Monthly Archives: January 2012

“Merge the Best of the Old with the Best of the New:” Coretta Scott King’s visits to Princeton

Posted on by
Last year, as the nation cel­e­brated the obser­vance of Dr. Mar­tin Luther King, Jr.’s birth­day, we posted an entry enti­tled “Mar­tin Luther King Jr.’s vis­its to Prince­ton,” which high­lighted the var­i­ous col­lec­tions at the See­ley G. Mudd Man­u­script Library con­tain­ing archival mate­ri­als related to Dr. King and his 1960 and 1962 vis­its to Prince­ton. To be sure, the “apos­tle of non-violence”—an eponym ascribed to MLK—was not the only King to spend time at Princeton.
Coretta at Commencement
Eight years after King’s last visit, his widow, Coretta Scott King, an activist in her own right, was con­ferred the Doc­tor of Human­i­ties, hon­oris causa (hon­orary degree) at Princeton’s 1970 com­mence­ment exer­cises. Dur­ing this occa­sion she was joined by an august group of hon­orees, includ­ing musi­cian Bob Dylan. In a let­ter of grat­i­tude to Princeton’s Pres­i­dent Robert F. Goheen, Scott King’s altru­ism, con­sci­en­tious tenor, and unwa­ver­ing com­mit­ment to racial and gen­der equal­ity were evinced when she wrote:
“I con­sider it a dis­tinct honor to be an alumna of Prince­ton, espe­cially since I received my degree at the time that you grad­u­ated your first woman stu­dent. I am fur­ther hon­ored to be asso­ci­ated with a pro­gres­sive insti­tu­tion which is steeped in tra­di­tion, but is keenly sen­si­tive to the tem­per of the times and can there­fore merge the best of the old with the best of the new.”
In yet another tes­ta­ment to her unshak­able activism, Scott King returned to Prince­ton in Novem­ber 1982 to par­take in Black Sol­i­dar­ity Day, a rally spon­sored by the Orga­ni­za­tion of Black Unity, among other stu­dent orga­ni­za­tions and aca­d­e­mic depart­ments. Accord­ing to the Novem­ber 2, 1982 Daily Prince­ton­ian arti­cle, when she climbed upon the ros­trum, as if to chan­nel her late husband’s phi­los­o­phy and dis­po­si­tion, she echoed the orga­niz­ing prin­ci­ples of non-violent social change, for which she added: “[non-violent action] awak­ens a sense of moral shame in one’s opponent.”
CSV and Honorees
Coretta Scott King along with other Hon­orary Degree recip­i­ents.
In both her 1970 and 1982 vis­its, Scott King demon­strated to Prince­to­ni­ans that she had not retreated to wid­ow­hood after King’s untimely assas­si­na­tion in 1968. Rather, she con­tin­ued in his stead, deliv­er­ing the gospel of non-violence, while also pre­serv­ing the rich legacy that Dr. King left in his wake. In short, Scott King cemented her place in Princeton’s Val­halla of dis­tin­guished alum­nae and vis­i­tors, right along­side her husband.
Inter­est­ingly, on Novem­ber 1, 1983, pre­cisely a year after her pow­er­ful speech at Black Sol­i­dar­ity Day, and after years of lob­by­ing, Scott King stood next to Pres­i­dent Ronald Rea­gan as he signed the bill estab­lish­ing Dr. King’s birth­day as a fed­eral hol­i­day. As the Prince­ton com­mu­nity joins the nation in com­mem­o­rat­ing King, we must also remem­ber Coretta Scott King, her time at Prince­ton, and most impor­tantly, the indeli­ble mark she has left on the world. On this day, we salute, Dr. Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King.
Infor­ma­tion about Coretta Scott King’s hon­orary degree can be found in the Hon­orary Degree Records, with a pho­to­graph of her and the other 1970 hon­orees found in the His­tor­i­cal Pho­to­graph Col­lec­tion, Cam­pus Life Series . From the Pub­lic Pol­icy Papers, infor­ma­tion related to her role as a civil right and human rights leader can be found in the Franklin Book Pro­grams Records and the Amer­i­can Civil Lib­er­ties Union Records: Orga­ni­za­tional Mat­ters Series.
To learn more about any of these resources, please feel free to con­tact or visit the Mudd Man­u­script Library.
–Brenda Tin­dal

Meet Mudd’s Maureen Callahan

Posted on by
Thumbnail image for CallahanImageWarthog
Mau­reen made fast friends with this warthog who was a part of the hotel where she was stay­ing while work­ing on an archives project at the Uni­ver­sity of Fort Hare in Alice, East­ern Cape, South Africa.

