Archives and History: Randall C. Jimerson

Two weeks ago, I reviewed the chapter written by Fran Blouin in the 2011 book published in honor of Helen Samuels, Controlling the Past: Documenting Society and Institutions.  This week I turn to Rand Jimerson’s chapter from the same volume entitled “How Archivists ‘Control the Past.'”  Jimerson revised a similarly-themed 2007 conference talk at the International Council on Archives’ Section on University and Research Institution Archives, and after submitting this essay, he also incorporated parts of it into his 2009 book Archives Power.  My earlier review of his 2005 SAA presidential address includes a brief biography.

Jimerson provided context for Helen Samuels’ 1986 article in the American Archivist, “Who Controls the Past.”  Jimerson asserted that rather than posing a question, Samuels used this quote from George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four as her title to demonstrate “a direct connection between archival documentation of the past and the potential political power and societal influence of archivists” (363).  Jimerson provided a brief overview of the history of archives to underscore the idea that “official government records should be created and used to protect the rights of all citizens, not just the political, social, and clerical leaders” (364).  He also summarized the relevant themes of Orwell’s fiction and nonfiction, which showed that

“personal memory could expose the falsity of collective memory and historical accounts of events that he had witnessed.  However, without records (archival memory), the necessary corroboration could not exist” (365).

It was in a February 4, 1944, “As I Please” column for the Tribune that Orwell wrote, “History is written by the winners.”  Although Orwell didn’t write specifically about archives, Jimerson contended that his interests in authenticity and truth mesh with the purpose of archives: “Read from an archival perspective, Orwell clearly seems to suggest that trustworthy recordkeeping and archival systems could even preclude the rise of totalitarianism” (370).

Ostensibly Samuels’ article title prompted the exposition on Orwell, but at the end, Jimerson more directly related his analysis to archival appraisal and Samuels’ contributions in the realm of documentation strategy.  Jimerson argued that archival principles and functions emerged from hierarchy and power; therefore, archivists should alter these basic functions in order to overcome biases and to document more adequately marginalized populations:

“Archivists may need to consider going beyond their custodial role and filling in the gaps, to ensure that documentation is created where it is missing, and to address the needs of those outside the societal power structures” (375).

Jimerson also identified as one of her “great breakthroughs” Samuels’ idea that archivists need to cooperate with librarians, museum curators, and other information professionals in order to provide information and document society (377).

Jimerson concluded with several challenges:

• “archivists have a moral professional responsibility to balance the support that archives have often given to the status quo by giving equal voice to those groups that too often have been marginalized and silenced” (377)
• archivists should take “decisive steps to counter the biases of previous archival practices” (377)
• archivists should join with librarians, museum curators, records managers, and other information professionals in committing “to the values of public accountability, open government, cultural diversity, and social justice” (378)
• “By shaping the documentary record of society, archivists indeed control the past and thus the future, at least to some degree.  Unless they recognize and accept this power, thoughtfully and transparently, they will fail to meet their most significant professional and societal responsibility” (378).

 

“Embracing the Power of Archives”

Randall C. Jimerson delivered his presidential address at the 2005 annual meeting of the Society of American Archivists held in New Orleans.  Jimerson began his archival career at the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan (1976-1977) and then spent two years as archivist at Yale University (1977-1979).  He was university archivist and director of the Historical Manuscripts and Archives Department of the University of Connecticut Libraries (1979-1994), where he also taught and led the graduate program in History and Archival Management.  Since 1994, Jimerson has been director of the Graduate Program in Archives and Records Management at Western Washington University in Bellingham, also serving as professor of History since 2002.  An expanded version of the address he delivered was published in the Spring/Summer 2006 issue of the American Archivist.

Jimerson’s address was a portent of the arguments he developed more fully in his 2009 volume Archives Power: Memory, Accountability, and Social Justice.  He borrowed the metaphors of Eric Ketelaar and analyzed archives as temples, prisons, and restaurants.  Jimerson suggested these representations illustrate the “trinity of archival functions: selection, preservation, and access” (20).

