By — Gabrielle Hays Gabrielle Hays Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/in-st-louis-a-chance-to-preserve-black-history Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter In St. Louis, a chance to preserve Black history Nation Nov 12, 2024 10:12 AM EDT ST. LOUIS — Lois Collier Jackson hadn’t watched the three 16 mm films that belonged to her dad for more than half a century. Her father, who recorded the footage in the 1950s, passed down the personal archive to her son when he died seven years ago. The now digitized films show barbecues in the backyard, the faces of deceased grandparents, moments of childhood mischief. When she heard The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture was coming to St. Louis earlier this year to help people preserve the history of the area and of their families, Collier Jackson jumped at the opportunity. READ MORE: Decades after historic Black hospital closes, former nurses fight to keep the memory alive The National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., launched its Community Curation Program in 2017. Doretha Williams and her team of 12 people travel across the country, from Baltimore and Chicago to New Orleans and Nashville to help Black communities preserve the many archives and artifacts that make up their local history. The goal of the project is to celebrate the history of institutions and communities in these different cities, said Williams, director of the museum’s Robert F. Smith Center for the Digitization and Curation of African American History, which leads the preservation effort. “Without the local community, you don’t have a national museum,” she added. “This is a way to show support and gratitude to our communities across the country.” READ MORE: Bringing historical Black newspapers into the digital age, students discover their past Collier Jackson was among the St. Louisans who brought items from home to possibly digitize. Along with her family’s history, she had photographs to share from Homer G. Phillips Hospital, where she trained to be a nurse in the 1960s. “We felt pride, but not prideful because they trained us to be professional and something as simple as your appearance,” Collier Jackson said of the photos she and the former nurses presented. “There was no hair hanging down over your collar. There was no all of this makeup, no earrings, no all of these rings, no long fingernails. Your uniforms had to be clean.” Standing at her dining room table, Lois Collier Jackson flips through memories of both her family and friends over the years. Photo by Gabrielle Hays/PBS Collier Jackson and other former nurses who were trained at the historic Black hospital brought a trove of memories to archivists. One former nurse from the early 1960s brought her student uniform. Another brought their nursing cape. There were more than 300 photos collected in albums. READ MORE: In St. Louis, a neighborhood destroyed, and the children who remember “From 1922 to 1968, we had 1,037 graduates,” Collier Jackson said. “How many of us are left, and where is all of our history? It’s just scattered in different people’s homes.” The process of digitizing this history is not a quick one. Williams’ team spends between 12 and 18 months preparing before traveling to each city. The museum’s staff talks with local organizations and maps out what their visit would look like. They arrive with a mobile digitization unit, or a truck that comes equipped with a range of media equipment, such as a large film scanner and VHS digitization decks, that converts home videos or audio tapes into digital files. Williams got goosebumps as her staffers uncovered certain moments from the past. Some had been forgotten, some never known before by the families. Doretha Williams inside the Nine PBS studio in St. Louis, Missouri, a few weeks before her team was set to leave after spending more than a month in the city. Photo by Gabrielle Hays/PBS News “Sometimes it’s grandpa’s voice they haven’t heard in 20 years, sometimes it’s a picture of someone they’ve never met.” she said. Some restored pictures were so degraded that it was hard for families to make out who was in the photo. “It’s absolutely the most amazing thing that I think we do on the road is to give people back those memories, to give people back their voice,” Williams said. The museum is also looking to nurture trust with each community. As such, Williams said the center is not accessioning, or formally taking stock of these materials for the museum’s own archives. READ MORE: Descendants of those enslaved by St. Louis University calculated their ancestors’ unpaid labor. Here’s how “We’re not here to collect items. We’re not here to collect stories, images, pictures,” she said. “We are not exploitative, so we’re not exploiting our time here. We’re not misusing narratives. We’re holistic, and we’re inclusive.” The work goes far beyond safeguarding memories. It’s also about aiding communities in challenging historic systemic wrongs. A doll dressed in the Homer G. Phillips student nurse uniform