Name/Title: Mau­reen Calla­han — Pub­lic Pol­icy Papers Project Archivist

Title/Duties: My offi­cial job title is Pub­lic Pol­icy Papers Project Archivist. Like every­one at Mudd, I do a lot of dif­fer­ent things, but my main focus is being a good inter­me­di­ary between the feet, yards, even miles of archival records that we have and researchers who want to come to use them. I spend time fig­ur­ing out how to describe mate­ri­als in aggre­gate and make sense of their con­text and con­tent. Or, to put it another way, I dig through a lot of dusty stuff so you don’t have to.

I also work with other archivists and librar­i­ans here to lever­age the tools of a net­worked world to make our resources avail­able to peo­ple who might never be able to come to Prince­ton to do research. We’re look­ing at pos­si­bil­i­ties for mass dig­i­ti­za­tion so that we can put our actual stuff – and not just descrip­tions of it – on the internet.

Recent projects: Part of the rea­son why I enjoy my job so much is because I get to do a lot of dif­fer­ent things. Dan Linke and I are cur­rently work­ing on an exhibit about the 1912 elec­tion – read­ing about char­ac­ters like Eugene Debs, Teddy Roo­sevelt, Woodrow Wil­son (and let’s face it, to a lesser extent) William Howard Taft is extremely engag­ing, and we’re hav­ing fun think­ing about ways to explain the con­texts and par­al­lels of 1912 and today.

Over the sum­mer I processed the papers of Judge Harold R. Med­ina, a fig­ure so well-known dur­ing the 1940s and ‘50s that he made the cover of Time mag­a­zine, but who is rarely ref­er­enced today. Med­ina presided over the trial of the lead­ers of the Com­mu­nist Party, USA, and over a huge anti-trust case against invest­ment bank­ing firms in the early 1950s. After spend­ing qual­ity time with Judge Med­ina, I would say that there are pos­si­bly dozens of arti­cles and dis­ser­ta­tions to be writ­ten from the con­tent of his records. I hope that we see an uptick in researchers now that his papers are more fully processed!

Worked at Mudd since: I’ve worked at Mudd since Feb­ru­ary of 2011. Before that, I led a project to dig­i­tize rare mate­ri­als from the Mid­dle East and North Africa at George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­sity, and pre­vi­ous to that I was an archivist at the Penn Museum.

Why I like my job/archives: Well, at an eso­teric level, I believe that an hon­est look at the his­tor­i­cal record tends to destroy pre­vi­ous con­cep­tions of what is nor­mal, and I think that there’s some­thing extremely lib­er­at­ing about this. Even Mudd’s records of fairly main­stream char­ac­ters have the power to chal­lenge my pre­vi­ous con­cep­tions of how power presents itself, how peo­ple behave, and how the nation operates.

Much more con­cretely, I like work­ing with peo­ple and I like work­ing with tech­nol­ogy. We get a lot of ques­tions that start with “my ances­tor went to Prince­ton. Can you tell me about him?” I appre­ci­ate the chance to con­nect peo­ple with the peo­ple who came before them, and some­times sur­prise them with the rich­ness of our records. This process is reward­ing, and I’m opti­mistic about the capa­bil­i­ties of the web to bring our resources to more people.

Favorite item/collection: I’m not sure if it’s my favorite, but last year we acces­sioned the records of Elmer C. Werner, an IRS agent who had the goods on Halliburton’s (well, the group that existed that even­tu­ally became Hal­libur­ton) ille­gal con­tri­bu­tions to Lyn­don Baines Johnson’s sen­ate cam­paign. I wrote a blog post about it, which tells the whole sor­did story:

blogs.princeton.edu/mudd/2011/03/how-high-can-an-income-tax-fix-go-the-lbj-tax-scandal-that-youve-probably-never-heard-of.html