Amistad Research Center offers treasure trove of history and culture

22nd August 2011   ·   0 Comments

By Michael Radcliff
Contributing Writer

In 1839, on the shores of Sierra Leone in Africa, a group of 53 captured Africans were loaded aboard the schooner, “La Amistad,” which means “the Friendship,” and set sail for a plantation in Cuba were they were destined to spend the rest of their lives in slavery. Realizing that they might not ever see their families or homeland again, when the opportunity presented itself, the Africans revolted, seized the crew, and proceeded to commandeer the ship. Unfamiliar with navigating a ship, the Amistad Africans were forced to rely on two members of the ship’s crew to guide the vessel back to the shores of Africa. Instead, the crew members deceived the Africans and instead sailed the vessel to the east coast of the United States – to what is now Long Island, New York. After being discovered off the coast of New York which was then an abolitionist state, the ship was ordered by the U.S. Navy to dock in the less racially tolerant state of Connecticut where there the 39 remaining Africans were arrested for murder, mutiny and an array of other charges.

A “Group of Friends,” made up of abolitionists, Harvard University students, scholars and concerned citizens worked together to assist the Amistad Africans and secured the legal services of the former President, John Quincy Adams. Adams, “the Johnnie Cochran of his day,” proved to be as good as his reputation and contrary to the hopes and wishes of President Van Buren, President-elect John Tyler and the overwhelming majority of the Congressional officeholders – Adams succeeded in winning the freedom of the kidnapped Africans.

This “Group of Friends,” explains Lee Hampton, executive director of the Amistad Research Center, “who came together to help with the defense of the Amistad Africans; in 1846, would go on to form the ‘American Missionary Association’ which would then go on to become one of the most effective and progressive civil rights organizations in our modern era.” Of all of the abolitionist groups formed to help free the slaves – only one – the American Missionary Association, or AMA, would actually allow African Americans to participate in decision-making policies and hold leadership positions on its Board of Directors and local branches. “And, it was from that beginning,” continued Hampton, “that the AMA would begin to embrace civil rights causes all the way through, and to, the point at which the Amistad Research Center was founded.”

While the organization at its inception was active prior to the Civil War, they were especially active after the Civil War, founding elementary schools throughout the South for the newly freed slaves, as well as Historically Black Colleges and Universities – most of which still exist today. The AMA founded more than 500 schools and colleges for former slaves both during and after the Civil War and recruited hundreds of teachers from the north to staff their schools. The AMA spent more money on educating freed slaves than the United States’ Freedmen’s Bureau. Among the 11 HBCUs they founded were Fisk University, Hampton Institute, Tougaloo College, Atlanta University, Berea College, Talladega College, LeMoyne College, Tillotson University, Avery Normal Institute — now part of the College of Charleston, and New Orleans’ own Dillard University. Additionally, along with the Freedmen’s Bureau, the AMA also assisted in the founding of Howard University.

“In 1966,” Hampton continued to explain, “the AMA realized that over the past 120 years they had amassed a considerable amount of historically significant documents which aided in telling the story of African Americans in this country. It was at this point,” he went on to say, “on the campus of Fisk University that the process of preserving these historical documents began, and so to the creation of an archive at which to store these documents; and thus, named in homage to the kidnapped Africans of 1839 – the Amistad Research Center became the official repository for the archives and institutional records of the AMA.

“In 1969,” he continued, “an administrative decision was made to incorporate the Amistad Research Center as an independent institution. And in 1970, Amistad was relocated to the campus of Dillard University at New Orleans. Sooner than expected, Amistad outgrew its allocated space and for a brief period was forced to temporarily relocate to the old U.S. Mint in the French Quarter. It was then that bids went out for a permanent location. Universities such as Rutgers, Harvard, Howard, Ole Miss and others responded seeking to host the Amistad on their campuses. However,” he continued, “there was a great deal of interest in keeping Amistad in the South and at the request of former Mayor Ernest Morial — in New Orleans. As such, another round of bids went out, Tulane responded, did their due diligence, and offered 13,000 square feet of space of prime real estate along St. Charles Ave, in its historic Tilton Memorial Hall – the university’s first library.”

Today, the Amistad Research Center is the nation’s oldest, largest and most comprehensive independent archive specializing in the history of not only African Americans, but other ethnic minorities as well. According to Christopher Harter, one of Amistad’s reference associates, “Amistad hosts the most extensive collections of materials on the modern civil rights era

“From its beginnings/ as the first archives documenting the modern Civil Rights Movement, the Ami­stad Research Center has undergone enormous expansion as our mission continues to evolve,” Hampton explained.

According to its mission statement, Amistad’s primary purpose is to “provide a home to the manuscripts, photographs, oral histories, books, periodicals and works of art that contain the histories of peoples, communities and nations, and to make resource materials for writing and rewriting history accessible to researchers, giving equitable treatment to the contributions of underrepresented groups.”