• In the archival temple, records achieve authority, immortality, and validity.  He cited numerous archival thinkers regarding the active role that appraisal requires.  He acknowledged that appraisal shapes “society’s collective understanding of its past, including what will be forgotten” (25).  Jimerson cautioned against conflating archives with memory but suggested “records of the past provide a corrective for human memory, a surrogate that remains unchanged while memory constantly shifts and refocuses its vision of the past” (26).
• Control is the foundation of the archival prison.  From the physical control imposed by lockers, closed stacks, and surveillance cameras to the intellectual control created by the arrangement and description of records, archivists regulate access.
• The archival restaurant is the locus of interpretation and mediation.  Jimerson contended that archivists cannot be fully objective regarding archives — “as archivists we cannot avoid casting our own imprint on these powerful sources of knowledge” (21).

He concluded the arc of these metaphors by saying,

“May our archival temples truly reflect values worthy of veneration and remembrance.  May our archival prisons minimize locks and security and emphasize accountability, preservation, and access.  May our menus be clear and understandable, and our table service efficient, thorough, and helpful” (32).

Jimerson’s challenge to archivists was to “embrace the power of archives and use it for the good of humankind” (24).  He clarified this notion as making “society more knowledgeable, more tolerant, more diverse, and more just” (28).  In order to accomplish this goal, he asserted that archivists must abandon “our pretense of neutrality” because only through recognizing our impartiality can we “avoid using this power indiscriminately or, even worse, accidentally” (28).  He also echoed Ketelaar’s advocacy for transparency in archival selection and access decisions.  Jimerson cautioned against sidestepping the social and cultural responsibilities of archivists while instead focusing myopically on technical issues.

Jimerson asserted that archives carry out a function of social responsibility by documenting and protecting the rights of citizens.  He pointed to the works collected by Richard Cox and David Wallace in Archives and the Public Good for evidence of archival records being used as agents of accountability.  He also echoed the words of Howard Zinn in challenging archivists to “commit themselves to ensuring that our records document the lives and experiences of all groups in society, not just the political, economic, social, and intellectual elite” (30).  Herein lies the power.

Archives power

Last summer, the SAA announced they were planning to hold at the annual meeting a brown bag lunch discussion of a forthcoming article by Mark Greene — one in which he commented on social justice as an archival imperative.  Greene explained that he primarily wanted to spark a debate within the profession on a topic that has received fairly one-sided attention.  So I’m going to take him up on that challenge.

Because Greene predominantly referenced Rand Jimerson’s work, I decided to read Archives Power (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2009) so that I could be well-versed in its arguments and be better able to evaluate Greene’s critique of it.  (However, from my attendance at the brown bag discussion, it became obvious to me that exposure to the literature is not a prerequisite for having a strong opinion on this hot-button issue.)  Rather than doing a traditional book review, I’ll use this space to incorporate some of Jimerson’s points that I found most compelling.  In the coming weeks, I’ll evaluate Greene’s article and try to establish my own viewpoint.

Jimerson offered three metaphors to explain the power of archives (3-10):

1. the temple, which shapes social memory
2. the prison, which preserves and secures records
3. the restaurant, which interprets and mediates between records and users

I like the metaphors in principle — though a vault might be a more appealing comparison than a prison — because they provide an easily accessible means to comprehend the purposes of archives.  And Jimerson didn’t argue that these are mutually exclusive depictions of the power of archives.

Jimerson cited Verne Harris’ identification of three major discourses that have defined roles for archivists (9):

1. western positivism (e.g., the Dutch men), which looks at archivists as “workers with the record”
2. Enlightenment (e.g., Hilary Jenkinson), which looks at archivists as “keepers of the record”
3. postmodernism (beginning with Hugh Taylor), which looks at archivists as “narrators of the record”

Although, once again, these roles are not exclusive, many archivists and certainly most theorists tend toward one.  Considering the possibility of an audience that might not be well-versed in archival functions, Jimerson went on to outline the responsibilities of archivists (10-18):

1. appraisal, or deciding what to preserve
2. arrangement and description, or organizing and controlling records
3. reference, access, and use

Jimerson used a thought-provoking quote from Cicero to introduce his chapter on the development of archives:

“To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.  For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?” (24)

Perhaps it is my background as an historian or perhaps it’s my love of textile metaphors, but Cicero’s idea strikes me as one that defines my own motivations as an archivist.

