The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
U.S. Senate website, Art & History, Timeline: The Senate and the 19th Amendment
Introduced on January 10, 1878 by California Republican Senator Aaron Sargent, the “Susan B. Anthony Amendment” took 42 years to be passed and ratified by the requisite states to become a part of the United States Constitution. Over the course of those 42 years, women organized to advocate for their rights, sending petitions, protesting, and lobbying lawmakers in Washington. In response, women were condescended to, reviled, vilified, and assaulted by opponents to woman suffrage.
The woman suffrage amendment was defeated in the Senate four times, in 1887, 1914, 1918, and June of 1919. The amendment passed the House of Representatives on May 21, 1919 and finally passed in the Senate on June 4, 1920. It was quickly ratified by the required three-fourths of states when Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the amendment on August 26, 1920, granting women nationwide the right to vote. Their first opportunity to exercise that right happening just two months and seven days later in the 1920 election.
Last fall, I was asked to put together an exhibit commemorating the 19th Amendment to be displayed sometime in 2020. Generally, our exhibits highlight materials in one of our main collecting areas. National politics is not one of those collecting areas. Still, with a little searching of our catalog and finding aids, I was able to identify some unique and interesting items related to the fight for woman suffrage and the passage of the 19th Amendment.
If you happen to be in Newman Library before the end of the year, you can check out the Votes for Women exhibit in the Special Collections and University Archives windows on the first floor. For those who won’t be stopping by the library, some letters from suffragists included in our collections are highlighted here.
First are two letters from Adelaide Avery Claflin (July 28, 1846 – May 31, 1931) to Mrs. Hollander discussing an upcoming speaking engagement for the woman suffrage association. These are from the Adelaide A. Claflin Letters (Ms1992-005). Claflin was a resident of Quincy, Massachusetts and began speaking publicly in support of woman suffrage in 1883. She became a member of the Qunicy school committee in 1884 and was the first known woman to hold elected office in the town. For more about Claflin and the suffrage movement in Qunicy, check out Remember the Ladies: Woman’s Suffrage and the Black Holes of Local History on the Quincy History Blog.
Claflin Letter, November 11, 1884, page 1Claflin Letter, November 11, 1884, pages 2-3
The first letter reads:
Tues. Nov. 11 1884, Mrs. Hollander, Dear madam,
I have received a note from Mrs. Stone, (giving me your name simply as above,) and asking me to communicate with you in case I were willing to speak for you in Somerville on Sunday, the 22d and on the same subject on which I lately spoke in South Boston. As the 22nd is Saturday, I am left in a little doubt as to the real date desired, and I am also a little embarrassed in my writing by some other causes. I have a bad cold just now, but probably would be well enough to speak by that time, and would like to do so, as far as I know at present. But I did not speak, exactly, at So. Boston, I read a written essay upon “What women as a class owe to each other”, and this essay, substantially, was read to the Somerville Woman’s Club a year ago. I do not know whether that club is in the same part of Somerville, or whether that would be any objection. I should, therefore be glad to hear further from you in regard to the circumstances, as Mrs. Stone’s note was extremely brief.
Very truly yours, Adelaide A. Claflin 21 Chestnut St. Quincy Maſ.
Claflin Letter, November 14, 1884, page 1Claflin Letter, November 14, 1884, page 2-3Claflin Letter, November 14, 1884, page 4
The second letter reads:
Friday, Nov. 14, 1884, My dear Mrs. Hollander,
I am much obliged for your explanation in regard to the lectures and I am glad such a course is undertaken. With regard to myself, I only mentioned the So. Boston paper, because Mrs. Stone wrote to me about that. I have spoken for the Massachusetts Suffrage Association, upon that question, a good many times within the past two years, and feel that I can always say something upon most aspects of the woman suffrage question. Mrs. Stone has often asked me to speak upon municipal suffrage because she liked my presentation of that subject – but some of the Somerville friends have very likely heard me speak upon it in Boston, and I would rather prefer myself to speak in a more general way. I have had some experience in regards to schools, having been teacher, mother, and school committee, and had some special advantages here in Quincy where educational matters have been much discussed, and I have been in the thick of it. How would you like as subject “The need of the feminine influence in the school, the town, and the state”? Or if that is too large – the first two leaving out the “state”? I think I could make some useful points in an address of that kind. But if there is any special branch of the suffrage, or woman question, which would be more desirable to you as a step in the unfolding of your scheme of lectures I think it would be safe enough for your President to announce it for me for the 23rd. I have studied the woman question all my life, and while I do not profess to have solved as great a problem, I feel pretty sure I can talk about most parts of it in a tolerably rational manner. I write thus because there is not time before Sunday for me to hear from you and write again as to subject, and I should like to meet the wishes of the committee in that respect. I should be glad to know how long an address is desired and whether it is to be in a parlor or a church, etc.
Very truly yours Adelaide A. Claflin, 21 Chestnut St., Qunicy
As an alternative subject I might suggest “The reaction of equal rights upon woman and society.” A.A.C.
Next is a letter from Lila M. Valentine to J. D. Eggleston, president of Virginia Polytechnic Institute, from the Records of the Office of the President, Joseph Dupuy Eggleston (Record Group 2/7). Lila Meade Valentine was co-founder of the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia and served as its first president. Learn more about her at Encyclopedia Virginia.
Lila Meade Valentine letter, April 2, 1919, page 1Lila Meade Valentine letter, April 2, 1919, page 2
The letter from Valentine reads:
Dr. J. D. Eggleston. April 2, 1915 Blacksburg, Va.
My dear [cousin?].
Can you arrange for me to speak any one of the following days, April 21, 22, 23, 24, 26? I am to help in the Pennsylvania campaign in ?? City April 28. I should greatly appreciate a prompt reply as I have several other invitations to fill in, and only wait your decision to readjust them because of your May 1st limit.
Cordially yours Lila M Valentine
P.S. I regret very much that you felt compelled to resign from our State Board of Education. We can ill afford to do without your valuable aid. L.M.V.
Finally, a letter from Eulalie Salley to Mrs. Francis Bear of Roanoke, Virginia, from the Eulalie Salley Letter (Ms2013-079). Salley was born in Augusta, Georgia in 1883 and lived on her grandparents’ plantation in Louisville, Georgia before moving to Aiken, South Carolina in 1892. Her education included a year each at Mary Baldwin College in Virginia and Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Around 1912, Salley organized the Aiken County Equal Suffrage League and served as its first president. She campaigned for suffrage by door-to-door canvassing, hosting fundraisers, and even dropping leaflets from an airplane. The end of this letter mentions her efforts to elect Gilbert McMillan to office in South Carolina and his role in South Carolina finally ratifying the 19th Amendment in 1969, 50 years after it became part of the U.S. Constitution. Learn more about Eulalie Salley in the South Carolina Encyclopedia.
