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Tag: Heather Cooper

Feb 25 2022

Civil Rights Trailblazer June Davis Donates Papers to IWA

Posted on February 25, 2022March 15, 2022 by Heather Cooper

This post is by Archives Assistant Heather Cooper.

The Iowa Women’s Archives recently received the first installment of a new collection of personal papers from Norma June Wilson Davis. Davis, who later became an administrator at the University of Iowa, was at the forefront of the student civil rights movement in Atlanta, Georgia, in the early 1960s. Born in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1940, Davis recalled that she realized she was different at a young age and resisted expectations that she sit at the back of the bus or drink at the water fountains marked for African Americans’ use when she went into town with her mother. Primarily known as “Norma” prior to her marriage, Wilson moved to Atlanta in 1957 to attend Spelman College and was part of a community of students from several Black colleges and universities who were inspired to organize their own protest movement after the first student sit-ins took place in Greensboro, North Carolina. Wilson was a central figure in what became known as the Atlanta Student Movement (ASM). Announcing their presence on the civil rights stage, representatives took out full-page advertisements in several newspapers, outlining their grievances and objectives. In “An Appeal for Human Rights,” Atlanta students declared that “Today’s youth will not sit by submissively, while being denied all of the rights, privileges, and joys of life. … [W]e plan to use every legal and non-violent means at our disposal to secure full citizenship rights as members of this great Democracy of ours.” As chair of the ASM’s Action Committee, Wilson played a major role in organizing the rallies, picket lines, economic boycotts, and sit-ins that swept Atlanta and the region from 1960 to 1961. The IWA is honored to preserve the papers of N. June Davis in our repository.

 

From “An Appeal for Human Rights,” March 9, 1960

 

Macon News, December 7, 1960. Norma Wilson center.

Although her name is far less known than some other civil rights activists, Wilson was a trailblazer in the student movement. Readers are likely familiar with the “Freedom Rides” organized by James Farmer and the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) in 1961 – a campaign to challenge segregation in interstate travel and accommodations. Six months before Farmer organized the first so-called “Freedom Rides,” Norma Wilson and other members of the ASM led their own effort to challenge segregation in facilities for interstate travelers. In 1960, Wilson and two other students boarded a Greyhound bus on the Atlanta-to-Jacksonville route. When the bus stopped at a station in Macon, Georgia, they tried to dine in the all-white cafeteria and were subsequently taken into police custody. Davis recalled, “So, we went to the police station and the police chief and I talked and I said, ‘You know we haven’t broken any laws.’ And he said, ‘We don’t serve you.’ And I said, ‘The Supreme Court just said you will.’ So, he left the office and went out, conversed with some people, and found out I was right.” One newspaper noted that it was “the first such integration attempt reported in Macon.” Davis remembered that, after reading about the bus station confrontation in the newspaper, James Farmer called ASM leader Lonnie King and said, “’I like the idea of the rides that you took. I think I’m going to call them Freedom Rides.'” “And that,” Davis said, “is how the Freedom Rides were born.”

 

Wilson and her colleagues were not actually arrested in Macon, but arrest was a regular occurrence for students and others who participated in sit-ins and other public demonstrations. The President of Spelman College actually sent letters to parents to inform them that students’ participation in demonstrations “on the desegregation front” could lead to arrest and time in jail. Wilson was sentenced to time in a number of different facilities, including two weeks in a work camp where male prisoners worked on a chain gang and female prisoners picked crops and worked in the kitchen or laundry. Davis recalled, it was “not a safe situation … for the women.” Following one of Wilson’s arrests, the Dean of Women at Spelman telegrammed Wilson’s mother: “REGRET DAUGHTER IN JAIL. REFUSES BAIL.” Wilson and others often refused bail and organized a “jail without bail” campaign in order to pack the jails and “hopefully strain the financial resources of the county.” It was another attempt to use economic pressure to force change. Two years before Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote his famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” Wilson and other participants in the “jail without bail” program issued a public statement from the Atlanta city jail: “[T]he only way we can achieve our freedom is by being willing to endure and suffer the hardships that are encountered in the achievement of freedom. I only wish that each of you were here to share the darkness of this room, this hard bunk, the smell of the place, and the filth, but yet the light of freedom is slowly slipping in.”