In his chapter on the historical role American archivists, Jimerson included a quote from archivist J. Franklin Jameson to historian Henry Adams about the contribution of archivists: “‘I struggle on, making bricks without much idea of how the architects will use them, but believing that the best architect that ever was cannot get along without bricks, and therefore trying to make good ones’” (106).  I tend more toward the helper role than one who needs the spotlight, but this statement might be a little too self-effacing even for me.  However, I do appreciate the principle that archivists need to be aware that there is a bigger edifice being constructed with their work.

In the chapter “Resisting Political Power,” Jimerson incorporated Czech author Milan Kundera and British author George Orwell as voices contending against authoritarianism, explaining that in some societies, “remembering unpleasant truths is illegal.  Thus, memory becomes a political act, charged with social meaning.  Historians and archivists work in a public arena, which is unavoidably political.  Every choice we make – about what documents and evidence to save, what to include in our research, and how to frame the questions for our interpretations of the past – reflects our own personal and collective perspectives on the world” (131).

Jimerson continued with a focus on memory in the following chapter, defining four planes of memory: (195)

1. personal memory
2. collective memory
3. historical memory
4. archival memory

Jimerson expanded on the idea of archival memory to be “constructed memory.”  He explained, “Because archives confer significance and authority on the documents they house, this power can shape the perspectives that we have on individuals and social groups.  Far from being a neutral repository for recorded memory, archives (and archivists) actively mediate and shape the archival record” (216).   Jimerson ended the chapter with a section entitled “A Responsibility for Tomorrow,” arguing that “the weight of the archivist’s responsibility surely lies more with the future than with the past.  It is the promise of future usefulness that justifies the archival enterprise” (234).  I personally appreciate this notion of future usefulness because I believe it places a proper emphasis on access and use of archival records.

The final two chapters (and the conclusion) introduce the more contentious arguments in Jimerson’s work.  In the chapter “Serving the Public Good,” Jimerson recounted the work by the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory and Dialogue, contending that “the archival record can thus foster the work of reconciliation, healing, and social justice.  The first step in this process is to remember the past in order to overcome oppression and to hold former leaders accountable for their actions” (239).  (Interestingly, in the prior chapter, Jimerson cited Michael Kammen’s Mystic Chords of Memory, where historian Kammen argued that “‘memory is more likely to be activated by contestation, and amnesia is more likely to be induced by the desire for reconciliation’” [225].  So the role of archives in encouraging reconciliation is far from resolved.)  Jimerson’s quotes of Elie Wiesel certainly offer compelling evidence of the importance of memory as a servant of justice, such as “‘Justice without memory is an incomplete justice, false and unjust.  To forget would be an absolute injustice in the same way that Auschwitz was the absolute crime.  To forget would be the enemy’s final triumph’” (243).  Jimerson broadly contended:

“Archival protection of records thus serves the vital need to ensure social justice and protect citizens’ rights.  By holding public leaders accountable to the people, by documenting the rights of citizens and the lives and voices of marginalized groups, by ensuring public access to essential records, and by providing a secure repository for reliable and authentic records, archivists and the archives they preserve contribute to the public interest.  Archives for all become archives for justice” (267).

Yet before concluding this chapter, Jimerson acknowledged the inherent complications of activist archives, citing several civil rights repositories “that seek to shape the public discourse on civil rights and sometimes even attempt to advocate a particular interpretive vision of the movement.  Such efforts may blur the line between scholarship and political partisanship” (275).

In the chapter entitled “Responding to the Call of Justice,” Jimerson expounded on his vision of the proper role for archivists.  In keeping with documentation strategy, he explained an idea of archives that actively seek out records that can provide the fullest representation of society, contending that “it may no longer be enough to select and acquire records that have already been created.  Archivists may need to consider going beyond their custodial role and to fill in the gaps, to ensure that documentation is created where it is missing, and to address the needs of those outside the societal power structures” (303).  He suggested that ensuring diversity is not only a concern in archival appraisal but also in description and access.