Eulalie Salley letter, January 12, 1974, page 1Eulalie Salley letter, January 12, 1974, page 2
The Eulalie Salley letter reads:
Eulalie Salley, Realtor Post Office Box 622 111 Park Avenue, S. W. Aiken, South Carolina 29801
January 12, 1974
Mrs. Francis Bear, “Bearcliff” 100 Etheridge Road, Roanoke, Virginia 24018
Dear Frances. I’m not at all surprised that your Mother did not tell you about my interest in politics. She and I are always so busy talking about members of the family that there is no time for anything else during her fleeting visits. In fact, most of our time is taken up with talk about that beautiful boy of yours.
I am so glad to know of your interest in politics. I’m wondering if you have joined the League of Women Voters or any other Woman’s organization in Roanoke. If not, you should, fo you would find it fasinating. I don’t see why you don’t begin right now to run for some public office—maybe by starting off with City Council or the State Legislature.
Here in Aiken we have a woman County Commissioner and a woman member of the South Carolina Lefislature. I campained for both of them, along with my faithful Gilbert McMillan. (Gilbert is a distant cousin of Louises’ husband, Raiford). He is the one who got the South Carolina legislature to ratify the Nineteenth amendment, a bill women had been working on for fifty years with no success.
Gilbert was a new commer and we decided we needed some one fresh in the Senate so 300 women got out and campained and elected him. It was very exciting.
It took me a long time to find out that if you wanted a law passed, you had better get your own man and get him to go to Columbia and pass it for you.
I hope Jody will do well in his school and I know you are going to be proud of him.
Affectionately, Eula
In addition to these materials, the Special Collections and University Archives exhibit also includes articles about women’s voting from the Ladies’ Home Journal from 1920, items from the New York Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, and some suffrage cookbooks. If you get a chance to stop by the library while the exhibit is up, check it out to see everything on display. If you don’t make it in before 2021, the items are always available to view upon request.
It’s not all unusual to find a lot of history wrapped up in a single, small, seemingly inconspicuous document. Sometimes you have to go looking for the stories contained in such a document. On other occasions, the stories shout their presence, even if their fullness has yet to be discovered. The Republican Party Flyer of 1921 is one of those documents. For years, in classes, I’ve used this document, this collection—the one document is the entire collection—to demonstrate the simple notion that archival collections can be small, a single sheet of paper; or large, consisting of hundreds of boxes of material. I’d breeze through its historical significance on the way to explaining “finding aids” to students who had not yet encountered them, that being the real goal of that particular moment in class.
A few weeks ago, I was reminded to consider at greater length the history that passes through this ballot, this piece of newsprint—approximately ten inches tall and five inches wide—that names eight individuals, eight political offices, and eight cities and towns in Virginia. It is the first and only all-African American statewide party ticket in Virginia’s history. As such, it represents a significant moment in the history of African American involvement in and exclusion from Virginia politics. That story bears repeating, even if only in the cursory and incomplete fashion that follows, as appropriate to this blogpost.
Even before the end of the Civil War, African Americans in Norfolk organized to insist on their full rights of citizenship, including the right to vote. In May 1865, over 1000 Black men of Norfolk attempted to take part in a local election. Although the attempt was unsuccessful, some did vote, but none of the votes were officially recorded and none of the winners took their offices. On 5 June, members of Norfolk’s Black community met with members of the Colored Monitor Union Club and agreed to a statement that was printed later that year under the title, Equal Suffrage. Address from the Colored Citizens of Norfolk, VA., to the People of the United Sates. Also an Account of the Agitation Among the Colored People of Virginia for Equal Rights. With an Appendix Concerning the Rights of Colored Witnesses Before the State Courts. The second paragraph of the Address states:
“We do not come before the people of the United States asking an impossibility; we simply ask that a Christian and enlightened people shall, at once, concede to us the full enjoyment of those privileges of full citizenship, which, not only, are our undoubted right, but are indispensable to that elevation and prosperity of our people, which must be the desire of every patriot.”1
It was not until the first Reconstruction Acts were passed by Congress in the spring of 1867 that the Southern states were required to hold conventions for the purpose of producing new state constitutions and to permit African American men to both vote for members of the conventions and to hold seats. When it came time to vote in Virginia on 22 October 1867, many white voters refused to vote and, as a result, supporters of radical reform of the state constitution won a majority of seats, including 24 African American men.2
State Convention at Richmond from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, 15 February 1868
The convention, sometimes referred to as the Underwood Convention, named for its presiding officer, the Radical Republican Federal judge John C. Underwood, was held between 3 December 1867 and 17 April 1868. Among the provisions of the new constitution was the granting of the right to vote to all male citizens who had reached the age of 21 and the disenfranchisement of men who supported the Confederacy. (Underwood had also argued in support of extending the franchise to women, but his argument failed.) By the time the new Constitution stood for and won ratification by popular vote on 6 July 1869, the measure to remove the voting rights of former confederates had been successfully separated as a distinct voting issue and was defeated. Elections for statewide officials and members of the General Assembly were also held. A Black candidate for lieutenant governor, Joseph D. Harris, lost, as did much of the radical Republican ticket, but thirty African American men won seats to the General Assembly, the first to win election to the Virginia legislature.
Title page of Luther Porter Jackson’s Negro Office Holders in Virginia 1865-1895
In the elections of 1871, ’73, and ’75, between eighteen and twenty African American candidates won election to the General Assembly. About one hundred Black Virginians served in either the Assembly or the Constitutional Convention between 1867 and 1895. Many more served in local office. Luther Porter Jackson’s 1945 study, Negro Office-holders in Virginia 1865–1895, offers a roster of these individuals, along with biographical notes and, in the case of those who served in the General Assembly, an analysis of their efforts to legislate towards achieving greater equality between the races.
In 1876, two amendments to the Constitution aimed at reducing the number of Black voters had been submitted by the Conservative Party and ratified statewide. These amendments introduced a poll tax and the disenfranchisement of individuals convicted of minor offenses, such as petty theft. In 1877, the number of African Americans in the General Assembly fell to eight and to four by 1889.
African American members of Virginia’s General Assembly, 1887-88; as pictured in Jackson, Negro Office Holders
With the exception of the years at the end of the 1870s and early 1880s when the Readjusters (a biracial reform party formed in coalition with Republicans) held power, Virginia politics were completely under the control of the Conservatives, followed by a newly formulated Democratic Party, that is, by the parties of the white elite and of white supremacy. (The end of the Readjusters’ political power in the state is often regarded as having been signaled by the successful description by Democrats of an 1883 Danville street fight that ended in violence, as a race riot, with the Readjusters to blame.3) During the mid-1880s, with Democrats in charge, new laws were passed in Virginia, including the Anderson-McCormick Act of 1884, which made voting by Black men more difficult and successful runs for office by Black men rare. Other measures and practices had already appeared for the purpose of reducing the Black vote. By the time the Readjusters had been ousted, the White Republicans that remained increasingly became more doubtful of their own chances for political success as long as they were identified with African Americans or African American causes.
John Mercer Langston, Courtesy of the Library of Congress
Virginia did send one Black congressman to Washington during this time, John Mercer Langston, who served one term from 1889 to 1891. The election was complicated, contested and, as a result, Langston only served the last seven months of his term. Part of the complication involved Langston splitting the Republican vote with a white Republican candidate who had been nominated at a separate convention that excluded Langston’s supporters. Only the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives in a contest of many twists and turns resulted in Langston taking his seat. He represented the Fourth District, the only one in Virginia in which the African American population was greater than that of whites. By 1891 when Langston’s term ended in the U.S. House—he was not reelected—not one African American still served in either house of the Virginia legislature.
