(Note: This post was authored by Taylor McNeilly, Processing & Reference Archivist.) While the vast majority of the material in the Dr. and Mrs. Wyatt Tee Walker collection naturally focuses on Dr. and Mrs. Walker and the work they have done throughout their lives, an interesting chunk of material appears to have come directly from the administrative files of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference while Dr. Walker was full-time director, namely 1960-1964. For this week’s #WyattWalkerWednesday post, I wanted to talk about some of the material that I’ve come across processing these administrative files recently.

Public statement by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. addressing the situation in Greenwood, MS. Click to enlarge.

If you’re looking for the big reveal, you might overlook administrative files. After all, they’re primarily official, internal documents of an organization – chances are you aren’t going to get any secrets scribbled in the margins. But if you’re a researcher who wants to know more about the SCLC or Dr. Walker’s work during his four-year tenure as executive director, these are a goldmine.

We have proofs of the public newsletters that SCLC published (as well as published copies) that will help highlight many of the activities the organization was involved in. Most of these would probably have been glossed over in the national narrative of the Civil Rights Movement, so this level of detailed information can be invaluable. We also have several years’ worth of correspondence with the organization, many of which are addressed to Dr. King – but handwritten notes indicate that “WTW” dealt with much of this instead. Some correspondence is also addressed to Dr. Walker, including a telegram from JFK inviting him to take part in a civil rights summit at the White House in the summer of 1963.

Most recently, I’ve come across several folders labeled “MLK” within these documents. This label is a little too generalized to be helpful, considering that MLK was the president of SCLC and played an important role in its operations. So naturally, I get to dig a little deeper into their contents in order to more appropriately organize and describe them. And this digging into these folders yielded some unique and interesting documents.

One of these folders held correspondence to SCLC, but specifically written requests for “hi-fidelity” recordings of “The American Dream,” a speech of Dr. King’s published by SCLC on vinyl sometime in late 1962. These letters date from November of 1962 into December of 1963, and include continued correspondence from some writers whose orders were delivered broken. While not intellectually scintillating, this material is still interesting in gauging the SCLC’s national prominence.

Another folder contained public statements made by Dr. King during 1963. This includes interviews conducted by various television news programs, as well as press releases put out by SCLC. Perhaps most interesting is an undated document addressed to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. This document, focusing on the police brutality occurring in retaliation to black citizens attempting to register to vote in Greenwood, Mississippi, is a powerful piece decrying the use of police dogs and other violent means of stopping nonviolent protests and civic engagement. Such a document can be a vivid reminder in a time when the general public may not have a detailed understanding of the time.

As always, the material archivists find during processing can carry a strong emotional impact. I’ll keep sharing these sorts of discoveries as I move through the collection – there’s a lot left to go through! Keep an eye out here and on our other social media accounts for updates.

(Note: This post was authored by Taylor McNeilly, Processing & Reference Archivist.) While much of our #WyattWalkerWednesday posts have focused either on Dr. Walker’s civil rights work or his lesser known activities, we haven’t done much to highlight his work at Canaan Baptist Church of Christ and the Harlem community. This week, we take a look at one of the most well known photographs of Dr. Walker and the impact that moment had on his life.

Dr. Walker was well known in Harlem, NYC, and New York State for many different reasons. He co-founded the first charter school in the state, he worked with Governor Rockefeller for a decade, he was a major proponent and developer of affordable housing in the community, and his church choir won major awards under his leadership. But Dr. Walker’s passionate sermons and the connections he drew between his religion and the world around him was perhaps most inspiring and noteworthy. He was certainly not afraid to draw concrete links between biblical topics and current events. And he was not afraid to address the general public directly about these events.

