announcing promotions and pay increases, notices of death of the employees, but also letters written by Solomon Johnson asking to be recognized for his years of service to the Government. It is inspiring to see an African American man of those times represent himself with a strong voice and proudly list his accomplishments for the record. It sure makes performance appraisals easier for me.

Letter from Solomon Johnson to the Secretary of the Treasury.

These are a couple of the records relating to African American history that are kept in the Vault. Vault records receive more specific attention and are described down to the item level, but they remain part of the larger series of documents that are available to researchers to request and view in the research rooms. Although it is not in the Vault, there may be many other personnel files of African American Treasury employees in the unrestricted records and stacks that are just as informative and significant to the history.

Today’s post comes from Stephanie Greenhut, Education Technology Specialist, in the Education and Public Programs division.

In the midst of the Civil War, on January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. This document, preserved here at the National Archives, formally proclaimed the freedom of all enslaved people held in areas still in revolt. After hosting a traditional New Year's Day reception at the White House, and shaking hands with several hundred people, President Lincoln signed the document with a shaky hand. He said, “I never, in my life, felt more certain that I was doing right than I do in signing this paper.”

This account – and many others surrounding Lincoln, emancipation, and United States military and government decisions during the Civil War – is included in our new eBook, created to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation in 2013.

The National Archives presents The Meaning and Making of Emancipation. It places the Emancipation Proclamation in its social and political context by presenting related documents from the National Archives' holdings. They illustrate the efforts of the many Americans, enslaved and free, white and black, by whom slavery was abolished in the United States.

The Meaning and Making of Emancipation is available for free for multiple devices on our new eBooks page at http://www.archives.gov/publications/ebooks.

• For iPad, download the interactive Multi-Touch book with iBooks on your iPad, or on your computer with iTunes.
• For iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, download it with iBooks, or on your computer with iTunes.
• For Android phone, Android tablet, iPhone, iPad, Nook, SONY Reader, other mobile device or eReader, or PC or Mac, download the ePub file from http://www.archives.gov/publications/ebooks. Open it with an eReader app on your phone or tablet, your eReader device, or an online ePub reader for your Mac or PC.
• Read it online on Scribd or on your iPhone, iPad, Android phone, or Android tablet using the Scribd app.

The Meaning and Making of Emancipation is the second commemorative eBook created by the National Archives. Exploring the United States Constitution celebrated the 225th anniversary of the signing of the Constitution. Each chapter connects one or more of the billions of records in the holdings of the National Archives to the principles found in the U.S. Constitution. This eBook is also available at http://www.archives.gov/publications/ebooks.

Today’s blog post is by Dr. Trichita M. Chestnut, Deputy Director Indexing/Declassification Review Division at the National Declassification Center (NWD)

Ida B. Wells was among many individuals whose letters bombarded the Department of Justice demanding Federal help to fight racial violence. These letters are found among Year Files, 1884 1903, located in RG 60, General Records of the Department of Justice (DOJ). This file consists of many letters, correspondence, newspaper clippings, and telegrams pertaining to the lynching of Postmaster Frazier B. Baker with his two-year-old daughter, Julia, in Lake City, South Carolina, on February 22, 1898 (a date corroborated by various lynching lists and contemporary newspaper accounts, though Wells-Barnett remarks that the lynching occurred on February 24).

In the early hours of February 22, the Baker family awoke to discover that a fire had been deliberately set to the back of their home where the local

Letter from Republican Senator Shelby Moore Cullom introducing Ida Wells Barnett to President William McKinley. ARC Identifier 578368

post office was located. As the family tried to flee from their burning home, a white mob fired upon them with guns. Baker and his daughter Julia were shot to death, and their bodies were left to cremate in the burning home, while his wife Lavinia and three of their remaining five children were wounded. The lynchers had become enraged by Baker’s appointment as postmaster by President William McKinley three months earlier.

Wells, now Mrs. Ida B. Wells-Barnett upon her marriage to Chicago attorney Ferdinand Barnett in 1895, expressed her frustrations about these two senseless lynchings the best way she knew how—with pen and paper. She sent a typewritten, four-page letter to President William B. McKinley, under cover of a letter by Republican Senator Shelby Moore Cullom of Illinois, dated March 19, 1898, in which he introduces Wells-Barnett to President McKinley, urging him to give much consideration to what she has to say regarding the murder of the postmaster and his daughter and any “counsel and advice you think proper in the premises.” The President later forwarded the document and the cover letter to DOJ for further action.

