Welcome to DC or Spinning My Wheels

I finally made it into D.C. yesterday, and stepping off the train the first thing I felt was the heat and humidity. I forgot just how hot it is here, and I think after two years in California, I’ve lost my tolerance for anything other than temperate climates. I also forgot about the flash thunderstorms on the east coast, but thankfully missed the vast majority of the heavy rain. (There is something really beautiful though about sitting inside watching the lightning.)

This afternoon I went to NARA (Downtown) for the first time. I had already spoken with the INS archivist (see previous posts,) who assured me that there were two boxes of materials already waiting for me here. I got to the archives and went through the registration process (signing into the building and going through the airport-style security; registering my computer and camera serial numbers; registering for a researcher card and going through an informational slideshow about preservation.) At this point the archivist on the main floor told me my materials should already by in the reading room, so I headed to the second floor. When I got into the reading room and went through security, the people at the desk told me they had no record of my materials, and sent me back to the first floor. Back again on the first floor the front-desk archivist sent me to the finding aid room, where they also could not locate my files or an archivist who knew about my case. After about 45 minutes we finally reached the INS archivist who came down and found my boxes. By this time I had missed the 1:30pm pull time, and had to kill another half an hour before the 2:30 pull time (basically I had to wait for a page to literally bring the boxes two flights up. This is only done at specific times during the day, naturally.)

Thankfully while I was waiting I did have the time to meet with an archivist from the Legislative Division, to talk about Senate and House Subcommittee Hearings. Hopefully I will be able to get unpublished documents on committee hearings for various Congressional legislation, but again, since everything needs to be screened in advance, I need to write up a list of the House and Senate Bill Numbers for each piece of legislation I’m looking for, and email it to the archivist to see if they have the files I need.

At 2:30 I headed to the reading room and finally got 2 boxes of materials. Surprisingly, considering all of the security getting into the room, the staff basically leaves you alone once you’re there. I was also struck by how noisy the room was – people freely talking loudly…shocking for a library. Of the two boxes of materials, one contained nothing really relevant – mainly documents too early for my project. The other box seems promising, and I was able to photograph most of it today. Unfortunately it’s mostly correspondence INTO the INS – I was hoping to find responses FROM the INS as well. I may just be missing an obvious oversight, but where do I find the outgoing records???

In terms of equipment – I bought a new tripod before I left California, and it’s made life a lot easier. I’m using a Cannon PowerShot SD400 (5 Megapixels) to document my work. So far so good…

Pre-NARA part 2

Still not quite in D.C. yet, but I did hear back from the NARA archivist in charge of the INS collections. I had sent him a list of about 40 files that I wanted to look at, to see if they existed, and to get them approved. Of the 40, he's gotten through about 20, and of those 20, about half don't exist. Interestingly enough, almost all of the missing files are categorized under the keyword "children." I'm not quite sure if I should take that as some kind of sign...Still, it's nice to know there are already 2 boxes of materials ready for me to look at.

I've also sat down and compiled a list of all the collections I want to look at - INS records and legislative archives at NARA Downtown; State Department and Displaced Persons Commission Records at NARA College Park; and the Emmanuel Celler records at the Library of Congress. There's also a number of items related to "National Origins" in the Secretary of Agriculture's "Foreign Policy" files. I'm still not sure what immigration, foreign policy, and national origins have to do with Agriculture (at least post-WWII), but I guess we'll find out!

NARA San Bruno

I spent most of the afternoon yesterday at NARA's Pacific Region archive in San Bruno. At the outset I'll say that I think I'm more confused now, having gone to the archive, than before, but we'll get to that.

NARA San Bruno is a windowless space in an obscure federal building, sandwiched between a park and a newly developed housing complex. The first thing that shocked me about the site was the lack of security - no one checks your bags. They do require you to put your stuff in a locker, but really all I had to do was sign in and sign out, and no one really paid attention to what I was doing. (Even the New York Public Library searches your bags when you leave, not to mention every time you enter or leave a reading room.)

So why was I in San Bruno? Well, one of the collections I need to look at for my dissertation is the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) correspondence files. I had been warned in advance that the INS files are tricky to use, but wow was I not prepared for what I found: first of all, the correspondence files only run through 1957, so I already need to find a work around, since my project runs until at least 1968. Secondly, there is no finding aid. At all. What they do have is Record Group T458, a 31-roll microfilm subject heading list. Basically every time the INS added a box to the archival collection, they took a notecard, typed out what was in the box, and microfilmed it. Thankfully, at least these 31 rolls were in alphabetical order, but since the microfilm was created over the span of about 30 years, the keywords have changed (i.e. displaced person to refugee to political refugee,) not to mention the fact that a few of the key terms I expected to be there just weren't. On top of all of that, the microfilm only runs through about 1953, so I'm still not sure how to access 1953-1957. San Bruno happens to have a copy of T458, and archivists and researcher-friends told me I should look through it before heading to D.C. (especially since INS records have to be cleared in advance by the archivist in charge before you can look at them.)

So after spending a number of hours trying to come up with as many keywords as I could think of that would be relevant for my project (and hand-cranking the reals back and forth - they have the old style microfilm readers,) I now have a 5 page excel spreadsheet with what I think are box and file numbers. And even that I'm not quite sure about.

Next moves: Contact the NARA archivist in charge of the INS Collection, contact the USCIS Historian (formally the INS historian) for help, and find other collections for 1957-1968.