As such, Amistad’s current holdings not only include the papers of artists, musicians, authors, politicians, and business leaders, but also those of educators, clergy, factory workers and farmers. Additionally, while the archive is located in New Orleans and contains a substantial amount of material documenting New Orleans’ rich cultural heritage, the Center’s collections far exceed local boundaries, and is national and even international in scope. “We’ve gotten requests from as far away as China and Russia to review our materials,” Hampton told The Louisiana Weekly. The literary manuscript collection, accordingly, “is the strength of the Center’s holdings and contains over 15 million documents that record the efforts of those who have charted African-American history and race relations. While the overwhelming majority of these papers document African-American history, at present, approximately 10 percent document other ethnic minorities.”

“Amistad’s periodical holdings include newspapers, journals, literary magazines, organizational news­letters and general magazines, such as The Crisis and Jet, with a focus on ethnic minority issues. Histori­cally speaking, while about 70 percent of the users of Amistad have been affiliated with institutions of higher learning, journalists, and attorneys, increasingly we are seeing more and more filmmakers and individuals affiliated with the film industry using our facility,” Hamp­ton said. “As a matter of fact, when the movie Pride — the story of African-American youth (in Phila­del­phia) who formed a swim team — was being filmed here a few years back, the producer came to Amistad and requested that we immerse the cast in the Black culture of the 70s. Some of things we were able to do was pull out our Ebony magazines from the 70s and then let them listen to some of the soundtracks of that generation.

“The kids were so excited that Diana Ross’s son Evan, the star of the movie, decided that he wanted to wear a huge Afro wig… but the make-up artist went berserk,” Hampton said, bursting into laughter. “His character had short hair so that he could see when he swam in the movie. And, it is that kind of excitement that shows one the value of primary sources.”

The Center holds more than 400 works of African and African-American art, including works by several internationally renowned 19th- and 20th-century African-American masters such as Aaron Douglas, Hale Woodruff, William H. Johnson, Malvin Gray Johnson, William E. Scott, Jacob Lawrence, Palmer Hayden, Claude Clark, Ellis Wilson, William Artis, Richmond Barthe, Elizabeth Catlett and Selma Burke.

“But we are not a museum so we don’t seek artifacts,” Hampton insisted. “Now having said that, we have an art collection that came to the Center as a gift through the Harmon Foundation which encompassed over 300 pieces of original art which has expanded to over 400 pieces and is now one of the finest collections of African-American art in the South, if not the nation.

“But we don’t seek to collect for that collection,” Hampton continued to stress. “Our goal is to preserve those paintings and make sure that they’re here forever and available to the public.

“Now, having said that,” Hampton added with a smile, “one of the most celebrated pieces in the Aaron Douglas Collection is ‘Funeral Procession’ by Ellis Wilson, which became a familiar image for years in the living room set of ‘The Cosby Show.’”

Last year, working in conjunction with the New Orleans Museum of Art, we assisted in putting on an exhibition, “Beyond the Blues,’ displaying some of our art pieces,” Hampton told The Louisiana Weekly. “It was such a remarkable success, and we still get complimented on the display, that we are currently working to make it available as a traveling display… but this is new territory for us since WE ARE NOT a museum!!!”

The Amistad’s printed collections include over 20,000 books, 30,000 pamphlets, over 2,000 periodical titles documenting the abolitionist movement, as well as over 250,000 photographs dating as far back as 1859. In addition to significant holdings in the area of African-American literature, this collection also contains one of the most extensive collections of letters and original manuscripts from prominent Harlem Renaissance writers and poets. Amistad holds works from the personal libraries of authors Countee Cullen, Chester Himes, Tom Dent and others.

Finally, In addition to housing original archival and printed collections, the Amistad Research Center also holds more than 15,000 reels of microfilm containing periodicals, dissertations and theses, and manuscript collections from other repositories around the country, and they (Amistad), reciprocate by microfilming a select number of their archival collections to make them available nationwide, as an aid to other researchers.

Hampton’s vision for the Amistad is to continue to acquire new collections, develop new programs, and use new information technology to meet the educational, cultural and intellectual challenges of the future. “At present, we’re a non-profit entity and nearly all of our services are free,” Hampton explained. “Our funding comes basically from grants, corporate donations and contributions from the community.

“Unfortunately preserving and restoring time- and climate- sensitive documents and artifacts are a very expensive process,” he continued. “And we, like everyone else, being in hard economic times, may need to seek additional sources of revenue just to meet our ongoing expenses. Having said this, my staff and I are committed to doing our part to preserve our precious history and those records that tell the story of all peoples in their collective struggle for freedom, dignity, human rights, and equality.”

This article was originally published in the August 22, 2011 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper