NARA II Screenings

Lordy…it has been a while since my last post, but in the time that’s passed, I have managed to finish off my research in the State Department records at Archives II. From everything I had been lead to believe, the State Department records are some of the worst-cataloged and difficult-to-navigate collections imaginable. The finding aides are in multiple parts, depending on the year (Prior to 1949 has one system, 1949-1963 has another, and 1963- a third,) or department.

But at least there are finding aides.

Having moved on from State, I was hoping to look at the Department of Justice and Bureau of the Budget Records. A substantial portion of the DoJ files have been declassified, but pretty much anything after WWII has to go through another round of security review before you can even see any of the files. (Why the initial security review was not sufficient, who knows? The staff certainly doesn’t!) This review can take up to six weeks to even get a case number assigned, and an indefinite amount of time for the actual review to take place. And to make matters worse, the bulk of the finding aides are classified. It is almost impossible to figure out what departments are where (i.e. how do I even request the Office of Legal Counsel files, to have them reviewed?) It seems as though these requirements are to maintain the privacy of case files, but I am only interested in administrative records, pertaining to immigration policy. I have contacted the archivist who works on the collection, but I’m not entirely optimistic that I will see any of the files anytime soon.

The Bureau of the Budget records also have no comprehensive finding aids. Instead, there is an alphabetical list of the sub-record groups (i.e. Department of State Budget Records, 1949-1952, Legislative Files, 1939-1970), that points to the Master Location Registry (MLR) for the record group (51). Aside from the fact that a number of the entries in the alphabetical list do not match up with the MLR, the only way to get to the finding aides for each sub-record group is to find the collection in the MLR, and then request box #1, which supposedly contains the finding aid.

The catch? Each box (Even the ones containing only finding aides) has to be reviewed onsite before they will give them to you (something they do not tell you in advance.) So while at least the records are reviewed as you order them (hopefully), there’s not telling how long that review can take.

All in all, if you plan a trip to Archives II, make sure to leave yourself ample time, and understand that you might not see the boxes you want on the first trip…

How Many Bodies?

The subject of my dissertation is the history of the practice of collecting, researching, and displaying human remains in the United States. For those unfamiliar with the history of anthropology, medicine, and the American West, this may seem to be somewhat of an esoteric subject. On the contrary, I argue that the practice of collecting, studying, and displaying bodies was central in the development of ideas about race in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

I recently strolled through the Smithsonian's new exhibit Written in Bone. I plan to write more about this exhibit either here or elsewhere, but I pinky swear that you will be the first to know. The public displays of human remains made me ponder their history; other than recent, traveling blockbuster exhibits such as Body Worlds, museums in the United States have been hesitant to display remains in their public exhibitions. While a complex history informs this hesitation, the new exhibits did cause me to think anew about the scope of human remains collections in the United States. Believe it or not, I am asked this question quite often at cocktail parties. If I had to venture a guess, I would think that when most people think of bodies in museums they first think of Egyptian mummies. Mummified bodies from Egypt, certainly, are a component of the overall number of bodies in museums in the United States. But they are vastly outnumbered by the remains of American Indians and other indigenous groups from around the world.

But just how many sets of human remains are in museums in the United States? I've struggled to find a single, clear estimate of the total number of remains in the US, but several major museums give an estimate of the number of human remains they have in their collections. This information is relatively easy to find via Google searches, but I thought it might be interested to explore nonetheless.

A 2000 report from the Hearst Museum of Anthropology lists 9,600 sets of remains (some of these catalogue numbers may reflect more than one individual).

The Smithsonian Institution’s website explains that when the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) was initially passed in 1990, the museum possessed 33,000 sets of human remains. 18,000 of these remains were of Native Americans. The Smithsonian claims that since 1990, 5,400 sets of remains have been offered for return and a total of 3,652 of these have been successfully repatriated.

The American Museum of Natural History possesses a collection of nearly 12,000 individuals collected from around 50 countries.