 

 

This blog highlights just a few moments in June Davis’s story. This first installment in our new collection of Davis’s personal papers includes fascinating material from her years in Atlanta, including correspondence and a journal from her time in jail, original newspapers and movement publications, and the transcript of an oral history about her work in the ASM. We look forward to receiving and exploring more material that sheds light on Davis’s life and work in Iowa. After moving here with her family in 1968, Davis continued to be a community activist, serving, for example, on an advisory committee that investigated racism in the Iowa City school system. Davis also had a long career at the University of Iowa, where she worked in Residence Services, Finance and University Services, and the Office of Affirmative Action. 

 

Posted in African American Women in Iowa, From the collections, UncategorizedTagged African American history, Black History Month, civil rights, Heather Cooper, June Davis, Spelman College
Oct 14 2020

From Alabama to the Barrio: Ernest Rodriguez and the Fight Against Racism in Iowa

Posted on October 14, 2020December 9, 2020 by Heather Cooper

This post by IWA Graduate Research Assistant Heather Cooper is the ninth installment in our series highlighting African American history in the collections of the Iowa Women’s Archives. The series ran weekly during Black History Month, and will continue monthly for the remainder of 2020.

In honor of Latinx Heritage Month (September 15 – October 15), this post draws attention to an individual and family history that sheds light on the intersection of Black and Latinx experience and activism in Iowa.

In recognition of his lifelong activism for the causes of labor, education, and civil and human rights, Ernest Rodriguez was inducted into the second Iowa Latino Hall of Fame in 2018.   Beginning in the 1950s, Rodriguez helped to organize the Davenport council of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC).  In the 1960s and 70s, he served on the Davenport Human Relations Commission, served as director of the Area Board for Migrants, and as coordinator of the Spanish Speaking Peoples Commission.  As a union organizer and advocate for workers’ rights, he co-chaired the Quad City Grape Boycott Committee to support the nationwide boycott of California table grapes led by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta.  Although Rodriguez identifies strongly with his Chicano heritage, his own experience growing up in an interracial family undoubtedly informs his broader commitment to fighting against the racism, discrimination, and inequality shared by Latinos, African Americans, and other minorities in Iowa and the U.S.

 

“Spanish-Speaking Program coordinator named here,” The Target (Published in the interest of employees at Rock Island Arsenal) vol. 13, no. 14, July 25, 1975.

The Ernest Rodriguez papers are part of a rich set of collections in the Iowa Women’s Archives (IWA) that include letters, speeches, diaries, photographs, and over eighty oral histories documenting the experience of Latina women and their families and communities in Iowa.  A large selection of that material is available in the Iowa Digital Library.  These collections also inform the IWA  website, Migration is Beautiful, a digital humanities project that “highlights the journeys Latinas and Latinos made to Iowa and situates the contributions of Latino communities within a broader understanding of Iowa’s history of migration and civil rights.”  IWA also holds the papers of Ernest Rodriguez’s older sister, Estefania Joyce Rodriguez, who was also a member of the Davenport LULAC council and a great chronicler of her family’s history through the preservation of photographs.

 

Ernest Rodriguez was born in 1928 in the predominately Mexican settlement known as “Holy City” in Bettendorf, Iowa.  His father, Norberto Rodriguez, was raised on a small ranch in the State of Jalisco, Mexico; his mother, Muggie Belva Adams Rodriguez, was an African American woman born in Balls Play, Alabama.  Both migrated north and, eventually, to Iowa in pursuit of new opportunities in the 1910s.  Following the death of her first husband, Muggie Adams ran a boardinghouse in the predominately African American town of Buxton, Iowa, catering primarily to “miners and Mexican laborers who worked as section hands on the railroad.”  It was there that she met Norberto Rodriguez, who she married in 1920.  The couple and their growing family settled in Bettendorf, Iowa in 1923.

 

Muggie Adams Rodriguez with children gathered around pump, Bettendorf, Iowa, 1924.
Muggie and Noberto Rodriguez outside with daughter, Nestora Rivera, Buxton, Iowa, circa 1918.

 

 

Ernest Rodriguez was part of an extended interracial family that included his mother and father, eight siblings, relatives in Mexico, and the families of his maternal aunt and uncle, Monroe Milton Adams, Jr. and Adaline Adams (known as “Aunt Tiny”).  Rodriguez described his mother as being “of a very light complexion with mixed African American, White, and Native American Indian bloods.”  Growing up in Iowa, Rodriguez recalled the way his mother’s cooking blended all of these cultures.  She made Mexican rice and fideo, cornbread and cobblers, chitterlings, posole, and “fried Indian bread.”  This she fed to her family, as well as to the needy men and women that came their way during the Great Depression.  Both Ernest and Estefania Rodriguez recalled their mother’s generosity and the fact that “She never looked down on anybody.”  Witnessing her struggles with poverty and racism, they both saw her as a model of independence, determination, and perseverance.

Members of the Rodriguez family, Davenport, Iowa, August 1955.

The Holy City barrio where Ernest Rodriguez was born was a working-class, mostly Mexican community which offered sparse accommodations to workers in the Bettendorf Company’s foundries.  Although most of Holy City’s residents were Mexican immigrants by the 1920s, a few Greeks and African Americans also lived there.  Latinos and African Americans shared many experiences in Iowa, including racial stereotyping; limited employment opportunities that often relegated men to the most dangerous, low-paying work and women to domestic service; housing discrimination; and segregation in churches, movie theaters, barbershops, and schools.  When the Rodriguez family moved to Davenport, Iowa in the late 1930s, they immediately faced a petition campaign organized by white residents who wanted to drive them out of the neighborhood.  Rodriguez recalled,

 

I remember that it was then I began to really know what prejudice and discrimination meant, because I felt it all around me. The kids in the neighborhood were all white and when they got mad at you, they [hurled racial insults].  As I grew older I found out that there were certain places you couldn’t get a job because of employment discrimination.  Certain taverns and restaurants you avoided for the same reason.  You were more likely to be stopped for questioning by the police.  It seemed that a disproportionate number of minorities were arrested and convicted for crimes than whites.  This is true today.

Although much of Ernest Rodriguez’s activism has focused on issues that impact Chicano communities in particular, he has also operated from an understanding of the shared oppression faced by all minorities living under systemic racism. Rodriguez was a Chairman and leading member of the Minority Coalition, which he described as “a banding together of organizations such as NAACP and LULAC whose aims are to work for the betterment of the black and Chicano (Mexican-American) Communities.”  He challenged the racism and classism that undergirded the education system, not only for ESL students, but for all “Children of minority groups [who] are victims of discriminatory middle-class thinking.”  As a leader in LULAC Council 10, he nurtured a strong relationship with Davenport’s League for Social Justice and the Catholic Interracial Council as they worked to combat racism and demand equal access to housing and employment.  And as a member of the Davenport Human Relations Commission he worked to address “race discrimination in housing, employment, and education” and developed a police-community relations program meant to challenge the racist treatment of Chicano and African American citizens by police in the Quad Cities.  Rodriguez was also an early feminist, noting in a 1970s radio broadcast that Chicano women, like African American women, faced “the double discrimination of race and gender.” 

Article discusses Davenport police seminars and other work of the Human Relations Commission. “Seek Joint Rights Executive,” Davenport Times-Democrat, December 10, 1968.

Even after he retired from his position as Equal Employment Manager at the Rock Island Arsenal in the 1990s, Ernest Rodriguez remained active in the Davenport LULAC council and regularly wrote opinion pieces published in local newspapers about racial justice.  He stands as an example of the power of community activism and the impact of local leaders who relentlessly work to promote social justice at the local, state, and national level.  Ernest Rodriguez’s life and activism also illuminate the longstanding presence and contributions of Latinos and African Americans to the Hawkeye state, as well as our long history of racism. 