Jimerson’s conclusion asserted the need to codify archival ethics.  In making this argument, he turned to philosophy to explain that “deontological theories seek to establish the morality of an action based only on the act itself, with no consideration of its consequences” while “teleological theory reverses this orientation, focusing on ends rather than means.  In these formulations, the moral act is that which would produce the most desirable consequences, regardless of the ethical aspects of the actions taken” (345).  Jimerson found among archivists too much of a focus on the former without enough consideration of the latter.  He concluded with this analysis:

“Responding effectively to the challenges of using the power of archives for the public good will require a broad commitment by the archival profession to reflect on underlying assumptions and biases, and to overcome these through a renewed commitment to democratic values. . . .  Historical examples of abuses of power, control through manipulation of the archival record, and efforts to limit access to vital information show the dangers of misusing the power of archives and records.  Archivists should commit themselves to preventing the archival profession’s explicit or implicit support of privileged elites and powerful rulers at the expense of the people’s rights and interests.  They should commit themselves to the values of public accountability, open government, cultural diversity, and social justice.  Then archivists can truly say that they are ensuring archives for all, and employing their professional skills to promote a better society.  This will be a valuable application of archives power to secure memory, accountability, and social justice” (362-63).

 

Has this sparked your curiosity about the concept of archives and social justice?  If so, come back next week, when I’ll reflect on Mark Greene’s article.  The following week, I’ll look at some of the dialogue that has been prompted by Greene’s article, including Rand Jimerson’s response that was published alongside Greene’s article in the last issue of The American Archivist.

In memoriam

It was 10:22am on that Sunday morning fifty years ago when four little girls who were preparing to participate in the worship service at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham were murdered by a bomb planted by the Ku Klux Klan.

This event has been seared into the conscience of the nation from that moment forward.  The reactions and reflections have taken many forms:

• Langston Hughes wrote a poem, “Birmingham Sunday.” (published in Arnold Rampersad, ed., The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994])
• Dudley Randall, who was a librarian at the University of Detroit at the time and created Broadside Press, wrote a poem that was published in 1965, “The Ballad of Birmingham.”  It was set to music by the folk singer Jerry Moore.
• In 1964, Richard Fariña wrote a song, “Birmingham Sunday.”
• Soon after the bombing, a Welsh artist, John Petts, raised the money to design a new stained glass window to replace one of those destroyed in the bombing.  He depicts a black Jesus, with one arm pressing against injustice and inequality and the other arm open to reconciliation.
• In 1997, Spike Lee produced a documentary, 4 Little Girls.
• In 2007, Carole Boston Weatherford wrote a children’s book, Birmingham, 1963, that describes the feelings of a fictional character who witnessed the bombing.
• In 2011, Carolyn McKinstry wrote a book, While the World Watched: A Birmingham Bombing Survivor Comes of Age During the Civil Rights Movement.
• In 2013, Photographer Dawoud Bey produced an exhibit, The Birmingham Project.

There are numerous books that incorporate accounts and analyses of this church bombing.  (In this and all instances in this post, I confine myself to the sources about which I have personal knowledge.)

• Glenn T. Eskew, But for Birmingham: The Local and National Movements in the Civil Rights Struggle (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997)
• Diane McWhorter, Carry Me Home: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001)
• Andrew M. Manis, A Fire You Can’t Put Out: The Civil Rights Life of Birmingham’s Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1999)
• Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988)

Four Spirits sculpture

On Tuesday of this week, Congress awarded the four victims of this bombing the Congressional Gold Medal.  It will be housed in the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.  On Thursday, a new sculpture, Four Spirits, was installed in Kelly Ingram Park, across the street from the church.  The coverage of the anniversary this week also included an interview Friday on WUNC’s program The State of Things.  Frank Stasio interviewed Billy Barnes, who attended the funeral, Glenn Eskew, and Carole Weatherford.  Writing for The Progressive, Fred McKissack, Jr., reflected on a 1963 editorial from the Milwaukee Sentinel, questioning whether fifty years later the nation has fully atoned for the crime committed.

A number of repositories have materials related to the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing available online.

