Exhibits: Apollo 11 at 50

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astronaut with lunar test equipment

Aldrin sets up seismic test equipment. (click to enlarge)

No doubt, news outlets everywhere are noting the 50th anniversary of this milestone in human achievement. This post also commemorates the lunar landing and provides me with a chance to highlight both the work of our summer intern Cynthia O’Neill and one of the collections she’s been working on: The Leslie Arends Congressional Collection.

In a previous post, University Librarian Scott Walter profiled the range of learning experiences Cynthia is engaging in this summer. In the course of her preservation assessment on the Arends material, she found many Apollo program items, including a clipping that describes Arends as one of only three Illinoisans named on the 1.5″ silicon Goodwill disk left on the moon by the Apollo 11 astronauts.

Close-up of canceled first-issue stamps commemorating the Apollo 11 Moon landing

Close-up of President Richard Nixon and Postmaster General Winton Blount’s signatures on a commemorative print of the Earth as seen from orbit and a first-day-of-issue stamp created in 1971. The Armstrong quote printed at the bottom of the Moon photo states “…one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”

That clipping, commemorative photos and stamps are on display in the John Wesley Powell Rotunda on The Ames Library’s entry level from now through August. (see a selection of images from the exhibit below)

Arends received these and items from other Apollo missions in thanks for his support of the program. A copy of the speech he gave on July 21, 1969 is part of this exhibit, too. In it he makes note of historic and contemporary global contributions that led to the success of Apollo 11. Visitors are invited to reflect on the broader implications of this achievement.

Another exhibit case just beyond the rotunda commemorates Arends’ involvement in the visit that Apollo 8 Commander Col. Frank Borman made to IWU in March 1969.

I will share more details on Cynthia’s internship in a future post, but I will add one additional benefit we gained by hosting her this summer. Cynthia’s full time work is as the Program Coordinator at the Eureka Public Library and she recently arranged a visit to her library by a museum director from Peoria. Cynthia shared her insights into the Arends collection with that person, and I am hoping we can arrange a loan of some materials from the Arends Collection for their Apollo-related exhibition this fall.

We welcome the opportunity to collaborate with others and readers should know that the Arends Collection and other materials located in Tate Archives and Special Collections are available for use by both the IWU community and the general public. So stop by the library’s first floor for a look at our Apollo exhibits M-F, 8-4 now through the end of August and let me know if you are interested in exploring this or any of our other collections!

Departmental History: School of Theatre Arts

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This post traces the origins of and changes to the Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees for IWU’s theatre program as found through examining the Catalogue of Courses held in the University’s Archives.

Starting in 1945-46 academic year, students could take a course in dramatics from among offerings in the Humanities division in the College of Liberal Arts but dramatic productions had their origin in the student organization known as the Masquers starting in 1916. IWU’s Speech program is associated with this area of study beginning in the 1920s.

Summer Theatre, ca. 1966

Richard Jenkins, Class of 1969, is in a white t-shirt, third man up on the left side of this photo. Contact archives@iwu.edu if you can identify any of the others. (click to enlarge)

1947-48 BA and BFA awarded in Dramatics: This is the first time the School of Dramatics is listed as an independent unit within the College of Fine Arts. “The courses in Dramatics are offered 1) as part of a liberal education, 2) as training for teachers and directors in schools, and 3) as preparation for work in the theatre, either community or professional.” (see catalog p. 153). The catalog also notes that a BA in Dramatics through the Division of Humanities is available on completion of 16 semester hours (of 126 total) in Dramatics. BFAs require 60-100 semester hours in Dramatics and “allied fields.” Professor of Dramatics Lawrence E. Tucker, M.A., is the School’s first Director and it was his first year on campus.

1951-52 BA and BFAs awarded in Drama and in Drama and Speech — the year that the unit becomes known as School of Dramatics and Speech. Tucker is still the director (see catalog p. 137). Candidates for BFAs “must present a minimum of 124 semester hours.” BAs are earned through the Division of Humanities after completion of 24 semester hours.

1964-65 BA and BFAs awarded in Drama — the year the unit becomes the School of Drama. The courses in Drama are offered 1) as part of a liberal education, 2) as training for teachers and directors in schools, 3) as preparation for work in television or the theatre, either community or professional, and 4) as preliminary work for graduate study” (see catalog p. 119). Tucker is still the director but is listed with a Ph.D. at this time. Candidates for BFAs “must present a minimum of 130 semester hours.” BAs are earned through the Division of Humanities after completion of 24 semester hours (of 124 total).

1978-79 BA and BFAs awarded in Drama and in Music-Theatre — the unit is still The School of Drama. “The Music-Theatre Degree Program at Illinois Wesleyan University has as its goal the training of young people for careers in musical theatre. It is a complete and intensive course of study leading to a degree, Bachelor of Fine Arts in Music-Theatre” (catalog p. 125). Associate Professor of Drama Carole A. Brandt, Ph.D., became the director in 1977. BAs are awarded in the College of Liberal Arts after completion of 34 course units. BFAs in drama require 34 units; BFAs in Music-Theatre require 36 units.

1993-94 Music Theatre, Theatre Arts — the year it becomes The School of Theatre Arts. Professor of Theatre Arts Jared Brown, Ph.D. is listed as the director with a start date of 1989. BAs are awarded in the College of Liberal Arts after completion of 35 course units. BFAs in theatre arts require 35 units; BFAs in Music-Theatre require 36 units.

2003-04 Acting, Music Theatre, Theatre Design and Technology — still The School of Theatre Arts. Professor of Theatre Arts Nancy B. Loitz, M.F.A., is listed as the director with a start date of 1999. Of 32 total course units required for graduation, BAs in Theatre Arts need 12; and BFAs in Acting need 20.5 units, BFAs in Music Theatre need 22.25 units, and BFAs in Theatre Design and Technology need 19 units.

Sesquicentennial Gate (aka Hedding College Pillars)

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It’s almost twenty years since the pillars were installed by Felmley-Dickerson as our main campus entry! This post commemorates that legacy due to newly re-discovered images you will find below and a recently digitized film of the dedication. The text that follows is from this August 23, 2000 press release by Bob Aaron. [Photos were not part of the original press release. Click to enlarge. Additional images are available in the online historical collections.]

The University’s Sesquicentennial Gateway, located at the corner of Park and Empire, was dedicated on Oct. 14, 2000 as part of Homecoming festivities. The two-section curved gateway to the campus features two inscriptions: “Illinois Wesleyan University” and “1850 Scientia et Sapienta 2000” (the University’s motto, “Knowledge and Wisdom”).

Four pillars are the gateway’s architectural highlight. They were key design features that
straddled the entrance to a building at Hedding College, an Abingdon, Ill., campus, that merged with IWU in 1930.

The four limestone pillars are composed of eight segments each. Each pillar is about 25-feet tall. They stand on a wall five-to-six feet tall.

The Rev. Henry M. Bloomer, president of Hedding’s Board of Trustees, preserved the pillars in the hope they would one day be used to honor his mother and father and the joint heritage of Hedding College and IWU. His son, H. Harlan Bloomer, presented the pillars to IWU to commemorate the university’s sesquicentennial. The late Harlan Bloomer was married to Florence Bloomer, who is the granddaughter of Joseph Fifer, governor of Illinois from 1889-93, an 1868 graduate, and the 37th student to earn an IWU diploma.

Help preserve our heritage!

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May Day 2019 logo from SAA

The Society of American Archivists promotes May 1 as a day for all cultural heritage institutions to take time to consider how well their collections are protected.

At IWU’s University Archives, (located in Tate Archives & Special Collections, 4th floor, The Ames Library) we conduct collection assessments and use high quality material to protect the analog items in our care. We also subscribe to high quality digital preservation services and redundant storage media to protect historically important electronic files. Physical Plant’s Heating/Cooling crew conducts regular maintenance to make sure our environmental conditions are efficient and effective. Other maintenance personnel and cleaning crews from Physical Plant keep our building in good condition, too.

Protecting our collections is one of our fundamental responsibilities as archivists. But sometimes disasters are so devastating that all we can do is offer funding to support clean up and recovery. That was true in 2018, when Hurricanes María and Irma wreaked havoc on repositories in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.

Society of American Archivists' May Day 2019 logo

The SAA Foundation’s National Disaster Recovery Fund for Archives was there to help, providing more than $37,000 in grants to support our colleagues. Here at the Ames Library, we also take a building-wide approach to disaster preparedness by conducting fire drills, having regular site visits with the crews of Bloomington’s Fire Department both to familiarize them with our floor plans and collection concerns and to give us their insights into our safety practices.

The whole reason we can have repositories for cultural heritage like archives and museums is because people have saved items significant to their lives and our collective history. Here’s what you can do to help:

1. Take a look around your home or wherever you store the mementos of your life and the lives of people who are important to you. Is a lot of it in long-term storage? Is the storage room subject to temperature and humidity fluctuation?

TIP: You don’t need to have cold storage to make paper and print photographic collections last. Constant levels of each are the most important thing. 70 degrees F is the upper recommended limit, but keeping storage spaces well-ventilated and preventing frequent fluctuation can help your stuff go a long way into the future.

2. Are your mementos sitting on the ground? Try putting a pallet underneath boxes or raising them 4-6 inches off the floor with something else.

3. Avoid stacking boxes directly on each other if at all possible. Open shelving is optimal: leaving space on all sides of stored material promotes air circulation and limits the chance that mold will develop.