One of his most famous sermons was held not in Canaan Baptist Church of Christ itself, but on top of a car in the streets of Harlem. Dr. Walker delivered this sermon through a bull horn, standing on the trunk of a car with one leg on the roof of the cab. The car was parked outside a pizza parlor infamously known as the front for a local drug ring run by the mob in Harlem. The New York Times had a presence in the crowd around Dr. Walker as he gave this sermon, and their photograph of the event is perhaps one of the best known photos of Dr. Walker to date (a copy of which is included in the Dr. and Mrs. Wyatt Tee Walker Collection here at the University and can be seen hanging in the Rare Book Room Annex).

Photograph of Dr. Walker preaching through a bullhorn atop a car in Harlem, NYC.

This sermon, delivered on April 5, 1970, focused on the community’s love for their children. Dr. Walker preached in front of a mafia-run drug front, convincing parents to steer their children away from such places and to bring them instead to the church and leadership of Christ. In his oral history recorded for the University of Richmond, Dr. Walker attributes the management of the “recreational unit” to Frank Lucas, the gangster portrayed by Denzel Washington in American Gangster. In fact, Dr. Walker said that Lucas put a hit out on Dr. Walker after that sermon — one of two hits he had on his life. (The other he attributes to black nationalists who were upset that Dr. Walker planned a state office building in Harlem.)

This story shows yet another aspect of the renowned Dr. Walker, one that is perhaps well known but overshadowed nonetheless by his work in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Dr. Walker cared deeply for his church and his religion but also for his community. He showed this care in many different ways, including much of the development work he did throughout his life. He developed housing and education opportunities for the community, but he also did his best to protect them from those who would lead them into lives of addiction and violence.

(Note: This post was authored by Taylor McNeilly, Processing & Reference Archivist.) There are many different tasks included in archival processing, many of which non-archives professionals may not really think about at all. Of course there’s the organization, the foldering, the putting everything into boxes. But one of the most interesting parts of processing a collection for me is coming across evidence of the donor’s cultural legacy and getting to research that legacy. I’d like to take this week’s #WyattWalkerWednesday to explore one such remnant of cultural impact from the Dr. and Mrs. Wyatt Tee Walker Collection: a play put on about Dr. Walker and his civil rights work in Virginia.

The “Ready*y For Right: A Petersburg Story” program with Sycamore Rouge insert.

Included in the collection is a program for the play “Read*y for Right: A Petersburg Story.” Without a page of copyright information like you’d find in a book, it can be hard to place something like this geographically or chronologically. Luckily, the theater staging this production was large enough (and modern enough) to have had an online presence, which makes placing it geographically pretty easy — turns out it was in nearby Petersburg. (You might have guessed that from the title, but archivists like to confirm that anyway.) Their online presence also shows that they are unfortunately closed, which cuts off one obvious avenue for questions. This makes placing it chronologically take a little more work.

To figure out when this play was put on, the easiest thing to do is search the program itself for context clues. We can tell by the style and quality of printing that it was most likely in the 21st century, but what can we tell from the information printed? What companies are placing ads? Do any of those have dates on them? It turns out one advertisement lists an event happening on “Saturday, October 25.” So let’s check to see what years October 25th fell on a Saturday and use those as a starting point. 2003, 2008, and 2014 are the most recent years that had a Saturday, October 25th. Since the theater, Sycamore Rouge, seems to have closed in 2013, we know it has to be earlier than that — so not 2014. Their online presence, some of which is still available, only dates back to 2011 or so, which doesn’t help us eliminate either 2008 or 2003 as possibilities.

Next, let’s look at some of the information given in the main text of the program. The message from the director doesn’t mention which season they’re in, and the timeline for her tenure is a bit vague. Looking at the list of actors and their biographies, however, we discover that the actor who played Dr. Walker is performing the role as his first with this company. Can we dig up any information about him?

