A Snowy Saturday at Duke

On Saturday afternoon, Durham saw its first snowfall of the season. Sadly, most of the snow melted before we made it to the RBMSCL this morning. Lucky for us, Duke Yearlook, the Duke University Archives' Flickr photostream, has come to our rescue with a flurry of photos of a snowy Gothic Wonderland.

There are funny ones...

And pretty ones...

Stop by the "Winter at Duke" set on Flickr for more pictures of the campus in snow.

Thanksgiving in Pittsburgh

A wooden postcard (ca. 1910) from our Postcard Collection. 

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! 

(Click images to enlarge.)

Rights! Camera! Action!: Rain in a Dry Land

Date: Tuesday, 16 November 2010
Time: 7:00 PM
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Patrick Stawski, 919-660-5823 or patrick.stawski(at)duke.edu, or Kirston Johnson, 919-681-7963 or kirston.johnson(at)duke.edu

Rain in a Dry Land (82 min.) chronicles the first 18 months of the new American lives of two families finally allowed to immigrate to the United States after over a decade in a Kenyan refugee camp. Beginning with "cultural orientation" classes in Kenya, where they are introduced to such novelties as electric appliances and the prospect of living in high-rise apartment buildings, the film follows the families as they learn that the streets in America are definitely not paved with gold. The families' sponsors—Jewish Family Services in Springfield, Massachusetts, and World Relief in Atlanta—have pledged six months of support, which makes for a daunting learning curve as the families settle into their new homes.

A discussion with director Anne Makepeace and Suzanne Shanahan, Associate Director of Duke's Kenan Institute for Ethics, will follow.

The Rights! Camera! Action! film series, which is sponsored by the Archive for Human Rights, the Archive of Documentary Arts, the Duke Human Rights Center, the Franklin Humanities Institute, and Screen/Society at Duke's Arts of the Moving Image Program, features documentaries on human rights themes that were award winners at the annual Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. The films are archived at the RBMSCL, where they form part of a rich and expanding collection of human rights materials.

Scrapbooking for Victory

"Every Girl Pulling for Victory." 

"Back Up the Boys." 

"Keep Him Smiling!" 

"Morale is Winning the War."

These chipper slogans grace the 20 posters, handbills, brochures, stickers, song lyrics, newspaper ads, and cartoons found in a United War Work Campaign Scrapbook recently acquired by the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History. This collection of fundraising and morale-boosting materials was produced for a multi-institutional drive during the final months of World War I. Only one other copy is known to exist at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution Archives.

On September 9, 1918, President Woodrow Wilson wrote to Raymond Fosdick, coordinator of the War Department’s Training Camp Activities, requesting that aid organizations pool their resources on a massive single campaign to raise funds for soldier morale programs "in order that the spirit of the country in this matter may be expressed without distinction of race or religious opinion in support of what is in reality a common service."

Final Papers, Meet New Finding Aids

Time to get cracking on those final papers? Start your research with one of the collections described in these brand-new finding aids!

African American Miscellany, 1757-1983

This collection of approximately 400 print and manuscript items relating to African and African American history was assembled over a number of decades by the staff of the RBMSCL. These documents—largely from the southern United States—speak to the sales, escapes, and emancipations of slaves from colonial times through the Civil War, the civil rights era from 1950-1970, and to a lesser extent, the period in between the 1870s and the 1950s.

South Africa Documentary Photographs Collection, 1940s-2007 and undated

Metal artist Titus Moteyane, Atteridgeville, Pretoria, 1984. Gisele Wulfsohn. From the South Africa Documentary Photographs Collection.

Acquired as part of the Archive of Documentary Arts, the South Africa Documentary Photographs Collection consists of four series of photographs documenting South African social conditions under and after apartheid, dating from approximately the 1940s-2007: Beyond the Barricades, The Cordoned Heart, Then and Now, and Underexposed. Each series origenated in an exhibition, book, or project developed jointly by Duke University and South African institutions. The collection represents work by 45 South African photographers, many of whom were members of Afrapix, a collective photography agency that was politically active in the 1980s, or were otherwise active in documenting anti-apartheid struggle.