Numerous other museums and universities possess collections that range from a handful of remains to several thousand bodies. Certainly, statistics that attempt to size up these collections fail to tell the whole story, which is exactly why I get to write a dissertation on the subject of human remains collections.

From Ike to Camelot

After my trip to Abilene in June, Boston and the JFK Library was next on my list. All in all the JFK Library was one of the easiest-to-use archives I been to, and with a location on Columbia Point, overlooking the Bay, it was certainly one of the prettiest. (Since my visit coincided with Ted Kennedy's death, it was also quite a humbling time to be there...I'm not going to detail about my experiences navigating the archives around the wake, but I will say that I was interesting to be a part of everything that was going on.)

I'd like to say that the JFK Library is pretty far from downtown, and it is, but after having to drive 2 1/2 hours from Kansas City to get to the Eisenhower Library, the 50 minute commute from Cambridge wasn't bad at all. Logistically, from the JFK/UMass stop on the T Red Line, you hop on Bus #2 (free), which takes you on a nice tour of Columbia Point, ending in front of the Library. The building itself overlooks the Bay with stories-high glass windows, very modernist / minimalist...the view from the reading room is spectacular. The archives themselves are not marked, so to get to them you have to walk through the gift shop to the lone security guard, who takes your name, and escorts you to an elevator, which then takes you to the reading room. Once you know where you are going it is fairly easy, but at first it is quite confusing.

In terms of the archives themselves, the staff is incredibly knowledgeable, and really laid-back - after the brief orientation, they basically leave you alone, though they are always ready to answer any research related questions. The reading room is also one of the more high-tech I've seen, with wireless internet access, and digital locks for their lockers. There are also bathrooms and a water fountain inside the reading room (albeit away from the records,) and I cannot tell you how clutch it is to have those two things there, rather than having to leave the research space, as in most other archives I've been to.

There are a few downsides to the library - for one, not all of the finding aides are digitized and online. They have paper copies of everything in the reading room itself, but I find it much easier to be able to keyword search through the aides. More importantly though, parts of certain collections (or entire other collections,) such as the RFK Attorney General papers, are still closed, for one reason or another. While I understand that there are donor restrictions and other such issues, it is frustrating to know that there are potentially useful materials sitting in the library that I just cannot access.

I did find some really useful documents, and hopefully in a future post I'll go through some of them...For now, I am headed back to DC!

The Weird Stuff We Archive

Let's have a friendly little competition for who can find the weirdest archived object this year. I'll start - samples of human hair from around the globe.

Yes. You read that correctly, single strands of hair. Clearly labeled, for your researching convenience.

Good luck topping that one, guys.

A Hired Historian (or) Other People's Archives

I couldn't be more excited to be back in Washington D.C. The city, though somewhat familiar, still a lot of surprises. When Emily and I arrived at the Mall a few minutes before an appointment, we stopped at the National Museum of Natural History and looked at a Giant Squid specimen. Later that afternoon I was flipping through the Andrew Jackson Papers at the Library of Congress. How many people do you think have done those two things in an afternoon? Later that day I skipped the gym and sat around eating popcorn to celebrate my accomplishments.

My first couple of days of research in Washington are on behalf of another historian, currently living in California. This makes me feel a bit like a hired hit-man, except with less killing and more historical documents. At the very least, it serves as a nice warm-up for my own work, which I hope to start next week.

Working in unfamiliar archives can be an adventure. Rules vary from archive to archive - but regulations tend to trend in a particular directions. When I started working in archives only a few years ago, people looked at me like I was from Pluto when I asked if I could use a camera to photograph documents. Now, both the Library of Congress and the National Archives ask visiting researchers if they have a camera with them to photograph documents. Some archives allow you to take a box of documents off of your cart, others ask that you only remove a folder at a time. But these are mostly inconsequential differences.

Another challenge of being a hired historian is that you can't really explain to archivists the nature of the project. Explaining my own dissertation to a willing audience is no problem (I say 'willing' because I have, admittedly, been guilty of waxing poetic about my research to audiences that would rather discuss - say - earthworms). But explaining someone else's research as it progresses can be more of a challenge. In this case, I was looking for documents related to military history - which isn't exactly my specialty.

And to make my inadequacy, my father sent me an e-mail this evening about a research trip he did on my behalf in Minnesota. The man stopped at a historical society and read newspapers in GERMAN because he thought he might be able to find some more information on an incident that is of interest to me. And you know what? The man absolutely nailed it. He found an article on microfilm, can I just say this again, in GERMAN. This dude took his last German class in the 1960s and the man walks into a research library and reads Gothic print Deutsche in his free time.

An archive starts to feel like home when you begin to know the people. You run into the same researchers day after day. You get to know the archivists. The nerdy intern requests to be your friend on facebook. You suggest a book to another historian, you goof off with the archivists, and if you're really nice, the interns will let you play soccer with them.

Sure, it is was an experience working with documents at two of the largest research centers in the world. I look forward to when my own research takes me there. But for now, I find the experience of working in smaller archives to be more satisfying on a personal level. Intellectually, I'd argue that working in small archives has made me a stronger historian. I certainly wouldn't argue that archivists at major institutions aren't helpful - quite the contrary, they are often well-trained and extremely helpful. When you're a familiar face, however, archivists tend to go out of their way to make sure you get what you need.

It seems as though every year I need to re-teach myself how to read handwriting from the 19th century. Despite the fact that it is the same language that I pretend to speak everyday, it feels like I'm working on a foreign tongue. And it doesn't even come with those fun Rosetta Stone practice games.

There is both a certain level of excitement and a level of trepidation in moving to a new place and starting a new job. This is certainly true in my case, anyway. I'm pining for a return to my archival home at the Smithsonian.

I Like Ike!

After a long hiatus I’m back in the research saddle. I’m in Abilene, KS at the Eisenhower Presidential Library. After a long flight to Kansas City, and a long drive down I-70, I arrived in Abilene, one of the smaller towns I’ve been to in quite some time. The Library sits on a pretty campus that also includes a museum, a welcome center, Eisenhower’s Boyhood Home, and a Place of Meditation. In the center of the site stands a statue of Ike himself, overseeing everything.

The Library is a giant marble building with exhibits on the first floor, and the research room on the second. So far researching here has been the most painless experience I’ve had at any of the NARA locations, though considering it’s a much smaller and more focused library, I guess that shouldn’t be overly surprising. On my first day in the archives there were only three other people doing research, and on my second, just one. The archivists and research room staff are incredibly friendly, and once they give you your orientation, they more or less leave you alone. That being said, when you do need help, they really know the collections. The best part though, is that just about all of the holdings are fully indexed, down to the folder level. Since most of the collections are individual people’s papers, I’ve been able to find some great stuff on immigration and refugee policy, but less about some of the important sub-themes I’m searching for, such as family reunification, refugees from Hong Kong, etc.

In particular the Maxwell Rabb Papers have been incredibly rich – he was Eisenhower’s point man on all things immigration (as well as civil rights, minority groups, etc.) and his confidential memos on the legislative process contain a lot of great Congressional and Bureaucratic gossip that you just can’t find in the official record. In general I’m learning a lot more about the political infighting around immigration policy during the 1950s.

(Other things are also coming together – going into the research I was looking for signs of a positive shift in policymakers’ attitudes toward East Asian immigrants and refugees in the mid-1950s, but I’ve now realized that the same shift applies to Italians, with conservative legislators still expressing their concern over Catholic immigration by 1953, but capitulating around 1957.)

More to come…

FOIA Update

Just a quick update -

I actually received some of the FOIA requests I put in! Granted they only declassified two documents from all of what I requested, but still. I'm actually somewhat shocked, considering how quickly they processed the request (not exactly in 30 days, but still within reason.) I received a letter explaining that the documents had been declassified, and actual copies of two memos in question (which turned out to be pretty interesting...)

I'm guessing when the de-classify the 119 boxes of materials I requested they will NOT send me copies. Just saying...