The passage of the 1894 Walton Act, introduced ostensibly to curtail corruption in election practice, had the otherwise intended effect of introducing a literacy test for voters. As such it was a measure to further guarantee the disenfranchisement of African Americans and a stepping stone toward calls for a new state constitution that would codify the dominance of the Democratic Party and the exclusion of Virginia’s African Americans from electoral politics and the exercise of political power. Writing in the online Encyclopedia Virginia, Brent Tarter writes:
“By the 1890s, a large proportion of black men and thousands of white Republicans in eastern Virginia were effectively disfranchised. Democrats regularly won overwhelming control of the General Assembly and most of the state’s congressional seats. During that decade, when the agrarian reform movement known as the Populist Movement threatened to rupture Democratic Party unity in Virginia, some Democrats employed the means by which they had contrived to win elections against Republicans to steal elections from other Democrats. The corruption led to enough demands for reform that a majority of the Democrats in the General Assembly passed a law in 1900 to hold a referendum on whether to summon a constitutional convention. A central objective of the supporters of the convention movement was to deprive African Americans of the suffrage and thereby eliminate the Democrats’ need to cheat in order to win.”4
One basis for that last, remarkable line may be the words of Alfred P. Gillespie, a Republican of Tazewell County, who said at the Constitutional Convention, which met in two sessions between 12 June 1901 and 26 June 1902:
“I have been taught to believe that where a man was guilty of a fraud, or of cheating another man, the man who committed the fraud should be punished, that a man who steals a vote should be punished. . . . The remedy suggested here is to punish the man who has been injured. It is now proposed to right a wrong by punishing those who have been defrauded of their votes to the extent of destroying their right of suffrage; in other words, the negro vote of this Commonwealth must be destroyed to prevent the Democratic election officers from stealing their votes, for it seems that, as long as there is a negro vote to be stolen, there will be a Democratic election officer ready to steal it.”5
When asked if discrimination was at the core of the proposed suffrage article of the new constitution, Carter Glass of Lynchburg, a member of the committee charged with producing that article, said, “Why, that is precisely what we propose; that, exactly, is what the Convention was elected for—to discriminate to the very extremity of permissible action under the limitations of the Federal Constitution, with a view to elimination of every negro voter who can be gotten rid of, legally, without materially impairing the numerical strength of the white electorate.”6
The Constitution that would have the effect of disenfranchising approximately 90% of the previously eligible Black voters, not to mention about 50 % of whites,7 was not put to the voters of Virginia for approval. Instead, having been adopted by the Convention, it was, following judicial challenges, ruled to be “the only rightful, valid, and existing constitution in the State” by the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia on 18 June 1903 and to have been legally in effect since 10 July 1902. The Constitution of 1902 was the legal elevation of the Jim Crow South in Virginia. It marked the achievement of the effort to turn back voting rights for African Americans that had begun as soon as those rights were obtained. It was the legal counterpart to the acts of intimidation and violence that accompanied that effort (and are beyond the scope of this overly-long blogpost) and laid the legal groundwork for the continued culture of intimidation and segregation that would follow. A few numbers:
— In the Presidential election of 1900, 264,240 Virginians voted; in 1904, the number was 135,865 — The Republican percentage of Virginia’s vote in the 1900 Presidential election was 43.8%; in 1904, it was 35.2% — In 1900, 147,000 Black Virginians registered to vote; in 1904, about 21,000 tried to register and fewer than half qualified8
As Southern Democrats reasserted control over the political process to remove African Americans, White Republicans responded to their need to reassert claims to their own political relevance by seeking increased support from White southerners and throwing off the Democrats’ claim that the Republican Party was the “Party of the Negro.” One form of this effort among Republicans was the formation of what became known as the Lily-White movement. Although it can be said to have officially started in Texas in 1886, the movement and the name spread throughout the South. In Virginia, the decline in the percentage of Black delegates sent to the Republican national conventions is one measure: from a high in 1872 of 44.1% the percentage dropped to 23.2% in 1888, 9.8% in 1904, and 0% in 1920.9 In July 1921, white delegates to the Republican state convention in Norfolk, which would determine the slate of statewide candidates, refused to seat almost all Black delegates who had been elected to participate and prohibited all Black spectators from attending. This, then, is some of the context out of which the Republican Party ballot of 1921 (remember that?) arose.
The convention in Norfolk nominated Henry W. Anderson, a lily-white Republican, as candidate for governor. Part of his platform was to attempt to remove questions of race from the contest with Democrats by claiming to be every bit a white supremacist as they. (Of course, the Democrats didn’t see it that way.) In opposition to the lily-white Republicans and claiming to be the true representatives of the Republican Party, an alternate convention was called and held in Richmond on 5 September 1921 with approximately 600 Black delegates attending.
Front page, Richmond Planet, 10 September 1921
The result was the formation of Virginia’s only statewide, all-African American ticket, which became known as the lily-black ticket, the slate represented on the ballot we have in Special Collections. The convention had been championed by the Richmond Planet, the city’s weekly African American newspaper. The paper’s longtime editor, John Mitchell, Jr. was chosen to head the ticket as candidate for Governor. Mitchell had served on the Richmond Common Council from 1888 to 1896 and, as editor of the Planet, had earned a reputation for his fight against the 1901 Constitutional Convention, his efforts against lynching, and as an advocate for civil rights and racial justice. Mitchell did not use the name lily-black to describe the ticket.
John Mitchell, Jr. as pictured in Jackson, Negro Office HoldersMaggie L. Walker
Perhaps the person best known today on the ticket is Maggie L. Walker, candidate for Superintendent of Public Instruction. Also a resident of Richmond, Walker became a candidate for statewide office about a year after women gained the right to vote nationally with the ratification of the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution. (Note that Virginia’s General Assembly did not ratify the amendment until 1952.) She is often noted as being the first Black woman in the country to establish and become president of a bank, the Saint Luke Penny Savings Bank, chartered in 1903. A year earlier, she founded the St. Luke Herald newspaper, through which she supported women’s suffrage, equal educational opportunities for African American children, and fought against segregation and lynching. In 1905 she helped to establish the Saint Luke Emporium, a department store owned and run by African Americans for the African American community. Her house in Richmond was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1975.
Joseph Thomas Newsome of Newport News
Theodore Nash, from Portsmouth, was candidate for Lieutenant Governor. Joseph Thomas Newsome, graduate of Howard University Law School, leading attorney, and community leader from Newport News was the candidate for Attorney-General. Thomas E. Jackson, candidate for Treasurer from Staunton, was manager of the Staunton Reporter and an officer of the People’s Dime Savings Bank. Francis V. Bacchus, a pharmacist in Lynchburg, was the choice for Secretary of the Commonwealth. J. L. Reed of Roanoke and A.P. Brickhouse of Exmore were the candidates for Corporation Commissioner and Commissioner of Agriculture, respectively.
There were no expectations that the ticket would be successful and there was not much of a campaign. Brent Tarter describes the campaign as “quixotic” and reports that Mitchell not only did not campaign, but that he took a vacation prior to the election.10 It was a mostly symbolic protest that failed to capture not only the Republican vote, but the Black vote, as well. Plummer Bernard Young, editor of the Norfolk Journal and Guide, a rival of Mitchell’s Planet, for example, was offered the nomination for Lieutenant Governor, declined, and did not support the ticket. Outside of the Black press, it received very little attention. John Mitchell received 5,036 votes in an election in which the victor, Democrat E. Lee Trinkle received 139,416. Henry Anderson, the lily-white Republican had 65,833 votes. In her contest, Maggie Walker received 6,991 votes out of 208,576 cast in the state.
Republican Party Flyer of 1921
But this ballot represents a kind of courage that is significant and should be noted. This single sheet of paper can’t be dismissed as a mere historical object of protest, but seen as representing an act of bravery that emerged from a history that includes much bravery in the face of repression, injustice, and violence. More than that, it speaks to a kind of bravery in the political sphere, in the realm of electoral politics that seems so relevant today, as, admittedly—let’s face it—it always is.
If you grew up knowing all of this history, forgive me for repeating it, even at this length. I’m fairly well-informed on matters concerning Reconstruction and Jim Crow, but not having grown up in Virginia or ever read deeply into the political history of the state, I’ve missed some of the details. Maybe you have, too. And the details matter. The Constitution of 1902 remained in effect until 1971, for example.
I was asked to include the Republican Party Flyer of 1921 in a conversation with students a few weeks ago to draw attention to the season in which we now find ourselves, and to use it, if obliquely, as a reminder to VOTE. (With a shoutout to Danna Agmon! Thanks!)
So, remember . . . and remember to VOTE!
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CODA:This post has led me to recall another run for office, perhaps also a little too forgotten today, but every bit as significant and courageous. Ultimately, Shirley Chisholm, member of the U.S. House of Representatives from the New York 12th and a founding member of both the Congressional Black Caucus and the National Women’s Political Caucus, won 151 delegates at the Democratic National Convention, but lost to Senator George McGovern.
Shirley Chisholm for President Buttons, 1972
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Notes 1. See Equal Suffrage. Address . . . , viewed 15 October 2020. 2. For more information, see Tarter, Brent. Encyclopedia Virginia, African Americans and Politics in Virginia (1865–1902), https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/african_americans_and_politics_in_virginia_1865-1902 , viewed 15 October 2020 3. Tarter, Brent. Encyclopedia Virginia, African Americans and Politics in Virginia (1865–1902), https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/african_americans_and_politics_in_virginia_1865-1902 , viewed 16 October 2020 4.Tarter, Brent. Encyclopedia Virginia. Disfranchisement, http://www.EncyclopediaVirginia.org/Disfranchisement. viewed 24 October 2020 5. Report of the Proceedings and Debates of the Constitutional Convention, 2 vols. (Richmond, 1906), 2:3014. Quoted in Tarter, Brent. Virginians and their Histories, University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2020, p. 326 6. Repot of the Proceedings and Debates of the Constitutional Convention, State of Virginia, Held in the City of Richmond June 12, 1901 to June 26, 1902 )2 vols; Richmond, 1906), vol. II, p. 3076–3077. Quoted in Edwards, Conley L., “A political history of the poll tax in Virginia, 1900-1950” (1973). Master’s Theses. Paper 452, University of Richmond, p.9 7. Tarter, Brent. Virginians and their Histories, University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2020, p. 328 8. Tarter, Brent. Encyclopedia Virginia. Disfranchisement, http://www.EncyclopediaVirginia.org/Disfranchisement. viewed 24 October 2020 9. Heersink, Boris and Jeffery A. Jenkins. “Black-and-Tans vs. Lily-Whites: Measuring the Racial Composition of Republican Party Organizations in the South after Reconstruction, 1868–1952,” Table 2, p. 35. Version of paper presented at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL. Retrieved from https://static1.squarespace.com/static/537e687fe4b0cabbb8f9d767/t/57fac46a6a496306c83ce67c/1476052078780/Heersink+and+Jenkins+-+Black+and+Tans+versus+Lily+Whites.pdf. Viewed 25 October 2020. See also: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/537e687fe4b0cabbb8f9d767/t/55410556e4b055af09d58f78/1430324566391/Heersink-Jenkins+MPSA+paper.pdf 10. Tarter, Brent. Virginians and their Histories, University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2020, p. 329
Earlier posts exploring Beverly Willis’s work can be found here and here. As those posts dealt with a residential renovation and the adaptation of technology to large-scale housing developments, this post is concerned with urban design of public spaces.
Part of an axonometric drawing, Margaret S. Hayward Playground, San Francisco, Ca., c. 1981. From the Beverly Willis Architectural Collection, Ms1992-019, Special Collections, University Libraries, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
In 1978 Beverly Willis, noted architect, artist, and photographer, was commissioned to rehabilitate a public space and pre-existing playground that serves the Laguna and Golden Gate neighborhoods of San Francisco. Her charge was to design and construct a small recreation building on this site, a two-block plot that already housed tennis courts, play structures, and a small storehouse. As discussed in the posts mentioned above, Willis’s design philosophy is heavily influenced by symbolic imagery. Indeed, in her book Invisible Images, she discusses her fascination with the power of images at length: their capacity to generate ideas, to captivate us, to contextualize architecture and ultimately to connect humans to nature. But here she also took her primary audience into account, namely children, and thus considered how young people on the threshold of young adulthood might interpret spaces and images differently than their grown-up counterparts.
Exterior elevations, Margaret S. Hayward Playground, San Francisco, Ca., February 20, 1981.
Schematic plan, Margaret S. Hayward Playground, San Francisco, Ca., October 10, 1979.
When conceptualizing a small building for the park, she wanted to evoke and foster the idea of play, and to frame the building as an invitation to play. She designed what she characterized as a “toy” building, which served the dual purpose of sparking children’s imaginations and enabling other functions, i.e., serving as an administrator office, restroom, and a service kitchen for park events. It serves a host of functional needs while it also works with the idiosyncrasies of the site.
As Willis wanted the building to feel fully integrated with the rest of the block, the building’s segmented design allowed the small structure to sprawl and fan out, creating a pavilion that descended via concrete steps to the play pit. The way it’s structured gives it the slight feeling of a dais. She designed an asymmetrical wall at an angle from the building with a child-sized arch such that there would be some fluidity between the practical and playful elements of the park. No doubt, the building exploits an unusual, exploded structure (akin to something you’d see in an axonometric drawing) to maximize its magical, whimsical appeal.
I’ll leave you with Bev’s own words:
“I designed the building to be lower in height than the tallest play equipment—like a toy building. The structure fans out of its tight corner site, and diagonal walls shift through the structure, like the joints of the armadillo shell. The façade stops at a wide walkway, bordered by three tiered steps. Together, these elements create an illusion of a stage platform. On the right wing ‘stage’ wall, which extends past the building, I placed an arched opening that leads nowhere but beckons the young to pass through and explore. The painted arch opening and circular moon above are as magical as Alice’s looking glass, leading from everywhere to everywhere” (Willis 87).
References
Willis, Beverly. Invisible Images: The Silent Language of Architecture. National Building Museum, 1997.
Remembering Charles Owen, a Beloved Early Campus Figure
Last year, while helping to assemble images for a photographic history of the Roanoke and New River valleys, I ran across a wonderful photo of Charles Owen, known to the students of Virginia Agricultural & Mechanical College (today Virginia Tech) as “Uncle Sporty.” Sometimes a photo really captures your interest and makes you want to learn more about the person shown.
Charles Owen, 1910
Charles Owen’s longstanding presence at the university began in 1890, when he was hired as a janitor for Barracks Number One (today Lane Hall). (Note that while some sources, including his own daughter’s death record, provide his surname as “Owens,” campus sources invariably identify it as “Owen,” so that is what I’ll use here.) Soon afterward, Owen assumed an additional duty that he’d perform for many years to come: according to Col. Harry Temple’s The Bugle’s Echo, an exhaustive history of the university’s early decades, Owen “took charge of a large snare drum which he attached to a leather belt about his waist. Ten minutes before Reveille each morning he would parade the area in front of the barracks, beating his drum. Sporty could actually beat out tunes on that drum; where he learned the art no one knew.” For nearly 20 years, Owen’s was one of the most familiar faces on campus and likely one of the first to be recognized by new cadets. Reminiscing on his years as a VAMC cadet, Henry Harris Hill (BS, 1907) recalled his first morning at college:
Very early in the morning I was awakened by a far off rumbling sound. For the life of me I couldn’t imagine what the noise was. It gradually came closer, so I got up and went to the window to look. Out on the parade ground was an old colored man beating a drum that looked like it was about five feet deep. The colored man was Uncle Sporty who was waking the boys preliminary to Reveille.
Unfortunately, despite some rather in-depth searching, I could learn little about Owen. The 1900 census recorded a Charles Owens living in Blacksburg with wife Ellen. The Owens’s sizable household included three daughters, Bell, Lucy, and Nellie; the daughters’ husbands, Lev, Hiram, and Reuben (all with the surname Collins); four Collins grandchildren; Charles and Ellen’s adopted son John Hickman; and niece Ella Collins. The census describes Charles Owen as a janitor but fails to record his and Ellen’s ages.
(To throw some confusion on the matter, the census lists a second Charles Owens living in Blacksburg and also working as a janitor in 1900. Later census records indicate that this Charles Owens also worked on campus, but following this man’s documentary trail we learn that he is not the man who came to be known as Uncle Sporty.)
Owen’s photo first appears in The Bugle (the college annual) in 1899. He is shown in a composite photo of other maintenance staff and is identified only as “Sporty Sam.” Given the time period and the fact that another African-American campus employee is referred to as “Smoky Sam,” we can infer that the name “Sam” was almost certainly being used here as a diminutive of “sambo,” a derogatory term that, even if used in jest, showed a flagrant disrespect.
Charles Owen, 1899 Bugle
Owen’s photo would again appear in the 1908 Bugle. By that time, he’d picked up the nickname “Uncle Sporty,” and while the term “uncle” when applied to African-American men of that era was also unquestionably derogatory, its use by the cadets in referring to Owen would seem to indicate an improvement of sorts in his status and the affection that they held for him. (We might also bear in mind that the cadets invariably referred to William Gitt, a white man who succeeded Owen as a worker in Lane Hall (and about whom I posted three years ago), as “Uncle Bill.”)
Illustrating the standing that Owen held in the cadets’ minds, his photo appears near the front of the annual, preceded only by the volume’s dedication page.
Charles Owen, 1908 Bugle
Below Owen’s photo is a poem, attributed to “J.D.P., ’08” (John Dalrymple Powell of Portsmouth, Virginia), written in the “Negro dialect” commonly used by white writers of the day. While the delivery is demeaning, the sentiments seem heartfelt:
Bein’ as I’se de fust to see yo’ when yo’ come,
And as I says Good-bye
to every one,
And since I takes
most painful care
Of all my boys
throughout the year,
It seems to me most
sartin’ sure
Dat I should be right
here befor’
De folks of all dese
friends of mine
And gib’ a greetin’
which dey’ll find,
Dat dough dey lib’ to
be past forty,
Will make dem tink of “Uncle Sporty.”
According to The Bugle’s Echo, Owen continued to perform his campus duties until mid-1909, when, due probably to age and failing health, he retired and left Blacksburg. “He took with him,” writes Temple, “the great well-wishes and gratitude of the cadets.” The Virginia Tech (the forerunner of today’s Collegiate Times) of March 2, 1910 reported that Owen had suffered a stroke, leaving his entire left side paralyzed. Just three weeks later, the newspaper announced Owen’s death. In eulogizing him, the editor offered what he considered high praise, but even here the newspaper could not resist inserting a backhanded “compliment”:
Charles Owen, the old negro janitor who for years has been known by the familiar name of “Uncle Sporty,” and who was loved and respected by hundreds of students and alumni of V. P. I., died at his home last week after a lingering illness. Owen had for many years been janitor of Number One barracks and his sterling honesty and respectability as well as his never-to-be-forgotten duty of awakening the sleepers each morning with the rumbling of his ancient drum, had made him a familiar and unique figure here. He was of the old order, now seen no more among the negroes, and his death is sincerely mourned by everyone who knew him. He is survived by several children, two of whom occupy positions with the college.
The Bugle’s Echo notes that Owen’s standing at the university was such that students proposed providing the pallbearers and a firing party for his burial service, only to find that the funeral had been held before these arrangements could be made. Still, the cadets collected a “substantial sum of money,” according to Temple, “and a huge spray of flowers was ordered to be placed upon his grave.” Shortly thereafter, The Virginia Tech published a poem by M. W. Davidson (BS, 1901) entitled “Uncle Sporty’s Drum,” the third stanza of which reads:
No matter where roams
Hokie’s man, his memory never failing;
He ponders on the
long ago, though often rough the sailing.
The strife is long,
the fight grows hot, and is ever lost by some,
But not by them who learned the way, where Sporty beat that drum.
A memorial also appeared in The Bugle for that year, featuring Owen’s photo and another poem.
Though the newspaper mentioned that two of Owen’s children continued to work at the university in 1910, nothing about them could be found. The 1910 census shows Ellen “Owns,” Charles’ 35-year-old widow, still living in Blacksburg, together with son-in-law “Rubin” Collins and two grandchildren. The census-taker noted that Rubin was working as a janitor in the “VPI Halls.” That same census shows another son-in-law, Hiram Collins, working as a janitor in the “YMCA Hall” (today the College of Arts and Human Sciences Building).