Latinx history is Iowa history. 

Black history is Iowa history. 

The ongoing fight for racial justice is Iowa history.

References:

Omar Valerio-Jimenez, “Racializing Mexican Immigrants in Iowa’s Early Mexican Communities,” Annals of Iowa, vol. 75, no. 1 (Winter 2016): 1-46.

Janet Weaver, “From Barrio to ¡Boicoteo!: The Emergence of Mexican American Activism in Davenport, 1917-1970,” Annals of Iowa, vol. 68, no. 3 (Summer 2009): 215-254.

Iowa Women’s Archives, Migration is Beautiful, http://migration.lib.uiowa.edu/, October 14, 2020. 

Posted in African American Women in Iowa, From the collections, Mujeres Latinas, UncategorizedTagged Ernest Rodriguez, Estefania Joyce Rodriguez, Heather Cooper, lulac, migration is beautiful, Muggie Belva Adams Rodriguez
May 29 2020

Pauline Humphrey & African American Beauty Culture in Iowa

Posted on May 29, 2020June 15, 2020 by Heather Cooper

This post by IWA Graduate Research Assistant Heather Cooper is the fifth installment in our series highlighting African American history in the Iowa Women’s Archives collections. The series ran weekly during Black History Month, and will continue monthly for the remainder of 2020.

 

Over the past few months, social media has been filled with people bemoaning the temporary loss of their favorite salon or barbershop and the need to improvise at home for their hair care needs. More broadly, the crisis over Covid-19 has been a reminder of how important local businesses and services are in our daily lives and how much they contribute to our sense of community. This is a good moment to remember and celebrate the history of African American entrepreneurship in Iowa by highlighting the career of Pauline Robinson Brown Humphrey, who might fairly be called the Madame C. J. Walker of Iowa.  A life-long resident of Des Moines, Pauline Humphrey opened the first beauty shop for African Americans in Iowa in 1935 and went on to establish the Crescent School of Beauty Culture in 1939. For many years these enterprises operated in the Center Street neighborhood, a thriving black business district in Des Moines.

 

Group portrait, including Pauline B. Humphrey, front row center wearing tied shoes, with hands in pockets, outside Crescent School of Beauty Culture with Dormitory, [1940s], African American Museum of Iowa

 

 

An oral history with Pauline Humphrey’s daughter Barbara James in the Iowa Women’s Archives recalls the strong example she set for her daughter as a “career woman.” The interview was conducted as part of the Iowa Women’s Archives’ African American Women in Iowa Project in the 1990s. 

Denied entrance to cosmetology programs in Iowa on account of her race, Pauline Humphrey traveled to Chicago with her young daughter in order to attend Madame C. J. Walker’s cosmetology school in 1934. There, she worked long hours to study both theory and practice and master how to care for the beauty needs of African American women. When the family returned to Des Moines in 1936, Humphrey passed the State Board of Examination to become a licensed cosmetologist and opened her first beauty shop.

But Humphrey wasn’t satisfied to simply provide services; she wanted to help create opportunities for others to become independent and self-sufficient and she saw a need for a beauty school in Iowa that would accept African American students. Humphrey commuted to Fort Dodge in order to gain certification and become licensed to teach and, in 1939, she opened the Crescent School of Beauty Culture in Des Moines. The school’s motto was “Aim High and Hold Your Aim.”

 

“Cosmetology students in Crescent Beauty School Classroom, 1950s,” African American Museum of Iowa

Around 30 students enrolled at Crescent each semester and trained in all the typical procedures found in African American beauty parlors at the time: “marceling, straightening, bleaching and tinting, permanents, pressing and styling, facials, manicures and pedicures, and cutting and conditioning.” Students learned by doing, offering discounted services for men and women at the beauty shop, as well as making monthly visits to local hospitals where they offered beauty care to patients free of charge. Humphrey sought to increase the availability of black beauty services in Iowa by recruiting students from underserved areas and then sending graduates back home to provide for their own communities. Reflecting on her grandmother’s life work, Julie James wrote that Pauline Humphrey “not only educated students, but did untold service to her community.”  Furthermore, the Crescent Beauty School “was a stepping stone for many men and women to gain economic independence” as cosmetologists, stylists, and cosmetology instructors. Humphrey was an advocate for her students, her graduates, and the profession. She went on to lease a chain of beauty shops in the state and start her own line of hair and beauty products for African Americans. 

As a female business owner and a woman of color, Humphrey faced many challenges owning and operating her own business. She couldn’t get a small business loan; many people weren’t willing to rent business property to African Americans; and suppliers weren’t always keen on working with a female business owner.  Humphrey was also fighting to claim a place in a beauty industry dominated by whites and white standards of beauty. Recalling her mother’s career, Barbara James said, “It was hard for a woman being in that position. . . She fought the racial fights and also the gender fights.” Humphrey built a life around creating opportunities for her daughter to pursue her education through graduate school without financial hindrance and for other men and women to become independent professionals. Citing her mother as the greatest influence in her life, James recalled, “. . .the biggest thing she wanted to do with me was to make sure that I was an independent woman, who could take care of myself, who was educated, and who was able to make a life for myself.”  Her mother’s image and her accomplishments provided, for James, the clearest example of how to approach one’s life – “Enjoy it, and savor it, and push yourself to make things better for other people.”

Pauline Humphrey and the Crescent Beauty School are featured in the African American Museum of Iowa’s current temporary exhibit, “Untangling the Roots: The Culture of Black Hair”: https://blackiowa.org/untanglingtheroots/

Material on Pauline Humphrey can be found in the Iowa Women’s Archives collection Giving Voice to their Memories: Oral Histories of African American Women in Iowa. This collection includes an oral history interview with Humphrey’s daughter, Barbara James; a brief remembrance written by Humphrey’s granddaughter, Julie James; and a copy of the article “Iowa Women of Achievement” published in the Iowa State Historical Society’s The Goldfinch: Iowa History for Young People (Winter 1993). Useful information on Crescent Beauty School and other African American businesses in Iowa was also found in Jack Lufkin’s chapter, “‘Higher Expectations for Ourselves’: African-Americans in Iowa’s Business World,” in Outside In: African-American History in Iowa, 1838-2000, ed. Bill Silag et al. (Iowa City: State Historical Society of Iowa, 2001). The photographs are shared by permission of the African American Museum of Iowa, which holds the Humphrey Family papers.

Posted in African American Women in Iowa, From the collections, UncategorizedTagged African American women, beauty, black history, cosmetology, des moines, Heather Cooper, pauline humphrey1 Comment
Feb 21 2020

Virginia Harper and the Battle Against Highway 61

Posted on February 21, 2020February 21, 2020 by Anna Holland

This post by IWA Graduate Research Assistant Heather Cooper is the third installment in our series highlighting African American history in the Iowa Women’s Archives collection. The series will continue weekly during Black History Month, and monthly for the remainder of 2020.

Call to a public hearing on Highway 61
Call to a public hearing on Highway 61

If you’re looking for a local history of civil rights activism, look no further than The Iowa Women’s Archives, where our stacks are filled with the papers and records of remarkable individuals and organizations devoted to the ongoing struggle for civil rights and social justice – the Virginia Harper papers are one such collection.  Harper was born in Fort Madison, Iowa in 1929.  She studied at the State University of Iowa (now the University of Iowa) and was one of five African American women to integrate the first residence hall on campus (Currier Hall) in 1946.  Harper worked as an x-ray technician and medical assistant in her family’s Fort Madison clinic and was actively engaged in her community, serving on the state Board of Public Instruction, the Iowa Board of Parole, and as Secretary and then President of the Fort Madison branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from the 1960s through the 1990s.

Virginia Harper at a NAACP membership drive event, 1971

As NAACP Secretary, Virginia Harper took on local issues with national import.  Beginning in 1967, the Iowa Department of Transportation (DOT) and Iowa State Highway Commission endorsed a plan to improve U.S. 61 in Fort Madison by re-routing the highway through the southwest corner of the city.  These plans were meant to improve traffic conditions and ease of access to the city, but at the expense of the effected neighborhood, whose residents would be forced to relocate.  The area in question represented what Virginia Harper called “the only truly multi-ethnic area in the city,” home to a significant number of African Americans, Mexican Americans, and low-income whites. Acting as Secretary of the Fort Madison branch of the NAACP, Harper filed a legal complaint against the project, alleging that it violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act because a disproportionate number of those who would be displaced were members of the minority population.  This was the beginning of a struggle that went on for several years as Harper and others joined forces with leaders of the Mexican-American community to protest the plan, gather signatures for multiple petition campaigns, and correspond with various government agencies and national civil rights groups. 

Letter from the Secretary of Transportation confirming that the re-routing plan did constitute discrimination

At the heart of Harper’s analysis was a critique of the racist and classist views which deemed this area of the city worth sacrificing.  In a letter to the Department of Transportation on June 30, 1970, Harper outlined fourteen reasons why the relocation plan was objectionable.  She wrote, “The corridor which has been chosen for the Highway relocation, follows the tradition of disrupting minority group neighborhoods. … Chosen because it is the ‘cheapest’ area of the town, it is this way because the citizens of this area have been systematically denied the privilege of living in other areas of the community.”  In a letter to the editor of the Evening Democrat, Harper added, “This is not quite the time for sitting back and telling minority group members and lower income whites that they must sacrifice for the good of society. They’ve been sacrificing all their lives and are accustomed to being used.”

Part of a larger series on “Iowa Racial Issues,” the Highway 61 material in Virginia Harper’s papers provides insight into historic patterns and practices of redlining and defacto segregation in Iowa. Come to the archives to learn more about Harper and civil rights struggles in the state.

For more information on this topic, check out Kara Mollano’s article about Highway 61 in the Annals of Iowa: “Race, Roads, and Right-of-Way: A Campaign to Block Highway Construction in Fort Madison, 1967-1976.” The Annals of Iowa, Vol. 68, No. 3 (Summer 2009): 255-297.

Posted in African American Women in Iowa, From the collections, IWA History, People, UncategorizedTagged African American history, African American women, Fort Madison, Heather Cooper, Virginia Harper
Feb 05 2020

“The Desire for Freedom:” Early African American Settlers and Activists in Iowa

Posted on February 5, 2020February 7, 2020 by Heather Cooper
Grace Morris Allen Jones

This post by IWA Graduate Assistant, Heather Cooper, is the first of a series highlighting African American history in the Iowa Women’s Archives’ collections. The series will continue weekly during Black History month, and monthly throughout 2020. 

The Grace Morris Allen Jones collection at the Iowa Women’s Archives consists of only one folder, but inside it you will find the history of three generations of remarkable African American women. Jones was born in Keokuk, Iowa in 1876 and grew up in Burlington, where she would later establish the Grace M. Allen Industrial School for African American students. After her marriage to Dr. Laurence Clifton Jones in 1912, the couple moved to Piney Woods, Mississippi, where together they built and taught at the Piney Woods Country Life School. Jones maintained contact with family and friends in Iowa and, in 1927, she wrote and published an article about her family history in The Palimpsest, a magazine published by the State Historical Society of Iowa. 

In “The Desire for Freedom,” Jones tells the story of her family’s journey from slavery to freedom in the 1850s. Jones’ grandmother, Charlotta Pyles, was enslaved by the Gordon family on a large plantation in Kentucky, along with her twelve children. Her husband, Harry Pyles, was a free man, but under the laws of slavery he had no legal authority to protect his own wife and children. When she was fifty-four years old, Pyles was granted her freedom, along with most of her kin, and they made the arduous journey from Kentucky to free territory just as winter set in. The group, which ultimately settled in Keokuk, Iowa, included Charlotta and Harry Pyles, eleven of their children, and five of their grandchildren. The family lived in a large brick house, built by Harry Pyles, and belonged to the First Baptist Church of Keokuk. It was there that Charlotta and Harry Pyles were legally married in 1857, a right denied to them under slavery, where husbands, wives, and children could be separated at the whim of slave owners and traders.

 

Image from Homespun Heroines and Other Women of Distinction, ed. Hallie Q. Brown (Xenia, Ohio: The Aldene Publishing Co., 1926), 22.

But, as Jones describes, freedom did not bring an end to heartache, for Charlotta Pyles was forced to leave behind one of her sons, Benjamin, and two of her sons-in-law. Pyles was determined to purchase the freedom of her sons-in-law, who had wives and children that needed them. Clearly aware of the antislavery movement and fugitive slave activists like Frederick Douglass who wrote and spoke publicly about their experience, Pyles traveled to the East Coast to engage audiences and raise the necessary money. Speaking in major cities like Philadelphia and New York, she gained the attention of prominent figures like Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and Lucretia Mott. Immensely proud of her grandmother’s bravery and commitment, Grace Morris Allen Jones wrote,

Note that Grace M. A. Jones, the author, is identified only as “Mrs. Laurence C. Jones” in this 1920s publication.

 

It was a difficult task for a poor, ignorant woman, who had never had a day’s schooling in her life, to travel thousands of miles in a strange country and stand up night after night and day after day before crowds of men and women, pleading for those back in slavery. So well did she plead, however, that in about six months she had raised the necessary three thousand dollars, returned to Iowa, thence to Kentucky where she bought the two men from their owners, and reunited them with their families.

Jones rightly noted that “the spirit of Charlotta Pyles found worthy expression in her children and grandchildren,” who made their own remarkable impacts on Iowa and the nation. The Pyles family is a reminder of the long history of African American settlement, community-building, and activism in the Hawkeye state. Check out the Grace Morris Allen Jones papers to learn more about the family, as well as Jones’ work in Piney Woods

 

In addition to the Grace Morris Allen Jones papers, this post references Betty DeRamus, Forbidden Fruit: Love Stories from the Underground Railroad (New York: Atria Books, 2006), 109-123. A copy is available at Iowa Women’s Archives.

Posted in African American Women in Iowa, From the collections, People, UncategorizedTagged African American history, Black History Month, Charlotta Pyles, Grace Morris Allen Jones, Heather Cooper, Nineteenth century, Slavery
Feb 20 2019

Activists in the Archives: Connecting High School Students with Local LGBTQ History

Posted on February 20, 2019May 29, 2020 by Anna Holland

Guest post by Dr. Heather Cooper, Visiting Assistant Professor in History and Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies

During LGBTQ History Month in October 2018, I worked with the Iowa Women’s Archives and University Special Collections to organize an archives visit for students from West Liberty High School.  The several students who were able to attend are members of the school’s Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA), a student organization that provides a safe and supportive environment for LGBTQ youth and their cisgender heterosexual allies and raises awareness on campus about LGBTQ issues.  The group’s faculty advisor, Katlyn Clark, has been teaching English at West Liberty High School for three years and is also enrolled in an English Education MA program at University of Iowa.  I first became aware of this important student group when Katlyn was enrolled in my Sexuality in the U.S. course during Summer 2018.  Her independent research project explored the importance of GSAs and the need to continue to develop more inclusive programming and pedagogy in the high school environment.

“Spinster, a lighthearted lesbian [card] gayme,” Iowa City Women’s Press records
LGBTQ History Month seemed like the perfect opportunity to introduce these students to some of the amazing archival records at UI that document the history of local LGBTQ activism.  I relied on the expertise of archivists Kären Mason, Janet Weaver, Anna Tunnicliff, and David McCartney to pull together some of the most interesting and engaging materials from relevant collections.  When students arrived, they found a smorgasbord of documents and artifacts, including issues of the feminist journals Ain’t I a Woman and Better Homes and Dykes; correspondence and newspaper clippings related to “Rusty” Barcelo’s LGBT activism; and records from the Gay Liberation Front, one of the first student groups of its kind in the country.  Students also had fun exploring “Spinster,” a feminist and lesbian reimagining of the “Old Maid” card game, printed by the Iowa City Women’s Press.  David McCartney introduced our visitors to  the amazing timeline of Iowa City queer history that he and Kären Mason created for the outhistory.org project several years ago.