While there’s plenty of information about this actor’s more recent roles (it seems he moved to Washington, DC), there’s not much to help in dating the show. What else can we find in the program to help us? And that’s when we hit gold! The Lighting Designer and Scenic Designer’s bios both mention work done in 2007, meaning this program must have been printed in ’07 or later. This, combined with the advertisement for “Saturday, October 25,” must mean that the show was put on in 2008. And to confirm this, the last page is a listing of Sycamore Rouge’s 2008-2009 season’s remaining shows, starting with December. On its own, this listing can’t confirm much, but combined with the information we picked up as we looked through the program, we know it must be 2008.

You can see how much work a single item in an archival collection may need, but this information is very helpful to archival staff in understanding the connections between the different items in the collection, as well as their connections to the donor. This can help us better serve researchers by providing access to materials we know are connected that the researcher may not be aware of when first coming in. And the information is also very helpful for researchers who come to use the collection, so we try our best to figure out as much as we can to help them along.

That’s it for this week’s #WyattWalkerWednesday post. As always, I’ll be back with a new glimpse into the processing of the collection next week. And in the meantime, feel free to follow the library’s Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts for more updates from around Boatwright.

(Note: This post was authored by Taylor McNeilly, Processing & Reference Archivist.) Hello, and welcome to another edition of #WyattWalkerWednesday! For this week’s post, I want to talk about a portion of the Dr. and Mrs. Wyatt Tee Walker Collection that many may not even realize could exist — but is already getting attention: Dr. Walker’s work as an ethnomusicologist and composer.

The Music Tree, copyright Wyatt Tee Walker, 1979.

Dr. Walker is, of course, primarily remembered for his work on the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and ’60s, as well as his continued work in that vein throughout his life. He is also well remembered as a devout and active pastor, gaining a doctorate in theology from Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School in 1975 (while already having been senior pastor at Canaan Baptist Church of Christ for eight years or so, talk about busy). But how many of you know that his doctoral thesis for that degree focused on Black Gospel music and its role in the Civil Rights Movement?

Dr. Walker donated his copy of that thesis, entitled “Scaffold of Faith: The Role of Black Sacred Music in Social Change,” to the University of Richmond before his passing. It is one of multiple items in the collection linked to Dr. Walker’s active role in this field. His work as an ethnomusicologist studying Black Gospel music, its roots in American slavery, and its effects on the modern American music scene, would continue throughout his life. In 1976, he organized a “Gospel Picnic” for the Newport Jazz Festival, followed six years later by a “Festival of Black Gospel” in 1982. In 1994, he wrote an article published in Score Magazine entitled “Music is Ministry, As Preaching is Ministry.” This article focused on the role of traditional Black Gospel in the black church, as well as the contemporary shift away from traditional music and that trend’s destructive effects on black churches and their communities’ faith.

Throughout this time, Dr. Walker was also writing and publishing books that focused on the Black Gospel tradition. His work on some, such as the “African American Heritage Hymnal,” are widely known and used today in black churches. Others, including “Spirits that Dwell in Deep Woods: The Prayer and Praise Hymns of The Black Religious Experience,” catapulted Dr. Walker to international fame. In fact, an unpublished manuscript in the collection recounts how Dr. Walker was introduced to Hisashi Kajiwara, a Japanese minister who came to Canaan Baptist Church of Christ from Japan to study under Dr. Walker. The manuscript goes on to tell how Kajiwara also introduced Dr. Walker to a Japanese pop star who, being engaged to a Catholic woman, asked Dr. Walker to fly to Japan with a group of gospel singers and coordinate the wedding music. Kajiwara would also go on to work with the Kobe Mass Choir and the United Church of Christ in Japan to translate and publish some of Dr. Walker’s work, including “Spirits that Dwell in Deep Woods.”

Perhaps the most visually stunning work on ethnomusicology that Dr. Walker donated is his large scale Music Tree poster, pictured above. This item, printed on canvas, is copyrighted 1979, four years after his Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School thesis. The poster is an image of a tree drawn by Dr. Walker depicting the growth of Black Gospel out of, at its roots, the “utterances and moans” of slaves brought to America. The trunk of the tree being Black Gospel, the branches — some intertwined — show the development of various forms of music both sacred and popular. The poster also seems to be accompanied by a VHS tape labeled “Roots of Music/Music Tree.” As I’ve previously mentioned, I’m currently focusing on processing the manuscript and object portions of the collection, so I can’t yet speak to the contents of the VHS. And since I’m not finished processing the manuscript materials yet, there may be even more material pertaining to Dr. Walker’s work with music waiting to be found, organized, and described. The ethnomusicology research potential in this collection is already exciting our faculty and researchers near and far, so I’m eager to finish the collection and open it to research, hopefully this fall.

And that’s it for this week’s post! As always, keep an eye on Boatwright Library’s Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter feeds to keep up with our activities both in RBSC and outside the division. Otherwise, I’ll be back next week with another #WyattWalkerWednesday post!

(Note: This post was authored by Taylor McNeilly, Processing & Reference Archivist.) Sometimes while processing an archival collection, the archivist will come across some unexpected items. Typically when donating a collection, the donors are expected to sign something called a deed of gift, which outlines what is being donated and what rights are being included (copyright, for instance). While this can be viewed as a legal document protecting the interests of both parties, it also helps the archives and archivist know what they’re getting in the collection.

However, most deeds of gift aren’t entirely exhaustive in their inventorying of a new collection, although if it’s a small enough collection it might be. With a collection as large as the Dr. and Mrs. Wyatt Tee Walker Collection, the inventory was long but not exhaustive. Because of this, I’m always coming across material that isn’t expressly detailed in the deed of gift. Most of this is material you’d expect, and some of it I’ve talked about in previous posts. For this week’s #WyattWalkerWednesday, I want to mention some materials I’ve recently found while processing the collection that were a bit more unexpected.

The Walker Collection has a multitude of photographs, and we knew when it was donated that there would be some surprises hidden away in the masses. Dr. Walker was a photographer himself, and because of his pivotal role in multiple political movements, he was also often the subject of photography as well. Many of these latter photographs were well known and individually listed in the deed of gift inventory, but some seem to have slipped through unnoticed. One of these that I recently found is a photograph of a young Dr. Walker shaking hands with Richard Nixon.

There seems to be very little information on when or why Dr. Walker met with Nixon, but based on the relative ages of both men, our best guess is that it was during Nixon’s run as Vice President under Eisenhower. Nixon was Vice President 1953-1961, so whatever Dr. Walker was meeting with him over would have occurred early in his time working on the Civil Rights Movement, potentially before he began working with SCLC and Martin Luther King, Jr. While Nixon did take a public stand against school segregation in 1954, there seems to be no record of Nixon and Dr. Walker meeting. Where has this mysterious photo come from, and what other clues might we someday learn about this seemingly forgotten day in history?

The Walkers also donated dozens of posters and large size photographs as part of the collection, and many of these came to Boatwright Library unframed and stacked together in boxes, exactly as they were packed to be shipped. This is nothing unusual, but while recently going through a box that we thought was full of duplicate posters for a theatrical production based on the Freedom Rides in which both Dr. Walker and Mrs. Walker participated, I came across some items I did not expect: holiday decorations for Valentine’s Day and Easter.

Holiday decorations discovered in the Dr. and Mrs. Wyatt Tee Walker Collection.

These decorations are store bought, mass produced, and hold absolutely no bearing on the Walker Collection or any real insight into the lives of the Walkers (besides that they had large decorations for holidays, probably used to hang on the front door), but they are a cheerful and fun surprise to find in the box. It’s no surprise that, as a pastor of a Baptist church, Dr. Walker had decorations for a holiday as important to Christians as Easter. But how lucky to have discovered them just in time for Valentine’s Day as well!

As always, I hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s peek into processing the Walker Collection! We continue posting material on Boatwright Library’s Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts as well, so check those out, too. Otherwise, we’ll see you back here next week!