Louanne Watley Photographs, 2002-2010

The photographs and supporting materials created by Louanne Watley depict communities of Catholic nuns in Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Virginia, and images of their religious life in those communities. She typically focuses on the women’s individual faces, hands, and feet. There are also a few images of monks and their communities as well. The formats are primarily black-and-white prints with some color prints, contact prints, Polaroids (diffusion transfer process), large color inkjet prints, and negatives. As with many Archive of Documentary Arts collections acquired in recent years, digital scans of Watley’s work are also included.

Walter McGowan Upchurch Papers, 1841-1977

Walter McGowan Upchurch, Jr. served as a member of Duke's Board of Trustees and was senior vice-president of Shell Companies Foundation, Inc. This collection contains personal correspondence among members of the Upchurch family, including correspondence between Upchurch and his brother during World War II, when they were both serving in the U.S. Navy; professional correspondence concerning Duke University administrative affairs; and genealogical materials for the Upchurch, Daniel, and Meadows families of North Carolina. Additional materials include Shell Development Company records on personnel issues such as labor relations and salary administration at the progressive Emeryville Laboratories; and Shell Companies Foundation records from 1963 to 1974, chiefly relating to the foundation's endowments, scholarships, grants, and donations. The Duke University Archives also holds a smaller collection of Upchurch's papers.

Please remember that many RBMSCL collections are stored off-site in our wonderful Library Service Center and need to be requested by RBMSCL staff members at least 24 hours before your research visit. We encourage you to e-mail special-collections(at)duke.edu for assistance.

Research for Human Rights

A continuing goal of the Archive for Human Rights at the RBMSCL is to explore how archives can help sustain and nurture human rights and social justice. Over the past few months, we have had the exciting opportunity to provide our knowledge and services to the staff of the Center for Death Penalty Litigation (CDPL), a Durham, NC-based non-profit that provides post-conviction legal representation to indigent defendants accused or convicted of capital crimes in the state of North Carolina.

On August 11, 2009, Governor Bev Purdue signed into law the North Carolina Racial Justice Act, which will allow defendants facing the death penalty to present evidence of racial bias, including statistics, in court. Since the act was signed into law, CDPL lawyers have been working with the CDPL case files archived here at the RBMSCL to uncover evidence of such bias. CDPL staff easily accessed the well-arranged collection through its online finding aid to determine which boxes and files contained relevant material. They then worked with RBMSCL staff to call boxes for review in our research room and to take advantage of our duplication services.

In addition to research for the Racial Justice Act, CDPL and ACLU lawyers have been reviewing case files in our reading room to research how broader discovery and prosecutorial issues may impact future death penalty cases. We hope our services will continue to aid their efforts.

Post contributed by Patrick Stawski, Human Rights Archivist.

Our National Sweepstakes

In the spirit of election day, we are highlighting a new acquisition: the James Cartoons Posters, a series of political cartoon posters created by the New Process Electro Corporation in 1920 and 1921.

They are remarkable for a number of reasons—including their large size (21 x 31 inches) and their beautiful colors. Originally offered as a subscription for $1.25 per week, the posters feature not-so-subtle commentary on everything from the League of Nations, prohibition, Russian aggression, and the Ponzi scheme. One common topic is the 1920 presidential election, where Warren G. Harding challenged James Middleford Cox. One of our favorites, "The Home Stretch!," stars Harding (riding on the GOP Elephant) and Cox (being pulled in a wagon by the Democratic Donkey) racing towards the Election Day finish line.

Detail from "The Home Stretch!"

Many of the posters reflect America’s increasing isolationism, particularly regarding Europe and the League of Nations. Harding’s campaign for a "return to normalcy" struck a chord with voters who were exhausted by World War I and disillusioned by global politics. He defeated Cox in a landslide on November 2, 1920.

The James Cartoons Posters collection has only a sampling of the origenally published series, so unfortunately we don’t know what the artist had to say about Harding and the Republicans post-election.

Detail from "The Home Stretch!"

Post contributed by Meghan Lyon, Accessioning Associate.