4. Do you have digital files? Do you back up your hard drive or use a commercial company for online storage? If you’ve got a back up hard drive, is it located near your primary digital storage place? Explore ways to back up your important files and keep them in a separate location to lessen the chance for loss if there’s a fire or natural disaster in your area.

5. Are your digital images labeled? File names like DSC7723, DSC7724, and so on can accumulate faster than you think. After awhile, how will you know what you are saving?

TIP: At a minimum, make folders with event names and dates to store photos in or create an index that associates this information with the program-generated file names.

6. Are your physical collections falling apart? Books, photo albums, scrapbooks and textiles need attention if they are to last. Taking photos out of old albums whose adhesives are failing and making sure they’re labeled is a good start. Some books may be rebound, but many will survive well into the future in a box or wrapper designed for them. Photocopying or scanning newspaper clippings can preserve their information without the worry of deterioration due to typically acidic scrapbook pages and/or newspaper itself.

TIP: Don’t seal anything in a plastic bag! Condensation forms quickly in plastic and damp, airless environments promote mold growth.

If you have concerns about any of your personal collections, I’m happy to talk with you about them. Use the Library of Congress’s Personal Archiving tips and the American Library Association’s Preservation Week as opportunities to take stock of what you’re keeping, why it’s important to you and how you can act in ways that will keep your heritage safe for years to come!

Note: more ideas are available in one of my previous blog posts.

Named places: Buck Memorial Library

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Buck Memorial Library is named for Rev. Dr. Hiram and Martha A. Buck. The Bucks became benefactors of the University starting in the 1890s with a donation of farmland. Hiram served as a trustee and Martha became IWU’s first female trustee on his death. On Mrs. Buck’s death a gift to the University included a request that funds be designated for a library and World Culture Center

HiramBuck

Rev. Dr. Hiram Buck

MarthaBuck

Martha Buck

 

 

 

 

 

 

Buck was IWU’s first free-standing library and served our community in that capacity from 1923-1968. It continues to fill Martha Buck’s wishes as home to IWU’s World Languages, Literatures and Culture department.

More information on the Bucks is available in IWU’s Historical Sketch and Alumni Record (1895) pp. 50-53 available online at https://bit.ly/2QX8865

First African-American PhD in Sociology

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This guest post was contributed by Carl Teichman, Director of Government and Community Relations, IWU President’s Office, and member of the Class of 1980. Teichman created this biographical summary through information found in Randall K. Burkett’s book Black Redemption: Churchmen Speak for the Garvey Movement (Temple University Press, 1978).

James Robert Lincoln Diggs, Ph.D., 1906
James Robert Lincoln Diggs, Ph.D., 1906

James Robert Lincoln Diggs was awarded a Ph.D. in Sociology from Illinois Wesleyan University in 1906, thereby becoming the first African-American to earn a Ph.D. in that discipline and the ninth to earn a Ph.D. in any field in the United States.

Diggs, whose Ph.D. thesis was titled “The Dynamics of Social Progress,” graduated from Wayland Seminary in Washington, D.C., in 1866, and went on to earn the A.B. and A.M. degrees from Bucknell University in 1898 and 1899.

After completing his academic training, Diggs was the head of several small black Baptist colleges in the south, including State University in Louisville, Ky., Virginia Theological Seminary and College in Lynchburg, Va., and Selma University in Selma, Ala. In 1914, he was named president of Clayton-Williams University in Baltimore. A year later he was called to the pastorate of Trinity Baptist Church in Baltimore, and he served as the minister there until his death in 1923.

Diggs was a colleague of W.E.B. DuBois and was one of the few black educators to participate in the Niagara Movement. Diggs was among the group of 29 prominent African-Americans who met secretly in Niagara Falls, Ont., in 1905 and drew up a manifesto that called for full civil liberties, abolition of racial discrimination, and recognition of human brotherhood. The Niagara Movement was the forerunner of the NAACP.

At the Niagara Movement’s Harper’s Ferry Convention in 1906, the year he received the Ph.D. from Illinois Wesleyan, Diggs lectured alongside Du Bois and Reverd D. Ransom. He was also a principal financial backer of the Niagara Movement’s journal, the Horizon. An early member of the NAACP, Diggs was president of the Baltimore division. He was also a member of the national Equal Rights League and served as its national vice president. Diggs was regarded for his scholarly sermons, including an eloquent defense of Marcus Garvey during the third International Convention of Garvey Universal Negro Improvement Association in August 1922.

Named places: Harriet House

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Harriet Rust

Harriett House completes the Dodds/Dolan/Magill housing quadrangle. It opened in the Fall of 1997 and was the first new residence hall built on the IWU campus since 1970. At first only known as “New House,” the hall was renamed on May 10, 1999 to honor Harriett Fuller Rust, an Illinois Wesleyan trustee and president of the Illinois Wesleyan President’s Club from 1983 until her death in July 1997.

