$999.99 More Than a Penny for Your Thoughts

Just think how many loads of laundry you could do or how many cases of . . . soda you could buy with $1,000.

If you, like the gentlemen on the left, have pored over RBMSCL manuscripts, books, broadsides, maps, etc. (with or without a magnifying glass) and turned your brilliant discoveries into a brilliant paper, why not submit it for a chance to receive one of two Chester P. Middlesworth Awards?

The two awards, one for an undergraduate and one for a graduate student, each carry a cash prize of $1000.00. The awards will be given at a reception held during Parents' and Family Weekend (22-24 October 2010). Click here for our post about last year's happy recipients!

A few stipulations:

• Your paper must have been prepared to meet requirements of a course in any academic department at Duke University or of an independent study project for credit at Duke University.

• Your paper must be based largely or wholly on sources in the RBMSCL.

• Your paper must be nominated by a faculty member. Faculty may use this nomination form.

Oh, and the deadline for submissions is Saturday, May 15th!

For Mom

On this special day, we're sharing this cover from the sheet music from 1915 song (words by Edward Morton and James S. Donahue and music by Newton B. Heims). We love the sweet chorus:

Just write her a nice little letter,
Tell her you hope she is well,
Send her some little remembrance,
Something to make her heart swell,
Pet her and call her your sweetheart,
Cheer her and make her feel gay,
Don't say a word that will grieve her,
Let this be your Mother's Day.

Of course, we can't write about mothers without mentioning one of the beloved treasures of the RBMSCL: enslaved woman Vilet Lester's 1857 letter to her former mistress (from the Joseph Allred Papers). Vilet asks about her precious daughter, whom she had to leave behind when she was sold (ultimately) to a Georgian family. Each time we read it, our eyes get teary and our hearts break all over again.

Happy Mother's Day, Vilet. Happy Mother's Day to moms everywhere!

2010-2011 Franklin Research Center Travel Grants Awarded

John Hope Franklin. From the John Hope Franklin Papers.

The John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture is pleased to announce the recipients of this year’s travel grants. These grants allow scholars to travel to Durham to conduct research using the Franklin Research Center’s collections.

• Shanna G. Benjamin, Department of English, Grinnell College, for work on a biography of the late Nellie Y. McKay, Bascom Professor of English and Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

• Derek Charles Catsam, Department of History, University of Texas of the Permian Basin, for a chronicle of the events of 1985 in South Africa, a tumultuous year in that country's history.
  

• Jametta Davis, Department of History, Howard University, for research for her dissertation detailing the effects of New Deal policies and programs on African American women.
  

• Jacob S. Dorman, Department of History, University of Kansas, for an examination of the formation and development of black Jewish religions in the past 45 years.
  

• Elizabeth Herbin, Department of History, St. John’s University, for an analysis of racial conflicts and segregation among small Southern farmers from 1900 to 1945.

• Karen Kossie-Chernyshev, Department of History, Geography, and Economics, Texas Southern University, for an account of "boomerang migration": the return of African American Southerners from their new homes in the North to participate in social and political uplift activities during the Jim Crow era.
  

• Deborah Lee, independent scholar, for a study tracing the networks of anti-slavery activists in the Potomac River basin from 1810 to 1870.

• Joseph Moore, Department of History, University of North Carolina at Greensboro,for research on the 1850 trial of George Grier, an enslaved South Carolina man, for seditious speech, with emphasis on an exploration of the community of Abbeville County, South Carolina.

Watch The Devil's Tale for news about upcoming discussions with several of the travel grant recipients from the Bingham, Hartman, and Franklin Research Centers.

RBMSCL Photos: It's MayDay!

Today, archives and other cultural heritage institutions across the country will be celebrating MayDay, our annual reminder to re-examine our strategies for protecting our valuable collections in the event of an emergency. To honor the day, we're posting this picture of a range of pH-neutral archival boxes and papers, just waiting to house our new acquisitions. Proper housing is one of the many steps that the RBMSCL takes to ensure that our collections will be around for generations.

Over at Preservation Underground, our colleagues in the Preservation department have prepared a handy list of online resources on library emergency planning.

Free Comic Books!

Today is Free Comic Book Day, which means that comic book shops all over the world will be giving away free comics. But every day is Free Comic Book Day at the RBMSCL, where everyone can use all of our 56,000 comic books (in the Edwin and Terry Murray Comic Book Collection) for free! You can’t take them with you, but you can spend as much time with them as you want in our reading room.

If you do want to take home some free comics (and who doesn't?), the closest participating store is Ultimate Comics on Ninth Street in Durham.

Post contributed by Megan Lewis, Technical Services Archivist for the Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture.