I am investigating the nature of work for African Americans in the public sector during the Jim Crow Era, specifically in healthcare, local government, and public safety. Drawing on archival research, interviews with local experts, and oral histories with tradition-bearers and pioneers who broke barriers, this research examines the opportunities, obstacles, and challenges for Black…
Wilmington Newspaper, The Sunday Star, Available on Google Archive
After Google launched an ambitious project in 2008 to digitize many local newspapers, the giant e-content provider scanned about 2,000 publications, including a Wilmington newspaper, the Sunday Morning Star. In the era when many dailies didn’t have Sunday editions, these periodicals functioned like newsweeklies, the broadsheet having a form distinct from the weekday news. They pulled together features and more in-depth, colorful pieces…
Prohibition Talk Focuses on New Hampshire
I recently had the opportunity to examine the subject of temperance and prohibition from a New England perspective. While framing this within a national context for the Nashua Public Library, the lecture considered the centuries-long attempt to control and regulate the consumption of alcohol in a regional context. This took in stories of rumrunners landing…
Finding Old New Jersey Map
Thanks to the World Wide Web, public digitization initiatives, and the growth of social media, researchers and curious types have almost unlimited, convenient access to an enormous array of rare historical maps. As these old cartographic renderings, many seldom used or seen, come out of storage vaults and are made available virtually, they allow a…