It isn’t easy, given the length of time that’s elapsed since his death and the little information at hand, for us to draw conclusions about Owen’s daily life, to put it in the context of the times, to know how he felt about his work at VPI and the students with whom he regularly interacted. (We haven’t even managed to conclusively identify his surname.) The little that we’ve learned of Charles Owen and his term of service here illustrates the larger, complicated topic of race relations of the era. It may be naïve and overreaching for us to say that Owen’s legacy was one of a slowly evolving, growing acceptance of and respect for African Americans in the campus community, but there can be no doubt that his work contributed to the university’s growth in its early decades, that his longstanding presence helped to instill in the students an affection for their school, and that he continued to be fondly remembered by university alumni for many decades following his death.
If you’re anything like me, working from home *may* have become a baking & cooking extravaganza of sorts. Success or failure, I find being in the kitchen extremely comforting. (I am your prime example of a stress-baker: just ask the chocolate chip cookies from last week, the oatmeal raisin walnut cookies bars from last night, the supplies for apple cheddar scones on my counter, and my plan to finally attempt to make bread–maybe…I think…when I work up the courage.) Anyway, one of the downsides to working from home/Special Collections and University Archives being closed is that I can’t scan anything new for a blog post. And while there is some material on our servers, I have a far more devious plan for this week’s post. If you, too, are social distancing, quarantining, or isolating, now is a great time to try those recipes you have always wanted to try. If you’d like to experiment AND keep those you are sharing a space with at a safe, 6-foot distance, here are some historic recipes that can help you succeed, re-purposed from some of my previous posts on our food history blog. Or, at the very least, you might stay 6 feet from the plate?
First off, I know there are many people that enjoy Spam. I don’t hold anyone’s food choices against them–I have my own favorites that plenty of people would question. But this is a whole other level:
Spam-dandy Spamwiches, a multi-layered, frosted Spam sandwich
This sandwich contains Spam, chicken, lettuce, tomato, olives, butter, and more mayonnaise than seems possible. Yes, that is frosted with a mixture of mayo, whipped cream, and hard-cooked eggs. You might understand how, upon seeing it for the first time, I may have mistaken it for a cake? More on this item and some other frosted sandwiches here: https://whatscookinvt.wordpress.com/2011/11/09/frosted-sandwiche/. (Also, the bottom of that post has links to additional posts about frosted sandwiches.)
Before leave sandwiches in this post, historically speaking, there are thousands and thousands of sandwich fillings. Here are a few from 1924:
Recipes from Mrs. Scott’s Sandwich Book: Selected Recipes for Pleasing Appetizing Meals and Light Summer Lunches
This is just one of several newspaper-sized pages of recipes from this four-sheet fold out. Personally, I might dive face first into some of these, but at least a few might have me considering my options. Want to see more? The original post is online here: https://whatscookinvt.wordpress.com/2017/07/21/mrs-scott-sandwiches-1924/.
For those of you fond of savory pies, you might consider branching out into lesser used proteins in these modern times:
“Umble pie” is what first caught my attention in Sarah Harrison’s The house-keeper’s pocket-book, and compleat family cook : containing above twelve hundred curious and uncommon receipts in cookery, pastry, preserving, pickling, candying, collaring, &c., with plain and easy instructions for preparing and dressing every thing suitable for an elegant entertainment, from two dishes to five or ten, &c., and directions for ranging them in their proper order, but once you get past the calves feet, there is also veal & suet, rabbit, skirret (a root vegetable) and bone marrow, and carp. These recipes are from the mid-1700s and you can read more about this book here: https://whatscookinvt.wordpress.com/2016/12/02/housekeepers-pocketbook-compleat-family-1760/.
Lastly, anyone who follows the culinary blog (inactive as I have been lately–apologies for that!) knows that I have something of a love-hate relationship with gelatin. So, I can’t write this post without sharing some wiggly, jiggly recipes.
Recipes from The Greater Jell-O Recipe Book, 1931
Recipes from The Greater Jell-O Recipe Book, 1931
These images are from The Greater Jell-O Recipe Book, a 1931 pamphlet. The first page includes some more savory, protein packed gelatin. Rice and fish? Chicken mousse? Ham and celery? …sure? Yes, I poke fun, but to put these recipes in context, 1931 was two years into the Great Depression. Economy was key in the kitchen would remain so for nearly another decade. Recipes like this used up every bit of leftovers. The second page contains mainly sweeter, fruit-based jiggling recipes, but I would point on the one made entirely of olives and cherries. I’ll say that again. Olives (with pimentos). And. Cherries. Yeah, I don’t have anything either. If you’re feeling brave, more Jell-O pamphlets from 1931 in this post: https://whatscookinvt.wordpress.com/2015/02/20/jello-pamphlets-1931/. And if you search the blog for “jello” or “gelatin,” you’ll find more.
Whatever you’re making, try to take a moment and enjoy your food. It can comfort us and connect us to memories in surprising ways and these days, we might just need that kind of emotional hug. Cheers and good snacking!
“We will never forget” poster with pictures of Norris Hall and a black VT ribbon, a poem, and the names of the 32 victims. (P00526, Ms2008-020)
Every year Special Collections and University Archives, in partnership with the University Libraries and Virginia Tech Student Engagement and Campus Life, hosts annual remembrance exhibits to highlight the outpouring of love and support the university received in the aftermath of the tragedy of April 16, 2007. Although we are unable to host physical exhibits this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we have continued the remembrance exhibit online.
The exhibit Unknown Origins: Anonymous gifts in the April 16, 2007 Condolence Archives highlights the messages Virginia Tech received from unknown individuals, organizations, or places following the events of April 16, 2007. It features anonymous donations and gifts of unknown origin, paying homage to those who want to be part of the mourning and recovery process but do not necessarily want to be known.
For more information on the university’s remembrance events, including the virtual 3.2-Mile Run in Remembrance, please visit https://www.weremember.vt.edu/.
As part of an ongoing effort to digitize records representing Beverly Willis’s significant works and projects, I’ve been highlighting some of her work in posts here. In November 2019 I wrote a post about her firm’s work in developing a program called “CARLA” or Computerized Approach to Residential Land Analysis and its use in a land development project (Pacific Point Condominiums). This week I’ll be looking at a smaller scale, but no less stunning, project: the River Run Residence. The house itself is beautiful, but I wanted to examine how it embodies Willis’s approach to design. When looking at a final product (a building facade, polished interiors) it can be easy to forget just how many choices went into creating something cohesive. Yet looking at design records can tease out some of the labor and give perspective on the process of designing and building that’s often obscured or mystified in the way we talk about and look at architecture. While this post won’t go deeply into the design process, it will touch on a few of the generative ideas and organizing principles behind the final building.
Section, River Run Residence, 1983. From the Beverly Willis Architectural Collection, Ms1992-019, Special Collections, University Libraries, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
The axis of Beverly Willis’s design philosophy hews to that line between formal and informal: the formal geometries of classicism and the informal rusticity of regionalism. Willis believes that at its core, design is about the investigation of the symbolic content of forms/shapes, and the manipulation of images (for more on this, see Invisible Images). When thinking about design, it can be a long and iterative process of drafting, layering, modeling – leaving aside sourcing materials and overseeing construction – this amounts to creating and blending images to form novel yet coherent aesthetics.
The Willis-designed Palladian villa cum rustic ranch in Napa Valley, called River Run, is emblematic of this mode of design thinking. The balance of the colonnaded portico, dramatic windows, grand approach mixed with the redwood shingle siding – classicism inflected by the vernacular – are all the more impressive given River Run’s relaxed atmosphere as a retreat. This is an interesting example of how works are often colored by different influences that are channeled through a designer. “While she abided by general principles of symmetry and proportion, the local shingle style — with its spreading roof, plentiful windows, and use of natural colors and regional materials — was also a powerful influence” (58-59). Willis seems to view it as a process of simplification – synthesis and streamlining. “Although the house is quite large, it displays a consistent economy of lines and means. It draws from the vocabulary of classicism, but there’s nothing complicated about it” (Willis qtd in Nelson 60). The nature and geometry mentioned in the title – and, indeed, Willis’s philosophy in general – refer to some of the central tenets of classicism and classical philosophy – that there are natural ideals that humans gravitate toward, that shapes and forms reveal a hidden geometry.
Virginia Tech’s history is a complicated one that is much more presumed than known due to an early 20th century blaze. In its early years, the institution served as an allegory of the rough, rag-tag, Appalachian spirit we see still embodied through a beaten-up lunch pail at football games and the largely blue-collar valley that envelops us. Tech, unlike its sister institutions William and Mary and the University of Virginia, has never owned any enslaved people by circumstance of its post-antebellum founding in 1872. Even its predecessor institution, the Olin & Preston Institute, has no record of owning any. That is not to say, however, that the grand 2,600-acre Blacksburg campus has never met or benefited from the harsh legacy of slavery.
Prior to last year, you most likely would not see him listed on the Virginia Tech Black History Timeline. He predates Charles “Uncle Sporty” Owens, Floyd Meade, and even Odd Fellows Hall, all well-known black figures in early Virginia Tech history. If you had the privilege of crawling around the campus of Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College about 148 years ago with Addison Caldwell and other “rats,” you’d most likely refer to him as “Uncle Andrew.” He is Andrew Oliver, and he is the first known African-American worker at what is now Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
Recently, CONSOL Energy announced it would be open a new mining operation on the Itmann Mine in West Virginia, and I’ve subsequently been fielding reference requests for information about Itmann and other mines in West Virginia. I haven’t spoken much previously about our mine maps in the Pocahontas Mines Collection, Ms2004-002, and this seems like the perfect time. The collection documents the development of the Pocahontas Coal Seam in southwest Virginia and West Virginia by CONSOL Energy, Inc., and its predecessors in the area. I have been working with the collection since late 2014 and several SCUA staff had been involved with it since the collection first arrived in 2004. The collection is a behemoth with 7,000 maps, about 3,000 survey books and ledgers, numerous photographs, and much more. It totals over 600 cubic feet in almost 800 boxes (but it’s not the largest collection I’ve worked on here!) We also have over 3,600 digital files of mine maps and other documents that I’m still creating metadata for!
A student worker reviews a map from the Pocahontas Mines Collection at Library Storage Building.
When I was processing the collection a few years ago, I was very fortunate to have a student majoring in mining and minerals engineering here at Tech working on the project. Ryan Mair graduated in 2016, but before he left, he drafted a couple of blog posts about the collection, since he had extensive knowledge about it and the mining industry.
One of the blog posts by Ryan Mair, about the Itmann Mines, follows:
Figure 1. Map of Itmann Coal Mines No. 1, 2, & 3, Pocahontas No. 3 Seam, Consolidation Coal Company, Southern Appalachia Region, 1983/03/04, CON411.jpg from the Pocahontas Mines Collection, Ms2004-002.
This map in Figure 1 is a production scheduling map of the Itmann No. 1, 2, & 3 Mines as operated by the Consolidation Coal Company. Maps of this type are used to depict the planned progression of mining operations with respect to a standard unit of time. This particular map progresses each future section of mining by year. The production schedule presented by this map was to start in 1983 and continue until the year 1992. The colored sections of the map represent what year coal production will occur in that area of the mine. the darker blue lines of the map depict the outline of the mine workings underground. Black lines are used to depict the property lease line and surface features, such as the buildings of the preparation plan.
These mines extracted coal from the No. 3 seam of the famous Pocahontas Coalfield. Coal from the Pocahontas seams was highly sought after because of its rare quality. This coal contains low amounts of sulfur and hydrocarbons known as “volatile matter” and leaves behind less ash material than most other coals. Pocahontas coal was especially prized by the U.S. Navy because it produces high temperatures while emitting little to no visible smoke when burned. Using this type of “smokeless” coal makes it harder to spot coal burning ships on the open sea. During World War II, the majority of coal from the Pocahontas seams were used to fire coal boilers for the U.S. Navy.
The mines depicted in the Itmann map (Figure 1) use two different methods to extract coal from the earth. Mines No. 1 and No. 2 use a conventional method called room and pillar mining, as seen in Figure 2. Room and pillar mining entails the extraction of coal while leaving large columns or “pillars” behind to support the rock overhead which is called the “back”, “roof”, or “top”. The open area left around the pillar is called the “room”. The shape of the pillars is typically that of a square or rectangle. Pillar dimensions vary with every mine design but are reliant upon the mechanical properties of the coal and the geological stresses present in the mine.
The No. 1 & 2 mines have completed their normal room and pillar mining operations and are recovering coal via a process known as “retreat mining.” Retreat mining is the selective excavation of the pillars to allow a controlled collapse of the mine roof while working towards the mine entrance. Retreat mining is done at the end of the life of a mine when the coal deposit had been depleted through normal room and pillaring. Normal room and pillar coal mines typically recover 40-45% of the coal located within the property. Mining the pillars upon retreat from a room and pillar mine allows operators to increase coal recovery to around 60%. Retreat mining is not always done due to the danger associated with it the unpredictable nature of the roof collapse. By removing selected pillars the mine roof or back is allowed to collapse while additional stress is placed on the remaining pillars. In some cases too much stress can be placed on a pillar. When a pillar reaches its maximum stress and fails, it shatters, sending rock and coal fragments violently through the air followed by the caving of roof around the area where the pillar once stood. This event is known as a pillar “burst” or “bump.” Many miners have died as a result of being near a pillar bump.
The No. 3 Mine in the northwestern part of the Itmann map (Figure 1) employs some room and pillar mining but its main design employs a method know as “longwall mining”. Longwall mining involves the complete extraction of coal from the working area using a “shearer” or “sled” that mines into a large wall or “face” of coal while moving parallel to that wall. A diagram of this method can be seen in Figure 3. As the machine cuts the coal free from the working face, an armored conveyor running parallel with the face transports the coal away. As the cutting and conveyor system move forward, it leaves the unsupported rock layers above to cave in a controlled manner in an area behind the machine. This caved area of roof rock is call the “gob” or “goaf”.
To protect the longwall mining system and the miners at the working face, numerous large hydraulic shields support the roof near the working face. These shields advance with each pass of the cutting head across the face. Longwall mines have considerably faster production capacities than traditional room and pillar mining but have more delays associated with the step and transportation of the equipment.
A working section of a longwall mine is known as a “panel” and are typically 800-1,500 ft. in width and 9,000-15,000 ft. long. Before mining the panel must be developed by what are called the “bleeder” entries. The bleeders serve to open up a path to the area while providing pathways for the ventilation of fresh air to the area. The bleeders are especially needed in the case of mining coal that contains high amounts of entrapped methane gas which is highly combustible. With the bleeder it is possible to degas or render the gas inert with enough fresh airflow. The pillars in bleeder entries are often called chain pillars and are left intact throughout the life of the mine to protect the ventilation and passageways.
In the northern section of the Itmann map (Figure 1), there are two geologic features that are identified. The two areas shaded in red denote areas where the coal on the property is less than 36 inches thick. Areas of deep underground coal that are less than 36 inches of coal are essentially too thick to mine profitably. Additionally, such areas make it difficult for both miner and machine to maneuver effectively. The second feature, shaded in light blue, is an area of coal with what is called a “parting,” a layer of non-coal rock that formed within the coalbed and parts the coal seam. Partings can be less than one inch to several feet in thickness. Thick partings are areas of coal to avoid when mining since the harder rock of the parting can excessively wear or damage cutting heads and requires more intense processing of the coal material at the surface plant.
Figure 4. Diagram of explosion area of Itmann No. 3 Mine, Itmann, WV, December 16, 1972, from the Historical Summary of Coal Mine Explosions in the United States, 1959-81, by J.K. Richmond, G.C. Price, M.J. Sapko, and E.M. Kawenski, Bureau of Mines Information Circular 8909, 1983. https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/mining/userfiles/works/pdfs/ic8909.pdf
The Itmann No. 3 mine shown in this map (Figure 1) was the scene of a mine disaster in December 1972. On December 16th, 1972, eight day shift miners had finished their shift and were exiting their working area of the Cabin Creek 4-Panel via an electrically powered rail car known as a portal bus (Figure 4). Unbeknownst to the miners, highly explosive methane gas had built up in the section. While in motion the portal bus trolley wire harp, which transfers electricity from the trolley wire to the portal bus, briefly disconnected from the wire. Such disconnections are common and are part of the design of the system but often result in an electrical sparking. Within the first 1,000 ft of the miners’ journey out of the mine just such an electrical spark occurred. This electrical sparking caused the ignition of the surrounding methane gas and propagated into an explosive wave. The blast wave and flames killed five miners instantly and seriously burned the other three. The blast force was also strong enough to blow out 14 permanent stoppings of cinderblock construction in the section.
“Historical Summary of Coal Mine Explosions in the United States, 1959-81,” By J. K. Richmond, G. C. Price, M. J. Sapko, and E. M. Kawenski, Information circular 8909, United States Department of the Interior, Bureau of Mines. https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/ mining/userfiles/works/pdfs/ic8909.pdf
“Official Report of Major Mine Explosion Disaster, Itmann No. 3 Mine (ID 46-01576), Itmann Coal Company, Itmann, Wyoming County, West Virginia, December 16, 1972” by W. R. Park, Sylvester E. Gaspersich, and Fred E. Ferguson, of the Office of Coal Mine Health and Safety, U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Mines, from the United States Mine Rescue Association, https://usminedisasters.miningquiz.com/saxsewell/itmann_1972.pdf
I began work on processing the Avery-Abex Metallurgical Collection at the beginning of November 2019, and boy has it been a rollercoaster so far. This collection, which spans 248 cubic feet, consists of case files, general company records and correspondence, photo negatives, glass plate negatives, photographic prints, and some 40,000 metal samples encased in resin plugs (more on these later). The collection has largely been languishing in Special Collections since it was acquired in the mid-1990s.
Over the years, several student employees have chipped away meaningfully at portions of the collection, but the majority of the boxes remained untouched. Because my time to process this collection is limited, I will need to strike a comfortable balance between getting all the work done on the remaining boxes before the end of July- a high priority- and processing the materials to the highest useful level- also a high priority. (Note that I did not say to the highest possible level. There is a point of diminishing returns to optimizing arrangement and description, and archival resources are scarce enough that frequently this equation must favor a more rough-and-ready processing style in order to reduce backlog and make more collections accessible faster.)
This balance is especially important to consider, given the large size of the collection. The boxes that much of the material arrived in are significantly bigger than the standard sized archival record carton, which necessitates a certain amount of space planning for both pre-and post-processed containers. The increased volume makes them very heavy and awkward to handle, and so much more prone to accidents when retrieving them from shelves.
I havent dropped any yet, but hauling them around really makes me appreciate the elegantly dainty standard sized boxes Im moving the records into. This is infinitely more so the case with the boxes of glass plate negatives, which are substantially heavier than their paper-holding counterparts and have the additional challenge of being very fragile. Let no one tell you that the life of an archivist is boring or sedentary.
Another quirk of this particular collection is that the boxes were more or less put where they would fit in the offsite storage facility when they were first acquired about 25 years ago, without recording their shelf locations, which makes finding the boxes a bit of a scavenger hunt. Pictured is one of three aisles of shelves at the storage facility. Attempting to process the boxes in any particular order would be a waste of time as a result, and so Ive had to change my approach to arranging this collection.
Instead of refoldering and replacing the records into their final resting places, I am processing box by box, keeping careful track of what ends up where, so that I can rearrange things as needed once I finish and have a better idea of what order best suits the materials. This way is much faster on the frontend than doing the boxes in order, and the surprise of not knowing whats going to be in the next box has proved a lovely diversion from the occasionally tedious tasks of pulling boxes, refoldering, relabelling, and filling in spreadsheets.
My favorite part of the collection so far has definitely been the metal samples. There are approximately 40,000 squat resin plugs, each with a small chunk of metal embedded in it with one surface exposed for testing, and a serial number etched on the outside. They are quite unique, in my experience, and are an instant point of interest for anyone who sees them. Their quantity, their different sizes and shapes, and the complete obscurity of their purpose to the uninitiated, makes them a valuable showpiece for the collection. However, these characteristics also make them a challenging processing project. Several have sprouted highly colorful oxidation growths over the years, which are fascinating and delicate. I have not yet decided whether they are more valuable remaining intact, or if I should attempt to clean off this reaction residue, knowing full well that it will likely grow back in time, as the fresh metal is exposed to air and humidity.
Oxidation on various metal alloys
Another slight wrinkle in processing that Ive encountered was the significant presence of mold on the cabinets housing the metal samples in the basement storage room used for some Special Collections and University Archives materials. The samples themselves were not in immediate danger, because resin and metals do not tend to support mold growth, but the mold would need to be killed and the plugs cleaned before they could be moved into appropriate archival boxes and placed near other, more vulnerable materials. I had planned to process the plugs first, but this had to be put on hold until the mold issue was dealt with. Luckily, we managed to employ a company specializing in mold remediation fairly quickly, and the problem was taken care of before it could spread to other collections being stored in this space. Now, the work of cleaning and boxing up the sample plugs can commence.