Mrs. Rust was actively involved in the campus and local community. At the time of the hall’s naming, then-president of the Board of Trustees Craig Hart said, “Her enthusiasm and energy has helped IWU in so many ways, but especially her strong commitment to our students makes this tribute especially appropriate.”

A video that pays tribute to Rust as a Bloomington-Normal “Woman of Distinction” is available at https://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/memorials/7.

Research files: IWU Baseball & segregation

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IWU Athletics made history with a 1930 spring Baseball training trip to the South (See the 1932 Wesleyana p. 133). A brief mention in the 1950 Wesleyana says IWU was the first school to take a team on this kind of trip annually. The trips spread IWU’s reputation and so were a good recruiting tool for out-of-state students. The Argus often attributes the success of our baseball teams to these non-Conference games and from the first mention on April 16, 1930 (p.6) it was clear that extra practice time was the primary goal.

A recent research request raised the question of our involvement with segregated schools during these trips. I have yet to find mention in the earliest articles on the subject, but in 1955 the Board of Trustees issued a statement that included a point about discrimination based on religion and race with regard to education. Our records are not clear about why such a policy was implemented but this was the year of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, so it is not difficult to imagine how topics in the larger world could influence decisions inside the Wesleyan Bubble.

Statement of Policy excerpt
Excerpt from a three page May 1955 IWU Bulletin insert titled “A Public Statement of Policy.”

More to the point of this post, on December 3, 1956 the Faculty Meeting Minutes show a question raised about policies regarding “colored players on our baseball trips and on other sports teams.” The Athletics Committee of the Board of Trustees took up the question.

IWU Board of Trustees' Committee on Athletic Relations with the stated purpose of reviewing athletics' policies and schedules.
1956 committee details are unavailable. The 1958 Board of Trustees committee name and purpose is pictured here.

The committee brought a policy back to the faculty on January 7, 1957 which was debated and approved. The policy below was written by the Committee on Improvement of Athletics Relations on December 13, 1956.

A 1958 restatement of the 1956 policy that IWU would not schedule games with athletic teams that discriminated against members of IWU teams.
1956 policy on athletics (Click to enlarge.)

A revision reported to the faculty on October 6, 1958 is pictured below and is attributed to the Committee on Athletic Policy. No separate records of these groups exist in the University’s archives and this statement was actually found in the March 1965 Faculty Meeting Minutes. It does not explicitly mention race and instead defines two criteria IWU uses, and expects its opponents to use, in determining eligibility of players.

1958 revision (click to enlarge)

Of course, agreed upon policies don’t always translate into actions. By early 1965 the faculty raised the question again. A February 5 (p. 3) Argus article implies that the Southern trips to segregated schools continue “because we at present have no Negro on the baseball team….” That statement is affirmed in a quote attributed to Jack Horenberger in the February 12, 1965 Argus (p. 1). Horenberger “agreed ‘in principle to the recommendation'” and added “that the present policy has never been fully invoked due to the fact that ‘he (sic) has never had a Negro come out for baseball.'” The same article mentions a new proposal that would prohibit IWU scheduling games with segregated schools regardless of the presence of an IWU athlete who is black.

A motion from the Human Relations Committee, which the February 5, 1965 Argus reports was recently formed, is raised at the March 1965 Faculty Meeting and is more explicit than previous statements regarding integrating athletic teams. It appears to receive approval and yet the record pictured below concludes that it is the 1958 policy that is ultimately affirmed.

This document shows the faculty affirming an explicit statement about playing only racially-integrated teams but the less explicit 1958 policy is affirmed.
March 1965 Faculty Meeting (click to enlarge)

At least one alumnus, the person who most recently prompted this inquiry, feels the policy was enforced. A further search of the student newspaper only reveals a later interview with a faculty member reminiscing on the controversy in the 1960s (February 22, 1985 Argus p. 6). She thought the lack of black athletes on IWU’s teams wasn’t a coincidence considering the poor climate of social justice on campus in the 1960s. Alumnus Luther Bedford (’59; track and 3x football letterman) shared his experiences, including examples of discrimination in this era, in a 1999 interview for the Minority Alumni Network.

Call for participation from Meg (your archivist):
A review of the sources for this post reveals several mentions of College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin (CCIW) policies regarding scheduling competitions. It would be an interesting exercise to compile a list of the IWU Spring schedules in this era in order to identify segregation policies of the schools we played and to look at the development of specific rules for CCIW schools. I would also be interested in hearing stories from IWU athletes during this time period and from any others who were impacted by these decisions. You, too, can contribute to our knowledge of IWU’s history! Any takers? Contact archives {at} iwu.edu