sits on a stand on Lois Collier Jackson’s dining room table. Jackson made the doll in 1987 for the groups 65th year celebration. The bottom of the stand reads, “Pride in nursing heritage.” Photo by Gabrielle Hays/PBS News “The importance on the surface is just preserving but what happens if we don’t?” Williams said. She pointed to neglected historic Black cemeteries in St. Louis and whole neighborhoods that were snatched away from Black families under a past urban renewal policy. Collier Jackson grew up in Mill Creek Valley, a neighborhood of Black residents that was displaced by the city’s urban renewal efforts. By the late 1960s, nearly 20,000 residents — mostly Black — were forced out of their homes to make room for other construction. “These are the stories that really lead to the foundations of American history, so we definitely have to preserve those. They have to be elevated,” Williams said. “We are also working to preserve our ancestors and where they are, and to acknowledge the hurt and harm done by local and state entities, with the way that they’ve devastated and demolished, [and] built over graves.“ Ian Darnell, an assistant curator for LGBTQIA+ collections at the Missouri Historical Society, said people often don’t realize how important their memories are. READ MORE: This World’s Fair exhibit aims to tell a more complete picture of what happened there “We hear that all the time. People will say, ‘I didn’t realize that anyone wanted this stuff,’” he said. “They’ll say, that ‘I didn’t think of this as history. I didn’t think of my life as history. I was just living my life trying to make a difference.’” Darnell said basically all of the artifacts in the museum’s “Gateway to Pride” exhibit were collected from people’s lived experiences. St. Louis, he added, has a complicated history, which is even more reason why the process of preservation should keep the stories of all people in mind. “If you’re really going to understand that community, understand its past, understand its present. If you’re really going to be able to imagine its future, the possibilities for its future, you’d need to have as many voices at the table as you can,” he said. “Only when you’re able to have access to all of that, that whole spectrum of the human experience through time, can you really get a true, complete sense of the whole.” For Collier Jackson, seeing her family memories again was like filling in a piece of a puzzle. “We didn’t know what we were missing until we saw it,” she said. We're not going anywhere. Stand up for truly independent, trusted news that you can count on! Donate now By — Gabrielle Hays Gabrielle Hays Gabrielle Hays is a Communities Correspondent for the PBS NewsHour out of St. Louis.
ST. LOUIS — Lois Collier Jackson hadn’t watched the three 16 mm films that belonged to her dad for more than half a century. Her father, who recorded the footage in the 1950s, passed down the personal archive to her son when he died seven years ago. The now digitized films show barbecues in the backyard, the faces of deceased grandparents, moments of childhood mischief. When she heard The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture was coming to St. Louis earlier this year to help people preserve the history of the area and of their families, Collier Jackson jumped at the opportunity. READ MORE: Decades after historic Black hospital closes, former nurses fight to keep the memory alive The National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., launched its Community Curation Program in 2017. Doretha Williams and her team of 12 people travel across the country, from Baltimore and Chicago to New Orleans and Nashville to help Black communities preserve the many archives and artifacts that make up their local history. The goal of the project is to celebrate the history of institutions and communities in these different cities, said Williams, director of the museum’s Robert F. Smith Center for the Digitization and Curation of African American History, which leads the preservation effort. “Without the local community, you don’t have a national museum,” she added. “This is a way to show support and gratitude to our communities across the country.” READ MORE: Bringing historical Black newspapers into the digital age, students discover their past Collier Jackson was among the St. Louisans who brought items from home to possibly digitize. Along with her family’s history, she had photographs to share from Homer G. Phillips Hospital, where she trained to be a nurse in the 1960s. “We felt pride, but not prideful because they trained us to be professional and something as simple as your appearance,” Collier Jackson said of the photos she and the former nurses presented. “There was no hair hanging down over your collar. There was no all of this makeup, no earrings, no all of these rings, no long fingernails. Your uniforms had to be clean.” Standing at her dining room table, Lois Collier Jackson flips through memories of both her family and friends over the years. Photo by Gabrielle Hays/PBS Collier