Behind the Veil: Documenting African American life in the Jim Crow South: from the 1890s to the 1950s

About Behind the Veil

The Behind the Veil Oral History Project was undertaken by Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies from 1993 to 1995. Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the primary purpose of this documentary project was to record and preserve the living memory of African American life during the age of legal segregation in the American South, from the 1890s to the 1950s. Over the span of three summers, teams of researchers conducted oral history interviews with more than one thousand elderly black southerners who remembered that period of legal segregation. The tapes and selected transcripts of the 1,260 interviews in this collection capture the vivid personalities, poignant personal stories, and behind-the-scenes decision-making that bring to life the African American experience in the Southduring the late-19th to mid-20th century. It is the largest single collection of Jim Crow oral histories in the world.

Four hundred and ten of the 1,260 interviews have been digitized and made available on this site totaling about 725 hours of recorded audio. One hundred and sixty five of the interviews include transcripts comprising more than 15,000 pages of text

Three hundred and ten of the interviews in the digital collection were conducted with North Carolina residents. The Charlotte and Enfield regions of North Carolina are especially represented in the collection; there are also many recordings from the Durham, James City, New Bern and Wilmington regions. The North Carolina recordings were all digitized as part of the Triangle Research Libraries Network’s project “Content, Context and Capacity: A Collaborative Large-Scale Digitization Project on the Long Civil Rights Movement in North Carolina.” Other collections from that project are also accessible as Duke digital collections.

The original interviews were recorded on audio-cassettes and the entire collection is housed in the John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture, in the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University. See  Inventory of the Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South Records, 1940-1997 and undated (bulk 1993-1997).

One hundred of the recordings and transcripts are also available through iTunes U (iTunes required), and accessible via any computer with iTunes software installed. The mobile touch-screen iTunes application interfaces on iPad, iPhone, and iPoddevices also provide a unique experience for researchers exploring the collection.

Recommended in the September 2014 issue of ALA's Choice

TEDEd Lessons Worth Sharing

TED 

TED believes passionately that ideas have the power to change attitudes, lives, and ultimately, the world. This underlying philosophy is the driving force behind all of TED’s endeavors, including the TED Conferences, TEDx, TED Books, the TED Fellows Program, and the TED Open Translation Project. With this philosophy in mind, and with the intention of supporting teachers and sparking the curiosity of learners around the world, TED-Ed is the newest of TED’s initiatives.

TED-Ed 

TED-Ed’s commitment to creating lessons worth sharing is an extension of TED’s mission of spreading great ideas. Within TED-Ed’s growing library of lessons, you will find carefully curated educational videos, many of which represent collaborations between talented educators and animators nominated through the TED-Ed platform. This platform also allows users to take any useful educational video, not just TED’s, and easily create a customized lesson around the video. Users can then distribute TED-Ed lessons, publicly or privately, and track their impact on the world, a class, or an individual student. This platform is also the home to TED-Ed Clubs – an exciting new program that aims to stimulate and celebrate the best ideas of students around the world.

TED-Ed Lessons 

There are two types of TED-Ed lessons. The first, TED-Ed’s award-winning original lessons, represent collaborations between expert educators, screenwriters and animators. Each collaboration aims to capture and amplify a great lesson idea suggested by the TED community. The second type of TED-Ed lesson can be created by any website visitor, and involves adding questions, discussion topics and other supplementary materials to any educational video on YouTube. Both types of TED-Ed lessons are used regularly – in classrooms and homes – to introduce new topics to learners in an exciting, curiosity-inspiring way.

A Night at the Opera

A Night at the Opera presents opera-related items from the Library of Congress Music Division, including manuscript and printed scores, librettos, photographs, and set designs dating from the late-eighteenth century through the beginning of the twentieth century. The exhibit also commemorates the bicentennials of opera composers Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner, both born in 1813.

from the Overview:
"Today, major opera houses present works chosen from a wide range of musical styles and periods, relying heavily on masterpieces written between the latter-eighteenth century and the first part of the twentieth for their standard repertoire. The works featured in this exhibition are drawn from this “long nineteenth century,” a time when many operagoers think opera reached its zenith. The Music Division of the Library of Congress is home to a vast collection of opera scores, libretti, set and costume designs, photographs, and production materials representing the full span of operatic history. Drawing on these treasures, and in observance of the bicentennial of Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901) and Richard Wagner (1813–1883), this exhibit invites viewers to enjoy a night at the opera".
Exhibition Items.

