(Note: This post was authored by Taylor McNeilly, Processing & Reference Archivist.) One of the most interesting things about processing a collection is some of the small, unimportant pieces of history you discover. For today’s #WyattWalkerWednesday post, I’d like to talk about a few items I’ve found recently while processing the Dr. and Mrs. Wyatt T. Walker Collection.

The first item I came across was in and of itself not that important. The SCLC had collaborated with a handful of other civil rights organizations in the south to develop a training program for the next generation of civil rights leaders, and this item is a press release or mailer publicizing the program and asking people to participate. Considering how active SCLC was in this period, this single mailer that sheds no light on the actual program is mostly insignificant, especially since the program has other records in the collection. However, at the end of the mailer is something quite interesting: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s signature.

Signature of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as it appears on a document found within the Dr. and Mrs. Wyatt T. Walker Collection.

MLK’s signature is of course well documented in many places, and it does appear elsewhere in the collection here. However, this was one of the first times I came across it unexpectedly and authentically, rather than as a stamp or photocopy. It is common practice for executives and celebrities to sign many documents with a copy of a signature, rather than signing each one by hand. In this instance, the signature appears to have been written by hand. While this isn’t momentous or historically significant, seeing MLK’s signature in person was an unexpected surprise.

You might be able to guess something about the second item I greatly enjoyed stumbling across, considering the title of this blog entry. That’s right: it touches on what very well might be the first-ever Wyatt Tee Walker Day.

A handwritten advertisement for what may be the first ever Wyatt Tee Walker Day.

While several cities have officially proclaimed Wyatt Tee Walker Days throughout Dr. Walker’s life, this handwritten advertisement seems to be less a official, municipal declaration than a celebration held by the community. Interestingly, this celebration occurs after Dr. Walker has moved on to his work at SCLC, and the item was found in SCLC records – indicating this was a celebration that Dr. Walker was notified of through SCLC, rather than through his previous post at Gilfield Baptist Church.

Since this is the only item pertaining to the 1960 Wyatt Tee Walker Day, we have no real record of what events might have occurred or how they would have celebrated “Petersburg’s fearless & outspoken dean of civil rights.” We also have no way to gauge just how popular the event was, or even to know who sponsored it or where it was held. This information may be in other archival collections or otherwise available to researchers, but for now it’s nice to know just that Dr. Walker was being recognized and celebrated as far back as 1960 by the communities he was working so passionately to help.

That’s all for this week! As always, please check back for future posts and any updates on the collection.

(Note: This post was authored by Taylor McNeilly, Processing & Reference Archivist.) Welcome back to another #WyattWalkerWednesday post! As I mentioned in our previous entry, we’ve spent much of the summer shifting things around to help make space and provide a better location for processing the Dr. and Mrs. Wyatt T. Walker Collection. Now that processing is once again in full swing, I’ve begun going through the materials we pulled out of off-site storage when setting up the quarantine (for more information on that, check out the Setting Up a Quarantine article from May). One of the main focuses of processing right now has been some of the earliest material, which happens to be more records of Dr. Walker’s time at SCLC.

Administrative records from Dr. Walker’s time at SCLC awaiting processing.

While Dr. Walker’s tenure at SCLC is well defined and many of his accomplishments are widely recognized, including his work on Project C and the March on Washington, the records I am processing now help shed light on the minute and sometimes mundane details: records such as reimbursement for gas used to drive from one event to another might shed little light on the Civil Rights Movements and its inner workings. However, a reimbursement request for a diamond ring Mrs. Walker lost during a protest seems to show more about the struggle than mere transportation costs.

These records reflect much of the work SCLC was doing beyond the attention-grabbing, headline-making events that are recorded in the popular American narrative. They help provide a distinct view of SCLC and Dr. Walker as its first full-time executive director. And taken in the context of SCLC’s records before and after Dr. Walker’s time there, they help provide a more complete history of this deeply important organization. As such, they are an important focus in our work to process the collection and open it to researchers, as we expect these records to be of high research value and under high demand.

As always, keep an eye on this blog and other official University of Richmond and Boatwright Library communications channels for news on when the collection will be open for processing. And in the meantime, stop back here next week for another interesting, behind-the-scenes look at preparing this collection for use.

(Note: This post was authored by Taylor McNeilly, Processing & Reference Archivist.) Welcome back to #WyattWalkerWednesdays on the blog! It’s been awhile, but not because we haven’t been making progress – quite the opposite! We’ve been so busy with the Dr. and Mrs. Wyatt T. Walker Collection, among many other things. And luckily, I can finally give some updates! This week, I’d like to talk about a new space we’re now using to hold and process the collection.