Jackson and other former nurses who were trained at the historic Black hospital brought a trove of memories to archivists. One former nurse from the early 1960s brought her student uniform. Another brought their nursing cape. There were more than 300 photos collected in albums. READ MORE: In St. Louis, a neighborhood destroyed, and the children who remember “From 1922 to 1968, we had 1,037 graduates,” Collier Jackson said. “How many of us are left, and where is all of our history? It’s just scattered in different people’s homes.” The process of digitizing this history is not a quick one. Williams’ team spends between 12 and 18 months preparing before traveling to each city. The museum’s staff talks with local organizations and maps out what their visit would look like. They arrive with a mobile digitization unit, or a truck that comes equipped with a range of media equipment, such as a large film scanner and VHS digitization decks, that converts home videos or audio tapes into digital files. Williams got goosebumps as her staffers uncovered certain moments from the past. Some had been forgotten, some never known before by the families. Doretha Williams inside the Nine PBS studio in St. Louis, Missouri, a few weeks before her team was set to leave after spending more than a month in the city. Photo by Gabrielle Hays/PBS News “Sometimes it’s grandpa’s voice they haven’t heard in 20 years, sometimes it’s a picture of someone they’ve never met.” she said. Some restored pictures were so degraded that it was hard for families to make out who was in the photo. “It’s absolutely the most amazing thing that I think we do on the road is to give people back those memories, to give people back their voice,” Williams said. The museum is also looking to nurture trust with each community. As such, Williams said the center is not accessioning, or formally taking stock of these materials for the museum’s own archives. READ MORE: Descendants of those enslaved by St. Louis University calculated their ancestors’ unpaid labor. Here’s how “We’re not here to collect items. We’re not here to collect stories, images, pictures,” she said. “We are not exploitative, so we’re not exploiting our time here. We’re not misusing narratives. We’re holistic, and we’re inclusive.” The work goes far beyond safeguarding memories. It’s also about aiding communities in challenging historic systemic wrongs. A doll dressed in the Homer G. Phillips student nurse uniform sits on a stand on Lois Collier Jackson’s dining room table. Jackson made the doll in 1987 for the groups 65th year celebration. The bottom of the stand reads, “Pride in nursing heritage.” Photo by Gabrielle Hays/PBS News “The importance on the surface is just preserving but what happens if we don’t?” Williams said. She pointed to neglected historic Black cemeteries in St. Louis and whole neighborhoods that were snatched away from Black families under a past urban renewal policy. Collier Jackson grew up in Mill Creek Valley, a neighborhood of Black residents that was displaced by the city’s urban renewal efforts. By the late 1960s, nearly 20,000 residents — mostly Black — were forced out of their homes to make room for other construction. “These are the stories that really lead to the foundations of American history, so we definitely have to preserve those. They have to be elevated,” Williams said. “We are also working to preserve our ancestors and where they are, and to acknowledge the hurt and harm done by local and state entities, with the way that they’ve devastated and demolished, [and] built over graves.“ Ian Darnell, an assistant curator for LGBTQIA+ collections at the Missouri Historical Society, said people often don’t realize how important their memories are. READ MORE: This World’s Fair exhibit aims to tell a more complete picture of what happened there “We hear that all the time. People will say, ‘I didn’t realize that anyone wanted this stuff,’” he said. “They’ll say, that ‘I didn’t think of this as history. I didn’t think of my life as history. I was just living my life trying to make a difference.’” Darnell said basically all of the artifacts in the museum’s “Gateway to Pride” exhibit were collected from people’s lived experiences. St. Louis, he added, has a complicated history, which is even more reason why the process of preservation should keep the stories of all people in mind. “If you’re really going to understand that community, understand its past, understand its present. If you’re really going to be able to imagine its future, the possibilities for its future, you’d need to have as many voices at the table as you can,” he said. “Only when you’re able to have access to all of that, that whole spectrum of the human experience through time, can you really get a true, complete sense of the whole.” For Collier Jackson, seeing her family memories again was like filling in a piece of a puzzle. “We didn’t know what we were missing until we saw it,” she said. We're not going anywhere. Stand up for truly independent, trusted news that you can count on! Donate now