Recommended in the November 2014 issue of ALA's Choice.

Global Forest Watch

Global Forest Watch (GFW) is a dynamic online forest monitoring and alert system that empowers people everywhere to better manage forests. For the first time, Global Forest Watch unites satellite technology, open data, and crowdsourcing to guarantee access to timely and reliable information about forests. GFW is free and follows an open data approach in putting decision-relevant information in the hands of governments, companies, NGOs, and the public.

GFW is supported by a diverse partnership of organizations that contribute data, technical capabilities, funding, and expertise. The partnership is convened by the World Resources Institute

History

Global Forest Watch originally began in 1997 as an initiative to establish a global forest monitoring network around the world, convened by the World Resources Institute and partners. It began as part of WRI’s Forest Frontiers Initiative. The original GFW achieved many outcomes toward the conservation of large intact forest areas.

WRI has continued the work that Global Forest Watch started, working to improve forest information by merging the latest technology with on-the-ground partnerships. In the Congo Basin countries, WRI has published Forest Atlases that help decision makers achieve sustainable management of forest resources through strengthened land-use planning and monitoring. These are now available for Cameroon, Central African Republic, Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon. The Forest and Landscapes in Indonesia project works to support government and civil society actions for effective and equitable land use in Indonesia. This work now continues as part of WRI’s work on forests and is integrated with Global Forest Watch. In addition to the countries listed above, GFW published state of the forest reports for Canada, Chile, Russia, and Venezuela and related policy reports for Guyana and Suriname.
The GFW network also developed the methods for mapping Intact Forest Landscapes by piloting this method in Russia and Canada and then expanding it to the global level for the year 2000. Monitoring of these areas continues, with an ongoing update for the year 2012 underway.

Recommended in the November 2014 issue of ALA's Choice.

You'd Be Surprised What Chinese College Students Think Of America These Days

Kathleen Miles, kmiles@theworldpost.com 12/03/2014

XI’AN, BEIJING, China -– China continues to open up to the West economically, and there are signs that U.S.-China relations could be improving. But a series of recent conversations with Chinese college students revealed that many in China remain both intensely patriotic and skeptical of the United States. And while China's economy continues to become more capitalistic, the Chinese definitely do not think America and the West have it all figured out politically or economically, especially not after the 2008 financial crisis. The students The WorldPost spoke with were also sensitive to, and eager to defend their country against, what they perceived as negative American press and sentiment towards China.


Most of the college students we spoke with had never been to America. Their opinions came from third-hand reports, interactions with Americans in China and, of course, movies and television. Some of the students' comments reflected stereotypes that have -- like so many stereotypes -- a grain of truth to them. At the same time, many of them, especially those who had encountered Americans themselves, were willing to move beyond their preconceived notions of the country.

What's clear is that Chinese students do indeed have opinions about the U.S., opinions that may be stronger than American students' views on China. Below are excerpts from conversations The WorldPost had with students from Jiaotong University in Xi'an as well as several other students in Beijing:


Read more comments at www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/03/chinese-college-students-america_n_6244638.html  

Students see rise in stress levels, studies indicate

By Jackie Miller, For the Michigan Daily News. December 3, 2014

Now that the Thanksgiving festivities have ended, students are feeling final exam stress becoming more acute every day. The impending deadlines for papers and looming tests have many feeling the pressures associated with this hectic time of year. “I think that it’s just a lot of time crunches all at once, like a lot of time management problems,” said LSA junior Sarah Zaccardo. “It’s kind of like the last of it all, so anything that happens you can’t really change afterwards. It’s like the determining factors.” In addition to all of the expected stress from finals, LSA junior Patrick Schoeps said there are still the usual, non-seasonal stresses to worry about, such as exercising. Such stress factors have a variety of effects on college students. Nationally, 17.3 percent of undergraduate and graduate students reported having depression, 7 percent reported anxiety and 6.3 percent reported serious thoughts about attempting suicide in a 2013 study by Daniel Eisenberg, an associate professor of health management and policy in the School of Public Health and the director of the Healthy Minds Network. Furthermore, stress and anxiety are the top two reported impediments to academic performance for college students at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, according to recently released results from the National College Health Assessment survey, administered by University Health Services last February. Between 2010 and 2014, the proportion of students reporting stress as an academic impediment rose from 25 to 31 percent and anxiety rose from 17 to 22 percent. The number of undergraduate students listing depression as an academic impediment also increased from 10 percent in 2010 to 15 percent in 2014. Eisenberg said depressive symptoms have been rising steadily not only for college populations, but also more generally for all younger demographics. He attributed this trend in part to a shift in the social pressures felt by many college students. “(There is) the idea that young people increasingly are motivated by extrinsic factors like social approval, status, money, and that’s probably exacerbated by social media and the interconnectedness that we all have now as opposed to more intrinsic factors like people’s values, their morals, their self-esteem, and doing things that make us feel good based on our own values,” Eisenberg said. “That’s the sociological explanation, which seems to make sense from people’s observations, but is difficult to prove.”

