New Collections – Page 15

February 3, 2021February 1, 2021

Architectural records documenting segregated health care facilities in Baldwin, Richmond, Treutlen, Ware, and Wayne counties in Georgia now available online

In partnership with Kennesaw State University’s Department of Museums, Archives & Rare Books, the Digital Library of Georgia has just added a collection of oversized technical drawings from the Gregson and Ellis Architectural Drawings Collection that document the experiences of “living and receiving medical and mental health care in the mid-20th century segregated South,” according to Helen Thomas, the outreach archivist at Kennesaw State University Archives.

The collection, available at https://dlg.usg.edu/collection/gkj_gead, features facilities located across Baldwin, Richmond, Treutlen, Ware, and Wayne counties in Georgia. The digitized drawings will also be made available through KSU’s Scholarly Online Access Repository (SOAR) at https://soar.kennesaw.edu/handle/11360/5132.

Some images from the collection include:

Title: Treutlen County Hospital. Details of nurses station
Collection: Gregson and Ellis Architectural Drawings
https://dlg.usg.edu/record/gkj_gead_treutlen-020

Title: Augusta State Hospital Complex. [Floor plan – first floor]
Collection: Gregson and Ellis Architectural Drawings
https://dlg.usg.edu/record/gkj_gead_augusta-005

Thomas, who works regularly with these materials, adds: “Architectural records demonstrate not only trends in construction and design, but also reflect the society in which the buildings exist…The materials we proposed to digitize depict public facilities, from small rural hospitals to large medical complexes, representing the medical services available to all Georgians regardless of their level of income.”

She concludes: “Since each set of drawings shows public facilities built in Georgia before the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, these drawings demonstrate how buildings were constructed to segregate not only by the facility but also within facilities. While some of the drawings in this collection reveal separate buildings constructed for the same purpose, but each restricted to white or African-American citizens (such as separate psychiatric buildings in the Milledgeville complex for white and African-American patients), some show how individual buildings were segregated. An example of the latter is the Augusta State Hospital, which shows separate entrances, waiting areas, restrooms, cafeterias, pharmacies, pediatric wings, and locker rooms for white and African-American patients and employees.”

Barbara Berney, Ph.D., MPH, used the Gregson and Ellis materials in her documentary Power to Heal: Medicare and the Civil Rights Revolution, and says:

“This documentary examines the history of inequality in Americans’ access to health care, and specifically how Medicare was used to desegregate thousands of hospitals across the country. As a scholar of public health and the U. S. health care system, I was inspired to produce the film by hearing eyewitness accounts from physicians, nurses, and government staffers involved in the integration effort and those who struggled to provide health services in rural areas lacking the most basic medical care. The Gregson and Ellis collection provided context for these firsthand accounts by illustrating the physical space in which these health care professionals were working…In addition to providing multiple examples of public hospitals of this era, these drawings show that the public medical facilities available to African Americans were not only separate but could also be limited in size and capabilities.”

About the Kennesaw State University Archives

The Kennesaw State University Archives is a destination for university and community members to research the history of Kennesaw State University and people and organizations in north and northwest Georgia. The mission of the KSU Archives is to identify, collect and make accessible records of enduring value to preserve institutional and community memory into the future. For more information, visit archives.kennesaw.edu.

January 20, 2021January 15, 2021

Pandora yearbooks documenting pivotal years in the University of Georgia’s history now available freely online

The Pandora, the University of Georgia’s yearbook, has been published nearly every year since 1886, serving as a rich source of institutional and social history that has traced the growth and development of the country’s first state-chartered university. Through a partnership between the Hargrett Library, University Archives, and the Digital Library of Georgia, yearbooks that document campus life, students and faculty, clubs, and other events from 1965 to 1974 have been digitized, allowing free online access to Pandoras that document the years following desegregation and the first social movements for black students, women’s liberation, gay liberation, and campus free speech as they manifested themselves on the UGA campus. These editions are now available at https://dlg.usg.edu/collection/dlg_pandora.

“The Pandora is a record created by and for students, and it naturally presents their perspective first and foremost. Not all of their views reflect our institutional values today. Still, a number of students depicted in the Pandora at this time were striving to create a more inclusive and conscientious campus, as evidenced by their writings, photos, artwork, and images of protests. The yearbooks are a crucial document for capturing the early days of student dissent and activism that continues on campus to this day,” said Steve Armour, university archivist at the Hargrett Rare Book & Manuscript Library, one of three special collections units of the UGA Libraries.

College yearbooks can help people interested in genealogy research or sports history. They also play a role in documenting the history of UGA and, by extension, the state of Georgia and higher education in a broader sense. The project to digitize the 1965-1975 Pandoras expands the virtual collection of materials, including the first 50 years of publication, allowing alumni, other UGA community members, or anyone with interest to explore more than decades of UGA’s history online.

Larry Dendy, a UGA alumnus who worked in UGA’s Office of Public Affairs for 37 years (1972-2009) and wrote the book Through the Arch: An Illustrated Guide to the University of Georgia, published by UGA Press in 2013, noted that the time period was marked by university milestones as well as national trends.

“The decade of 1965-1975 was a critical period as the University dealt not only with national social and political upheavals but also with many major campus issues including enrollment increases, advances in research and academic quality, physical plant expansion, newfound athletic successes, and changing student attitudes and mores,” he said. “These and many more challenges and changes of this decade are documented by students themselves through their photos and narratives in Pandoras. Their perspective—whimsical, irreverent, ironic but often incisive—opens a revealing lens into the mood and mentality of college campuses in this time.”

Featured images:

Page 88 of the Pandora volume LXXXIV 1970 (page 92 of the pdf). Photograph of African American students at the University of Georgia, and part of a printed letter to Robert Benham, president of the Black Student Union at the University of Georgia, from Frederick C. Davison, president of the University of Georgia, addressing the student organization’s declaration of a moratorium on white racism. https://dlg.usg.edu/record/dlg_pandora_pand1970

Page 161 of the Pandora volume LXXXV 1971 (page 168 of the pdf). Students protesting the Kent State shootings of May 4, 1970. https://dlg.usg.edu/record/dlg_pandora_pand1971

About Hargrett Library, University Archives

The University of Georgia Archives preserves over two centuries of the University’s history in the form of official records, images, plans, publications, and artifacts. Their mission is to acquire, organize, preserve, and publicize such materials and to assist researchers in their use. Visit them at l ibs.uga.edu/hargrett/archives/.