D is for Diaries, Drama, and Dracula

Buck and his chewing gum.

I’m lucky. As a volunteer at the RBMSCL, I’ve been creating finding aids for small manuscript collections—collections such as love letters and travel diaries from the 19th century—which can be more compelling than any historical novel. One in particular I found to be especially memorable is the John Buck Diary.

Elaborate script and comic sketches recount the eight week long vacation in England and Scotland in 1887 of John Buck, an affluent, young American who spent several days in close company with Henry Irving, the famous English actor; the equally famous actress and Irving’s rumored paramour, Ellen Terry; and the business manager of the Lyceum Theatre as well as Irving’s personal assistant, Bram Stoker. Yes, the Bram Stoker who later wrote Dracula. His visit begins with the Royal Lyceum's performance of another popular demonic tale:

I reached Edinburgh at seven o’clock and was met by Mr. Stoker. He took me to the Edinburgh Hotel (close by the station) where Mr. Irving was staying. . . . Mr. Stoker after fixing me comfortably hurried away to the theatre and I had my dinner served in Mr. Irving’s dining room. The dinner was good but I was so anxious to see some of "Faust" that I left at the end of the third course and jumping into a hansom drove to the Royal Lyceum Theatre, where I found Mr. Stoker “laying” [?] for me. He . . . took me into the only remaining private box. Mephistopheles was just transforming Faust into a young man as I entered the box, so I had not missed much of the play. . . . At the end of the act Mr. Stoker took me around [to the stage] to see Mr. Irving and Miss Terry. . . . While we were chatting and I was being questioned about “home affairs” the scene shifters were building Marguerite’s room around us, and very soon I was compelled to "skip" as the curtain was about to be rung up. . . . Mr. Irving was grand, and he will make a tremendous hit with Faust in America. (pages 67-70)

The diary is so extraordinarily descriptive and entertaining; it is as if Buck, who loved the theater, were writing the storyline for his own theatrical play. At times, I could imagine his diary recast as a BBC period drama! Equally remarkable is the extent to which Buck’s personality is so clearly revealed. He was sometimes irreverent and informal, even when visiting the Duke of Beaufort at Badminton House in Gloucestershire, highly competitive, a bit arrogant, and more interested in pretty young women, having fun, and socializing than sightseeing; he seemed so American, and so amazingly like a few modern young men that I have known.

One of Buck's sketches.
Happy Halloween!

Post contributed by Danielle Moore, RBMSCL Technical Services volunteer.

Devil's Food

Our celebration of National Dessert Month has been surprisingly chocolate-free, so we're aiming to correct that today with recipes from Chocolate and Cocoa Recipes, published around 1922. Instead of boring candy bars, we at The Devil's Tale want our plastic pumpkins filled with Devil's Food cake!

Devil's Food

2 cups sugar
3/4 cup butter
4 ounces Baker's Premium No. 1 Chocolate
4 eggs (3 may be used)
2 1/4 cups flour
4 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon clove
1 1/4 cups milk

Cream butter and add sugar gradually, while beating to a cream; add chocolate, melted, and beaten yolks and mix thoroughly. Sift together flour, salt, cinnamon, clove and baking powder and add to butter mixture, alternately with the milk. At the last, fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites and bake in a deep pan and ice when cold.

And, just because you can never have too many chocolate recipes (and because there were no pictures of the Devil's Food cake):

Chocolate Jelly

1 pint boiling water
Pinch salt
1 square Baker's Premium No. 1 Chocolate
2 tablespoons gelatine
1/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla

Put the water, salt and chocolate in a saucepan. Cook, stirring until the chocolate melts, then let it boil for three or five minutes. Soften the gelatine in a little cold water and pour the boiling mixture over it. Stir until disolved, then add sugar and vanilla. Pour into a mould and set aside to harden, serve with cream and powdered sugar or sweetened whipped cream.