As you might recall from earlier posts, we finished some renovations to the Rare Book Room and the vault in May. While these renovations were ongoing, we had packed away the entire collection from the Rare Book Room and held them in storage. Once the renovations were completed, the books began to be shifted back into their new space. This, of course, opened up the storage space for use. And, being large and secluded with high security and appropriate environmental controls, it was perfect for storing the unprocessed majority of the Walker collection while allowing me space to work on it. And so, after enough of the books had been shifted, I moved the Walker collection down to its new processing space.

A portion of the Walker Collection awaiting processing.

As you can see, there’s plenty of the collection still waiting to be processed. This material has been organized primarily by format, so you’ll notice stacks of photographs, posters, a small group of digital files, and a box of awards. Similarly, the remaining boxes are all full of manuscript material, which comprises the bulk of the collection and is the current focus on processing.

Further Walker Collection materials in storage and the processing workspace.

The best part about the new space is that it allows me some small room for processing, which has helped to keep the processing workflow moving. This has allowed us to move through new material and add to our understanding of Dr. Walker, his life, and the collection itself.

This increased understanding of the collection has also opened new avenues for us. While we can’t say too much in the way of details, I am allowed to say that we are working on multiple exhibits of some of the processed material. These exhibits will take place in the coming year, and more information will be announced as plans are finalized – so keep your eyes open! I’ll report more here when I can. And of course, I will continue to give updates on the processing of the collection and when we expect to open it for research and use.

(Note: This post was authored by Taylor McNeilly, Processing & Reference Archivist.) Welcome back to another #WyattWalkerWednesday post! This week, we’re keeping up our every other week updates on the A/V materials pattern.

Approximately 500-600 audio cassettes, arranged chronologically. The box on the left edge of the image is commercially produced cassettes, separated from the main work of the collection.

When last I gave an update on the audio cassettes, I was busily arranging them into chronological order, with commercially produced cassettes separated out. This work is almost done – 800 cassettes is a lot to sort through, and unfortunately I do have other daily duties – but progress has also been being made on the inventory.

You may recall I mentioned the inventory last time. It was compiled by some student workers before my time on the project, and it lists each cassette by name and date, as well as speaker whenever possible. Unfortunately, the cassettes weren’t listed in any consistent order, and the dates were written in a way that didn’t allow for sorting the inventory chronologically. Since I’m arranging the cassettes chronologically, I was faced with a dilemma: either clean up the date column, normalizing the data into a format that Excel can sort, or number the cassettes in the inventory one at a time after physical arrangement was finished.

Both of these options have pros and cons. If I wanted to normalize the data, it would be time-consuming to retype 800 date fields, but it would mean I could sort the inventory and save time during the packing process. If I left the dates as is, I could finish arranging the physical cassettes faster – but I’d have to do the date normalization at some point in order to send it out to the digitization vendor.

There were a handful of other factors that tied into the decision, but in the end I decided to take a quick break from arranging the physical cassettes to update the inventory. This started with normalizing the date column, allowing me to sort the inventory into the same order that they should be physically. This also proved useful at cleaning up the data, as there were occasional typos (a year listed as 19846, for instance). I also created a new column to indicate commercially produced cassettes, allowing them to be sorted separately from Dr. Walker’s sermons and church recordings. Since these are physically separated, this is another major improvement that should make things much easier as we prepare a spreadsheet for the digitization vendor.

The physical arrangement is also coming along well, with approximately 600 of the cassettes separated into commercial and non-commercial recordings and arranged chronologically. With about 200 cassettes left to arrange, I’m hoping to be finished with the arrangement before the Memorial Day weekend, and listing and packing can begin next week.

As always, I’ll continue posting updates here, and with luck you’ll see another discussion of the A/V materials in two weeks. Keep in mind that the audio cassettes aren’t the only material being digitized – the 8mm films, 16mm films, and audio reel are also being included in this project! There’s plenty more to do, so keep an eye out for further updates.

(Note: This post was authored by Taylor McNeilly, Processing & Reference Archivist.) Welcome back to the Something Uncommon blog with another #WyattWalkerWednesday post! This week, I want to let you all know about progress happening on some non-manuscript materials within the collection.

Some of the audio cassettes donated as part of the Dr. and Mrs. Wyatt Tee Walker Collection.

Now, if you’ve been keeping up with the posts concerning the Dr. and Mrs. Wyatt Tee Walker Collection, you may recall that I said we would be focusing first on the manuscript materials and turning attention towards the A/V (audiovisual) material later. This is partially to ensure that we can open the manuscript portion of the collection to researchers as quickly as possible, as processing manuscript materials can be done much faster than A/V materials. Let me talk about what A/V materials are – and why they’re so much harder to process – before telling you all the great news!

So A/V material, or audiovisual material, is a term used to refer to a whole host of different types of materials. These typically include audio recordings, video recordings, and still images. Each of these categories can take multiple forms, of course. Audio cassettes, vinyl recordings, even wax cylinders – these are all audio recordings, so they fall into the A/V material category. Similarly, video recordings can be on DVD, VHS, or film reels – the Walker Collection includes some 16mm film reels and a couple 8mm film reels as well. Photographs and other still images are perhaps the mostly widely varied – you have photographs, tin types, cyanotypes, various slides, photograph negatives, daguerreotypes, and so forth. There are archivists who specialize specifically in different types of A/V materials, because each format has its own preservation requirements, including what it should be housed in, what temperature the room should be kept at, and even if it can be viewed under different kinds of light.

The Walker Collection has a lot of different formats for A/V material. As I mentioned above, we have different formats of video recordings, and I’m sure I’ve mentioned before the 10,000 or so slides and countless photographs. Since I’m more of a generalist/digital archivist, I don’t have the level of expertise with A/V materials that would let me process these materials as quickly as manuscript material, so I’ve been working through the manuscript items first to let researchers have access faster. However, one thing that most archivists know immediately about A/V material is that it is almost never as stable as manuscript material.

Another format we have plenty of is audio cassettes. In fact, our current inventory lists 780 audio cassettes, some dating from as early as the 1960s. While my predecessor and I have been processing the manuscript material for the collection, some of the student workers here at Boatwright Library created an inventory of the audio cassette tapes for us. This has allowed us to get quotes from various digitization vendors to move forward with this important work: the “life expectancy” (how long the recording will be accessible) for cassette tapes sits somewhere around 10-30 years, according to most estimates. This means that, in the case of the earliest of these recordings, we may already be too late – but we have to try. As such, we’ve begun moving forward on a digitization project with a large portion of the A/V materials, with the 700+ cassette tapes taking center stage.

All of this is very exciting, especially for the cassettes, film reels, and single reel-to-reel audio recording we have in the collection. Details on the project – and the eventual end result, digitized copies accessible to researchers who’d like to hear the sermons and speeches of Dr. Walker – will be forthcoming. The project is still in its early stages, but I’ll keep you all updated on this – as well as my progress processing the manuscript materials – as progress happens. So keep an eye on this space!

(Note: This post was authored by Taylor McNeilly, Processing & Reference Archivist.) Hello, and welcome to another #WyattWalkerWednesday post! I’ve been busy processing the Dr. and Mrs. Wyatt Tee Walker Collection, and I’m still in the middle of Dr. Walker’s SCLC records. One of the interesting finds I came upon this week was a group of folders all labeled “LEGAL” that seem to touch on a variety of topics.

Original folders labeled “LEGAL” in the Dr. and Mrs. Wyatt Tee Walker Collection.

As you can see in the above photo, the folders aren’t labeled just LEGAL (except for a few that are). Most of them have clarifying details, which are where things get really interesting. Perhaps most notable for researchers is the folder labeled “LEGAL FREEDOM RIDE.” And while these documents will certainly be interesting, my interest was particularly focused on the back folder. Perhaps not visible enough to be legible in the photo, that folder’s label reads “LEGAL Petersburg VA.”

We have very little material from Dr. Walker’s time in Petersburg. The collection was donated beginning in 2015, and by then Dr. and Mrs. Walker had been away from Petersburg for over 50 years, so it makes sense that the amount of material they had kept from that time would be less than from more recent work, especially their work in Harlem. Nonetheless, anytime material connected to Dr. Walker’s time in Petersburg and Richmond comes up, I’m especially excited!

The Petersburg legal folder contained three documents, each stapled. These appear to be copies of lawsuits and supplementary information filed with the suits, all of them in the East District or Richmond District of Virginia. The suits appear to be focused on the integration of bus stop lunch counters in Petersburg, which was the first civil rights work that Dr. Walker worked on – just before his work on integrating the public library in Petersburg. We have some records pertaining to his work on the library, but so far had found nothing about the bus stop lunch counters. This materials in this folder, then, play an exciting role in filling a hole in the collection’s historical record, documenting some of the first civil rights work Dr. Walker did during his time in Petersburg.

It’s important to note that the folders pictured above will not be making it into the collection, even though the material held inside them will be. A major part of processing a collection is rehousing the materials in archival quality folders and boxes. This helps preserve the material, extending its lifespan to ensure its availability for generations to come. Once the collection opens, the materials themselves will still be accessible, so don’t worry!