 

 

 

Miranda Welch’s high school graduation cap, 2006, Miranda Welch papers

Reflecting on their visit, high school senior Miguel Solis wrote that, “… most people’s knowledge of LGBTQ+ history is mainly the Stonewall Riots and the AIDS crisis.  Iowa actually has a large history for the LGBTQ+ community that most people do no not know about. … I learned [that] the very first form of ‘Pride’ in Iowa was a last-minute float in the Iowa homecoming parade.”  Senior Dio Gonzales described their visit to the university as “an eye-opening experience. … My favorite part was being able to go around and see different kinds of posters, books, and magazines that were released.”  In contrast to the usual hushed environment of the library, we encouraged students to talk and wander around the reading room to get a feel for different kinds of materials.  Our conversations led Librarian Anna Tunnicliff to bring out a few boxes from the unprocessed collection of Miranda Welch, a student activist from small-town Iowa.  Among the papers and artifacts was Welch’s high school graduation cap, bedecked in pride-colored ribbons and gems. 

In preparing for their visit, Katlyn Clark mentioned that the students were especially interested in transgender history.  But the nature of archive collection practices and typical end-of-life donations means that IWA and Special Collections currently have very little material on this relatively contemporary topic.  That archival silence created an opportunity to talk about what it would mean to try to build a transgender archive and to document the experiences and activism of LGBTQ people today.  Aiden Bettine, a History Ph.D. student, joined us to talk about their current project, the Transgender Oral History Project of Iowa (TOPI).  As Aiden explained, “A primary goal of the project is to empower transgender and gender non-conforming communities to collect and preserve their own histories by training trans-identified people in the methodology of oral history.”  Students later commented that learning about TOPI’s goals was a very important part of their experience at the archives. 

Students from West Liberty High School’s Gay Straight Alliance (GSA) learning about local LGBTQ history at the Iowa Women’s Archives.

On the day of their visit, our discussion about creating a transgender archive offered a perfect segue to talking about how students in the Gay-Straight Alliance could start to record and preserve their own history of activism.  Since the club’s official recognition in 2017, they have successfully campaigned for the creation of a gender-inclusive restroom on their campus and, every year, they organize school-wide participation in the Day of Silence, a national event that brings attention to anti-LGBTQ bullying in schools.  Members of the group have attended leadership workshops at the GSA Conference in Des Moines and they regularly attend the annual Governor’s Conference on LGBTQ Youth.  I wanted to encourage the students to think about themselves as important historical actors whose activities deserved to be documented and preserved.  I hoped that showing them the records of other student organizations at UI would help them recognize that the work of student groups like theirs was important and would be valuable to researchers and other activist groups in the future.  We also talked about ways to build their archive, such as writing down the narrative of how the group was founded and keeping records of their members, group meetings, and specific events and activities.  Katlyn reports that since their visit last fall, students in the GSA have talked about creating a twice-a-year newsletter to record their activities.  Reflecting on our discussion in the IWA reading room, Miguel Solis wrote, “We really just need to keep trying to make a change and leave our mark on the school so that one day we can be remembered in history and be talked about as people who made a difference.”

A special thanks to Kären, David, Anna, Janet, and Aiden for their help with this!  And to Katlyn Clark, C. Blick, Jacqueline Castillo, Dio Gonzalez, Angie Meraz, Mary Norris, and Miguel Solis for joining us and sharing the amazing work they are doing in West Liberty.  Hope to see them on campus as official Hawkeyes in the years to come – the future is very bright!

 

Heather L. Cooper, Ph.D.

Visiting Assistant Professor

History and Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies

Posted in Events, From the collections, IWA Update, PeopleTagged Gay Straight Alliance, Heather Cooper, High School, LGBTQ, Transgender Oral History Project of Iowa, West Liberty

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