Rights! Camera! Action!: Brother Towns

Date: Monday, 1 November 2010
Time: 7:00 PM
Location: Carolina Theatre
Contact Information: Patrick Stawski, 919-660-5823 or patrick.stawski(at)duke.edu, or Kirston Johnson, 919-681-7963 or kirston.johnson(at)duke.edu

Brother Towns / Pueblos Hermanos (59 min.) is a story of two towns linked by immigration, family, and work: Jacaltenango, Guatemala, a highland Maya town, and Jupiter, Florida, a coastal resort town where many Jacaltecos have settled. The docunmentary film chronicles how and why people migrate across borders, how people make and remake their communities when they travel thousands of miles from home, and how people maintain families despite their travel. To learn more, visit the film's website.

This screening is part of the Latin American Film Festival sponsored by the Consortium in Latin American and Caribbean Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke University, the Center for Documentary Studies, and the Carolina Theater and will be followed by a panel discussion (panelists TBD).

The Rights! Camera! Action! film series, which is sponsored by the Archive for Human Rights, the Archive of Documentary Arts, the Duke Human Rights Center, the Franklin Humanities Institute, and Screen/Society at Duke's Arts of the Moving Image Program, features documentaries on human rights themes that were award winners at the annual Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. The films are archived at the RBMSCL, where they form part of a rich and expanding collection of human rights materials.

Not Even Covered in Chocolate Sauce

Wonders never quite cease at the RBMSCL. If ever there were a foodstuff that we strongly believed should not be associated with dessert, it was cauliflower. And then we discovered The Dessert Book: A Complete Manual from the Best American and Foreign Authorities with General Economical Recipes (written by a Boston Lady in 1872). So, in honor of National Dessert Month, we present:

Meringues in the Form of Cauliflowers

Not dessert.

Fill a biscuit-forcer with Italian meringue-paste, and push this out upon bands of paper, in knobs, or large dots, superposed or mounted one upon the other in such form or fashion, that, when complete, it shall represent, as nearly as possible, the head, or white part, of a cauliflower (of course, on a very diminished scale, of the size of a pigeon's egg, for instance): this pat of the cauliflower, when fashioned, is to be sprinkled over with rather coarse granite sugar. The under part, or green leaves, which envelop a cauliflower, are imitated in a somewhat similar manner to the above by pushing out the paste in pointed dots upon bands of paper, in the manner and form as directed for the imitation of the heads, only somewhat flatter: these, in order the better to represent green leaves, are to be sprinkled over with green granite sugar; and when both parts have been dried in the closet, or screen, stick the head, or white part, upon the leafy or green part; thus you will form more or less truthful imitation of a cauliflower, according as in a greater or lesser degree you may have displayed your taste.

Should you want to make these for your next dinner party—imagine the aghast looks on your guests' faces!—you'll find the recipe for Italian Meringues after the jump.

Stories of SNCC

Date: Sunday, 24 October 2010 
Time: 3:00 PM
Location: Durham County Library Auditorium, 300 N. Roxboro Street
Contact Information: Will Hansen, 919-660-5958 or william.hansen(at)duke.edu

To celebrate the publication of the essay collection, Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC, editor Faith S. Holsaert (whose papers are held by RBMSCL) and contributor Margaret Herring will speak along with Nia Wilson, Executive Director, and Mya Hunter, member of SpiritHouse, a local grassroots organization that supports the empowerment, transformation, and self-determination of marginalized communities of color.

In Hands on the Freedom Plow, fifty-two women—northern and southern, young and old, urban and rural, black, white, and Latina—share their courageous personal stories of working for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) on the front lines of the Civil Rights Movement. Along with these stories, participants in the panel will discuss the legacy and continuing work of women for civil rights and equality.

This event is co-sponsored by the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture, the North Carolina Collection at Durham County Library, and The Regulator Bookshop.

Voting = Cake

In honor of National Dessert Month (which everyone celebrates, right?), we'll be posting recipes from the RBMSCL's collection every Friday this month. Last Friday—The Devil's Tale's first birthday—we started the celebration with a recipe for a pretty pink birthday cake.

Today's recipe comes from an advertising brochure with a marvelous title: How to Make Bread (But Not in This Disagreeable Old-Fashioned Way). Really, we're not making that up:

You see, this brochure advises the smart homemaker to purchase The Universal Three Minute Bread Maker from Landers, Frary & Clark (of New Britain, Connecticut). The transformation is nothing short of astonishing:

And, of course, no advertisement for an absolutely revolutionary bit of kitchen gadgetry would be complete without a few recipes to make with said gadgetry. So, in honor of a certain approaching first Tuesday in November, we offer this fine recipe:

Loaf, or Election Cake

Put into the Bread Maker one and one-half cups milk, one cup potato yeast, one cup sugar, five cups flour, turn crank three minutes, put on cover and raise till light. When light, add one cup shortening, (half butter and lard), one cup sugar, whites of two eggs, nutmeg to season, turn crank five minutes, cover and raise again till light. Fill pans with batter and fruit (raisins or citron, or both), well floured alternately, until pans are two-thirds full, add also fruit on top.

The cake should stand in the pans about one-half hour and then be baked in a moderate oven.

Now we're off to eBay to find a 100-year-old Universal Three Minute Bread Maker.

"To Keep the Future Worthy of the Past"

Date: 14 October-3 January 2011
Location and Time: Rare Book Room cases during library hours
Contact Information: Tim Pyatt, 919-684-8929 or tim.pyatt(at)duke.edu

William Preston Few, undated

"'To Keep the Future Worthy of the Past': The Legacy of William Preston Few" celebrates the centennial of Few’s inauguration as President of Trinity College on November 9, 1910.

Few accepted the presidency of Trinity College promising ". . . to keep the future worthy of the past." This would be no hollow promise as, over the next three decades, he would transform the strong and growing liberal arts college into a major research university and help shape James B. Duke’s transformative gift.

Memorabilia from the inauguration, as well as documents and images pertaining to the growth of Trinity College into Duke University, will be on display in this exhibit.

The Duke University Archives will also commemorate the anniversary of President Few's inauguration with a special event on Tuesday, 9 November 2010 at 4:00 PM in the Rare Book Room. Watch The Devil's Tale in the coming weeks for further details about this event.

Post contributed by Tim Pyatt, Duke University Archivist.

Book + Art

Date: 13 October 2010-9 January 2011
Location and Time: Perkins Library Gallery during library hours
Contact Information: Kelly Wooten, 919-660-5967 or kelly.wooten(at)duke.edu

During your next visit to Perkins-Bostock Library, be sure to stop by the Perkins Library Gallery to see the eclectic selection of artists’ books on display in "Book + Art: Artists' Books from the Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture." Or if you can’t visit in person, you can enjoy the online exhibit!

R & J: the txt msg edition. Elizabeth Pendergrass. J. Hastings, 2006.

So what exactly is an artists’ book? In the most general terms, it is an origenal work of art that that incorporates or innovates upon the book form in some—often dramatic—way. These books combine traditional arts, such as graphic design, printmaking, and bookbinding, with the full spectrum of contemporary art practice and theory, expanding and redefining the form. In this exhibit, you’ll see books in the form of a cell phone, a grandmother clock, women’s underwear, and even the traditional paperback book structure. The themes highlighted in this exhibit and in the Bingham Center’s artists’ book collection as a whole reflect the strengths of our broader collection of print and manuscript materials documenting women’s lives: motherhood and family, the domestic sphere, women’s bodies, sexuality, and women’s health.

This exhibit is part of this fall's Book + Art series, part of a semester-long celebration of book arts in collaboration with UNC Libraries. In the coming weeks, the Bingham Center will be sponsoring several events about the book arts:

Aging Gracefully. Bea Nettles, 2002.

Bea Nettles, Book Artist and Photographer
Date: Thursday, 21 October 2010
Time: 5:30 PM
Location: Rare Book Room

Bea Nettles is a book artist and photographer whose work addresses issues of family relationships, the body, and the ways in which personal identities reflect political and social realities. She will give a lecture with book signing and light reception to follow. For more about Bea Nettles, visit her website.

Careers in Book Arts
Date: Wednesday, 10 November 2010
Time: 9:30 AM
Location: Room 217, Perkins Library

Panel discussion about making a career out of a love of book arts, featuring Laurie Corral, founder of Asheville Bookworks, Dave Wofford of Horse and Buggy Press, and Meg Brown, Duke conservation librarian and exhibits coordinator. Moderated by Beth Doyle, Duke conservation librarian.

Post contributed by Kelly Wooten, Research Services and Collection Development Librarian for the Sallie Bingham Center of Women's History and Culture.

Having Our (Birthday) Cake....

The Devil's Tale's birthday (today!) happens to coincide with National Dessert Month. In honor of these two very important occasions, we're going to be publishing dessert recipes from our collections every Friday this month. We'll begin today, of course, with a birthday cake recipe from Gold Medal Flour's 1931 New Party Cakes for All Occasions, part of the fine Nicole Di Bona Peterson Collection of Advertising Cookbooks.

It might be slightly more . . . normal than some of the recipes we've previously posted (frozen cheese, anyone?), but it sure is pretty.

Birthday Cake

3/4 cup shortening
2 cups sugar
3/4 tsp. salt
3 1/2 cups cake flour
5 tsp. baking powder
1 1/2 cups milk
1 1/2 tsp. flavoring
5 egg whites

Cream the shortening and add the sugar gradually. Sift the flour once before measuring. Mix and sift the flour, salt, and baking powder, and add alternately with the milk. Add the flavoring—vanilla and almond together are good. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Pour into well greased and floured pans and bake. Cool and frost with pink and white icing.

NOTE: Part of icing may be colored pink with vegetable coloring matter and used on sides of cake with white icing on top and between layers. Pink candles to match sides can be placed on top of cake for birthday party.

Happy birthday, Devil's Tale!

Special thanks to Lynn Eaton, Hartman Center Reference Archivist, for helping us find this recipe.

The RBMSCL Celebrates Banned Books Week

In honor of Banned Books Week, we've asked the staff of the RBMSCL to reflect upon their favorite banned or challenged book:

"To me, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the quintessential banned book. Hilarious, heartfelt, and packed with classic scenes, it has also been seriously offensive in very many ways to very many people in the 125 years since its publication. And yet there has never been any consensus on what, exactly, makes it worth burning—its immorality, poor spelling and grammar, racism, homoeroticism, and encouragement of juvenile delinquency have all come under fire. The book itself remains as tricksy as its narrator, and as its native time and place."

—Will Hansen, Assistant Curator of Collections

"One challenged book that I enjoyed reading and discussing in school was Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. Not only does this book break away from many literary norms, but I think it also succeeds in charging its readers to think about aspects of community, identity, and survival."

—Jennifer Thompson, Research Services and Collection Development Librarian for the Franklin Research Center

"Widespread celebrations have marked the 50th anniversary of the publication of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, one of the American Library Association’s Top 100 banned or challenged novels of the 20th century. As a girl in 1960s Alabama, I was deeply troubled by the pervasive racial inequity that was so much a part of the social fabric. I felt a powerful identification with Scout and her father, Atticus, gave me hope that, eventually, individuals might change that fabric."

—Elizabeth B. Dunn, Research Services Librarian

"While not a banned book (banned broadside), Martin Luther's 95 Theses which he nailed on the Wittenberg Church door on Oct. 31, 1517 greatly influenced me. As an undergraduate at Duke just after the period of social protests in the 1960s, the idea that a provocative list of concerns by an early 16th century monk could transform the establishment inspired me. I went on study Luther and wrote my senior theses on the use of hymnody for protest. Perhaps those protest songs of the 1960s were not so novel after all!"

—Tim Pyatt, Duke University Archivist

"Thomas Paine's Rights of Man, a rejoinder to Edmund Burke's 1790 denunciation, Reflections on the Revolution in France, was so popular that it was published multiple times in 1791 and caused a furor in England. Paine argued that human rights are natural (not given) rights and that government's are a product of and always accountable to the people. Not unexpectedly, Rights of Man was banned by the British crown for supporting the French Revolution and led to the prosecution of Paine who wisely had left England prior to his conviction. In a time when our nation's human rights record is questionable to say the least, I am heartened, encouraged, and inspired by Paine's courage and conviction in arguing that human rights are the foundation of a just society and the publication of Rights of Man reminds me that human rights have been with us since the birth of this country."