• John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.  Their exhibit on the bombing is divided into five parts: Pressure, Explosion, Shock Waves, Aftermath, and Public Opinion.  The records incorporated into this exhibit include telegrams from civil rights leaders to President Kennedy; political cartoons; the official statement Kennedy made to the press four days after the bombing; and letters from citizens to President Kennedy representing a  broad spectrum of opinions on the civil rights movement.
• Alabama Department of Archives and History.  Their photo gallery includes views of the destruction on the day of the bombing along with the mug shots of Robert Chambliss, who was arrested and convicted in 1977 for his role in the bombing.  Two other conspirators, Thomas E. Blanton, Jr., and Bobby Frank Cherry, were convicted in 2001 and 2002, respectively.  The fourth suspect, Herman Frank Cash, died in 1994 without ever facing charges.
• The King Center.  They have the manuscript of the eulogy that Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered at the funeral for Addie Mae Collins, Carol Denise McNair, and Cynthia Diane Wesley that was held three days after the bombing at the Sixth Avenue Baptist Church in Birmingham.  (A separate service was held for the fourth victim, Carole Robertson.)
• Birmingham Public Library.  They have created a digital collection of photographs, newspaper clippings, and documents related to the bombing.  It also includes coverage of the 1977 trial of Robert Chambliss, but the later trials are not included.

The archival world is connected to this story in more ways than these exhibits.  Archivist Randall Jimerson was a teenager living with his family in Birmingham in 1963.  His father was the director of the Alabama Council on Human Relations, and on the afternoon of the bombing, he and his wife drove to the church and salvaged two remnants of stained glass windows that had been blown out of the church.  One of these fragments was donated to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, and the remaining piece was donated by the family this week to the Smithsonian Institution to be a part of the new National Museum of African American History and Culture.

But I also believe that commemorations such as those that have occurred in the past week provide an important opportunity for archivists to consider our role in creating and sustaining collective memory.  Writing in 2002, archivists Joan Schwartz and Terry Cook pointed out,

“Memory, like history, is rooted in archives.  Without archives, memory falters, knowledge of accomplishments fades, pride in a shared past dissipates.  Archives counter these losses.  Archives contain the evidence of what went before.  This is particularly germane in the modern world.  With the disappearance of traditional village life and the extended family, memory based on personal, shared story-telling is no longer possible; the archive remains as one foundation of historical understanding.  Archives validate our experiences, our perceptions, our narratives, our stories.  Archives are our memories” (“Archives, Records, and Power: The Making of Modern Memory,” Archival Science 2 [2002]: 18).

Yet there will always be the voices suggesting that we would be better off forgetting.  Geography professor Kenneth Foote asserted, “A society’s need to remember is balanced against its desire to forget, to leave the memory behind and put the event out of mind. . . .  If a tragedy seems to illustrate a lesson of human ethics or social conduct worth remembering, or if it demands that warnings be forwarded to future generations, tension may resolve in favor of a permanent monument or memorial” (“To Remember and Forget: Archives, Memory, and Culture,” American Archivist 53 [Summer 1990]: 385).  Perhaps one of the most poignant arguments in favor of remembering came from President Obama, upon the groundbreaking of the National Museum of African American History and Culture on 22 February 2012:

“the time will come when few people remember drinking from a colored water fountain, or boarding a segregated bus, or hearing in person Dr. King’s voice boom down from the Lincoln Memorial.  That’s why what we build here won’t just be an achievement for our time, it will be a monument for all time.  It will do more than simply keep those memories alive. . . .  It should stand as proof that the most important things in life rarely come quickly or easily.  It should remind us that although we have yet to reach the mountaintop, we cannot stop climbing. . . .  When our children look at Harriet Tubman’s shawl or Nat Turner’s bible or the plane flown by Tuskegee Airmen, I don’t want them to be seen as figures somehow larger than life.  I want them to see how ordinary Americans could do extraordinary things; how men and women just like them had the courage and determination to right a wrong, to make it right. . . .  And I want them to appreciate this museum not just as a record of tragedy, but as a celebration of life.  When future generations hear these songs of pain and progress and struggle and sacrifice, I hope they will not think of them as somehow separate from the larger American story.  I want them to see it as central – an important part of our shared story.  A call to see ourselves in one another.”