How College Students Deal With Stress Students Under Pressure - APA Percentage of college students who presented with depression, anxiety or a relationship problem 1 in 5 college students are constantly stressed Life of a College Student is Pretty Awesome, Report Reveals Eisenberg conducts an annual survey across more than 100 colleges and universities that seeks to assess mental health-related issues such as depression, anxiety and substance abuse, as well as how well students utilize campus resources.

American Museum of Natural History Digital Special Collections.

Digital Special Collections of the American Museum of Natural History’s Research Library provides access to our rich collections of digitized archival photographic images, art and memorabilia images and Rare Book Collection illustrations. Use the tabs above to view Collections and Exhibits, or choose Browse to see all the images digitized to date.  Enter terms in the box above to search across all our images or choose the Advanced Search option.
Image Collection
What began as a pilot project of 1,000 images is a long term effort to create comprehensive access to the rich and varied collections of photographs, rare book illustrations, art and memorabilia held in the Library. Images are being scanned and cataloged by teams of staff, interns, and volunteers and new images are added as they become available.

Digital Special Collections allows the Library to curate and describe items through format, provenance, photographer or subject such as exhibition or expedition. Online access provides a wide range of virtual visitors to see these images and helps to preserve the originals via reduced handling.

We have cataloged the images using the data available to us from each item’s original accession into the Museum Library, additional information from Museum departments, research conducted at the Library, and numerous related resources. Images are described using accepted standards such as the Library of Congress Subject Headings and the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names, as well as local Museum vocabularies. Data is entered into modified Dublin Core fields in an Omeka database. To maintain historical integrity, we retain legacy information about the images through data fields such as original caption, but include modern terms to ensure discovery through newly generated titles. For full documentation of metadata specifications, cataloging procedures, data definitions, and standards used, please refer to our Image Database Cataloging Procedures & Style Guide.
Recommended in the November 2014 issue of ALA's Choice.

USA Today College edition: Preparing students for tomorrow with USA TODAY.

College USA Today covers trending topics of interest to college students, faculty and administrators.

Choose from a variety of categories:
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and you'll  find dozens of current eye-catching articles just a click away.

Read, share, comment upon, and/or e-mail.

USA TODAY is a multi-platform news and information media company. Founded in 1982, USA TODAY's mission is to serve as a forum for better understanding and unity to help make the USA truly one nation. Through its unique visual storytelling, USA TODAY delivers high-quality and engaging content across print, digital, social and video platforms. An innovator of news and information, USA TODAY reflects the pulse of the nation and serves as the host of the American conversation – today, tomorrow and for decades to follow. USA TODAY and USATODAY.com reach a combined seven million readers daily. USA TODAY is a leader in mobile applications with more than 21 million downloads on mobile devices.

Dec 1, 1955: Rosa Parks ignites bus boycott

On this day in 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for civil disobedience when she refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger.
 Rosa Parks stood up for what she believed, or rather, sat down for what she believed. On the evening of December 1, 1955, Parks, an African American, was tired after a long day of work and decided to take a seat on the bus on her ride home. Because she sat down and refused to give up her seat to a white passenger, she was arrested for disobeying an Alabama law requiring black people to relinquish seats to white people when the bus was full. (Blacks also had to sit at the back of the bus.) Her arrest sparked a 381-day boycott of the Montgomery bus system. It also led to a 1956 Supreme Court decision banning segregation on public transportation. Who was Rosa Parks, the woman who helped spark the civil rights movement of the 1960s?
Read more at: America's Story and  History.com
www.history.com/this-day-in-history/rosa-parks-ignites-bus-boycot
www.americaslibrary.gov/jb/modern/jb_modern_parks_1.html