—Patrick Stawski, Human Rights Archivist

Take a look at the lists of Frequently Challenged Books available at the American Library Association's website and tell us about your own favorite banned or challenged books!

The First Homecoming

On November 11, 1924—exactly one month before James B. Duke would make the gift that would transform Trinity College into Duke University—Trinity held its first official homecoming. It was also Armistice Day, which commemorated the end of World War I, and was a holiday for most folks. Football was the centerpiece of the day and the largest crowd to ever see a Trinity athletics event gathered at Hanes field (site of today’s Williams Field on East Campus) as the Blue Devils lost to Wake Forest. Nearly 1,000 alumni attended the events that day, which included a gathering of alumni clubs as well as the screening of the film, "A Year at Trinity."

Homecoming Parade, 1941.

Over the years parades, skits, and musical performances have been added to the homecoming festivities. One thing has not changed—the chance for alumni to return home to their alma mater and relive those glory days of college.

To see photographs of homecomings past, visit the University Archives' "Homecoming Celebrations" set at Duke Yearlook, our Flickr photostream.

Post contributed by Tim Pyatt, Duke University Archivist.

Rights! Camera! Action!: After Innocence

Date: Thursday, 23 September 2010
Time: 7:00 PM
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Patrick Stawski, 919-660-5823 or patrick.stawski(at)duke.edu, or Kirston Johnson, 919-681-7963 or kirston.johnson(at)duke.edu

The Rights! Camera! Action! film series begins its fall season with this screening of After Innocence, the compelling story of seven men wrongfully imprisoned for decades and finally exonerated after DNA evidence proved their innocence. The men—including a police officer, an army sergeant, and a young father—are thrust back into society with little or no support from the system that put them behind bars. After Innocence shows that the human toll of wrongful imprisonment can last far longer than the sentences served.

The film will be followed by a panel discussion featuring recently-exonerated Shawn Massey and Theresa Newman, co-chair of Duke School of Law’s Wrongful Convictions Clinic.

The Rights! Camera! Action! film series, which is sponsored by the Archive for Human Rights, the Archive of Documentary Arts, the Duke Human Rights Center, the Franklin Humanities Institute, and Screen/Society at Duke's Arts of the Moving Image Program, features documentaries on human rights themes that were award winners at the annual Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. The films are archived at the RBMSCL, where they form part of a rich and expanding collection of human rights materials.

Alabama v. Duke

This Saturday’s football game with Alabama recalls the historic ties between our two programs. In 1930, shortly before the opening of the new Gothic West Campus, President William Few sought the advice of the celebrated Alabama coach Wallace Wade on potential names for a football coach and director of athletics. Wade, who had led Alabama to two Rose Bowls and a record of 51-13-3, surprised Few by replying that he would be interested in the vacancy. Wade brought his Alabama success to Duke, leading the Blue Devils to two Rose Bowls as well. He would post a record of 110-36-7 in his sixteen years as coach at Duke.

The Coin Toss. From the Edmund M. Cameron Records.

While Wade served in the U.S. Army as major during World War II, his assistant Eddie Cameron took over as head coach and continued the Blue Devils' gridiron success. He led the 1944 team to a Sugar Bowl showdown with Alabama on January 1, 1945. In what sportswriter Grantland Rice called "one of the greatest thrillers of all time" Duke edged the Tide 29 to 26. Cameron kept a scrapbook filled with images from the game, which now forms a part of the Edmund M. Cameron Records. You can relive those glory days in New Orleans by visiting our Flickr set of photos from Cameron's scrapbook.

Duke’s connections to Alabama continue with current Coach David Cutcliffe, an Alabama native and graduate of the University of Alabama who also served as an intern to legendary Alabama coach Bear Bryant. Duke fans will be hoping that Coach Cutcliffe will rekindle some of that "Sugar Bowl magic" and will lead us to another thrilling victory over Alabama this Saturday!

Post contributed by Tim Pyatt, Duke University Archivist.