In the typewritten, four page letter addressed to “His Excellency, William B. McKinley, President of the United States,” Wells-Barnett appeals on behalf of the Ida B. Well’s Women’s Club of Chicago, Illinois, for the President to apprehend and punish those responsible for the shooting. They seek support for the widow and children stating that “the nation owes that family the support and maintenance of which they were deprived by that brutal mob, in so far as money can requite their loss, these helpless ones should be indemnified.” She believes that their request for the family’s compensation will “not be in vain.” She notes that President McKinley had already set a precedent whereby the U.S. paid a considerable amount of money to countries from which lynched aliens had come. She cites two examples of recommendations by President McKinley that Italy and Mexico receive appropriations from Congress for the lynchings of three Italians and one Mexican citizen in the United States. Furthermore, the heirs of three lynched Italians in New Orleans were paid $25,000. In closing, she writes that we “come under the Stars and Stripes, believing that the plea of an outraged American citizen should be as potent for protection and justice as the demand of a frowning Power.”

In a second handwritten, two page letter addressing “Mr. Dawes,” referring to Republican Senator Henry Dawes of Massachusetts, she expresses urgency for President McKinley to make a recommendation to Congress regarding the manuscript (most likely referencing the lynching of the postmaster and his daughter) that she left in the possession of Senator Dawes. She speaks directly to the injured widow and her children, who are in need of medical and financial support as well as food, shelter, and raiment.

Letter from Ida B. Wells to “Mrs. Dawes” ARC Identifier 578368

No documents were found in the files to indicate a response to Wells-Barnett’s two letters appealing for assistance to the remaining survivors of the Baker family. But after 14 months of extensive investigation by the DOJ, a Federal grand jury found that there was sufficient evidence to charge 13 white men with conspiracy to deprive Frazier and Julia Baker of their civil rights. Still, after deliberations at the trial, a divided all-white male jury produced a mistrial. The DOJ did not prosecute the case further.

Ida B. Wells-Barnett—journalist, leader, and crusader—received national attention for her efforts in the anti-lynching movement. She will be remembered always as an African American woman of courage and conviction.

Other records related to this topic can be found in RG 60 Year File #1898–3463; Year Files, 1884–1903; General Records of the Department of Justice, Record Group 60; National Archives at College Park, College Park, MD.

This post is written by Tina L. Ligon, an Archivist in the Textual Processing Division of the National Archives and Project Lead for the Updated Black History Guide.

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is dedicated to preserving the history of the Federal Government and the American people. In 1984, Dr. Debra Newman Ham published Black History: A Guide to Civilian Records in the National Archives to showcase textual documents, special media, and photographs that are related to the black experience held by the National Archives. This award winning guide has assisted numerous graduate students, researchers, and family genealogists in identifying records for various scholarly and genealogical projects within the field of black history.

The cover of the original Black History Guide.

In 2011, a committee of NARA Employees agreed to update Dr. Ham’s black history guide. Each of the committee members is dedicated to providing new and exciting information on selected series, artifacts, and special media at the National Archives. This group of employees consists of Archivists, Archives Specialists and Technicians, and graduate students who have an interest in learning more about black history and sharing this knowledge with the general public.

The plan is to have portions of the guide available electronically to the public by late 2013 or early 2014. The guide will incorporate updates to the original entries in Dr. Ham’s guide, as well as include new information on records that have been accessioned since the first publication and include records from newly created record groups. The updated guide will also consist of Archival Research Catalog (ARC) identifiers, Holding Maintenance System (HMS) identifier, user and access restrictions, and type and extent of the archival material at most NARA locations, including the regional archives and the presidential libraries.

The goal of the updated black history guide is to be more user friendly and to introduce non-traditional researchers to the valuable resources that NARA has to offer regarding the black experience. Various forms of social media will also be used to chronicle the progress of the black history guide. The Rediscovering Black History: Updates at the National Archives blog is now available to notify researchers on new series descriptions, intriguing collections, and the status of the overall project. In additional, we are considering using Flickr, tumblr, webinars, videos, and other forms of medium or social media to reach out to and to educate the general public.