History is preserved in the letters, diaries and documents of men and women who lived in earlier times. By studying these papers, historians can gain insight into the social, political and economic landscape of a particular time.
The Special Collections Department of the McWherter library focuses on acquiring and maintaining these vital portals into the past. Other types of materials found in Special Collections include books, maps, oral histories, photographs and sheet music, just to scratch the surface.
One of the largest areas of Special Collections, the Mississippi Valley Collection (MVC), contains a wealth of materials relating to local history and culture. Edwin Frank, curator of the department, said the MVC began to develop in the early Sixties mainly through a thrust from English professors interested in the University collecting literary manuscripts of regional writers. Though the department does hold a few regional literary manuscripts, the focus of the collection broadened to regional history and culture in general.
“We’ve got something from A to Z that is related in some way to the lower Mississippi Valley region,” Frank said.
The MVC can be broken down into topical fields that include Civil War, African-American, and American popular culture materials.
The personal papers of Robert R. Church, an influential Memphis leader and businessman, are a valuable component of the African-American collection, Frank said.
“There was a thriving black middle class here that sort of centered on Mr. Church,” Frank said. “The stuff in his files reflects the activities of all these people because they wrote letters back and forth talking about the next political rally, or who they wanted to support for a certain office.”
The Civil War collection consists of 70 different collections ranging in size from just a few letters to about 40 letters covering a man’s entire experience through the war, Frank said. Surprisingly most of these letters are in extremely good condition, due to the high quality of mid-nineteenth century paper.
“Southern people had to use whatever they could get,” Frank said. “I’ve got examples of Southern letters written on a freight billing chart from a railroad.”
Frank has seen many military and social historians come to read the Civil War letters. A few years ago, a historical linguist wanted to read through the letters to learn about the dialects of the time period through studying spelling and word usage, Frank said.
“He could care less about the personal or military side of the letters, he was only interested in how words were used by different people from different areas,” Frank said. “There’s a lot of non obvious usage for these kinds of things.”
Documentary filmmakers often make use of the photographs and personal papers in the Mississippi Valley Collection. U of M filmmaker Steven Ross used materials from the collection extensively in several of his projects, including “At the River I Stand”, a film focused over the 1968 sanitation strike in Memphis. Local public television station WKNO also used collection photographs for the “Memphis Memoirs” production, Frank said.
“A lot of people come in here and they really don’t have any idea of what it is they’re interested in, or how to go about finding it,” Frank said.
Because the stacks are closed to the public, the department depends on the reference interview in order to help researchers pinpoint exactly what materials in the collections are best suited to their needs, Frank said.
The books and maps are cataloged in the main library system, as well as guide refining aids for each box of personal documents, which lists brief descriptions of each item in the box.
The department collects actively, adding several hundred titles to the book collection each year, as well as purchasing smaller personal collections and receiving donations of larger personal collections such as Church’s, Frank said.
For the World War II 50-year anniversary, Frank sought materials by speaking at community and heritage groups.
“Just getting people to realize that those things are historically valuable documents, that’s the hardest thing,” Frank said.
The types of materials the department looks for is anything that will reflect a certain time period in the region, not just famous people’s papers, but everyday people’s as well, Frank said.
“We’ve really moved past the stage where the only people that matter are presidents, senators, and generals,” Frank said. “That’s not the modern way of thinking.”
