Abstract: Stan Woodward is a southern auteur and documentary filmmaker. The Woodward Studio Limited produces documentaries on southern folk culture through the themes of American foodway and related traditions. In the 1980s, Woodward served as director of the Media Arts Center and the Communication Wing at the Capital Children’s Museum in Washington, D.C., where he got to know animator Chuck Jones. Woodward also worked as filmmaker-in-residence in Georgia, South Carolina, and other locations where he was involved in mentoring independent filmmakers and advising classroom teachers on how to teach students to create Super 8mm films. In the 1990s, Woodward worked on productions of Satellite Distance Learning Broadcasts for various television networks. The R. Stanley Woodward Collection consists of about 1400 items created or collected by Woodward, 1932-2004, including films, moving image materials, production notes, distribution and licensing contracts, and promotional and educational materials related to his films and other work promoting independent filmmaking. Films cover a wide range of topics, including southern food traditions; southern families, storytelling, folklore, and customs; African American dance and folk art; NASA, the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, the Skylab Program, and astronauts; media programs on the novel To Kill a Mockingbird ; educational films; teaching filmmaking to students; the Capital Children’s Museum; the University of South Carolina; serpents; and sharecroppers. Locations include South Carolina; Virginia; Georgia; North Carolina; Kentucky; Washington, D.C.; New York City; and Alabama. Some of the people associated with the films are food critic Craig Claiborne, John A. Burrison, filmmaker Frank Eastes, John Egerton, Harold Hausenfluck, Fred Wolfe, animator Chuck Jones, Richard Pillsbury, and folklorist Saddler Taylor. The moving image materials are in various media formats, including 16mm print film, DVCAM video, U-Matic video, Betacam SP video, Digital Betacam video, MiniDV video, VHS video, and DVDs. Descriptions have been derived from the original container, film, video, or notes.

Repository: Southern Folklife Collection

Collection Highlights: This collection contains materials related to African American dance and folk art. In Series 1, about the tradition of Brunswick Stew in Georgia, Videotape VT-20446/262-267 contains an author’s note about meeting with an African American stewmaster.

Series 2 focuses on Southern Stews and Videotape VT-20446/35-37 depicts the cooking of Frogmore Stew by the African American Faulkenberry family and a neighboring chef in Saint Helena, S.C.

There is also a 1971 film in Subseries 6.1 (Video and Film) entitled Afro-American Dance: Establishing A Cultural Heritage (Film F-20446/17)

Abstract: The North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources is the state agency responsible for arts, history, and library programs; among its divisions is the State Library of North Carolina. The North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources films collection documents a variety of topics, some relating to North Carolina and others to the wider world, covered in films made by a variety of filmmakers, 1951-1988. Topics include folklife, folk dancing, folklore, and folk art in various parts of the world; tattooing; women’s folklore; African American history, culture, and music; Indians of North America; Canadian Iroquois Indians; Aboriginal Australians; folk, gospel, jazz, and blues music; folk singers and composers Woody Guthrie, Elizabeth Cotten, and Malvina Reynolds; gospel singer Mahalia Jackson; various religious communities; Colonial Williamsburg; poet Carl Sandburg; filmmaker Tom Davenport; and the social life and customs of the American South. All of the films are 16mm commercial release prints with sound. Both narrative and documentary films are represented.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Several of the films in this collection relate to African American history and  culture. A few examples include

Afro-American Music: Its Heritage (1969): This film traces the history and evolution of black American music from enslavement to contemporary music ( Film 20448/22)

Black Genesis: The Art of Tribal Africa (1970 ): The film shows masks, carving sculptures, statues, drawings jewelry and tattoo art of different areas of tribal Africa, as well as songs and musical rhythms (F-20448/15)

Black Music in America: From Then Till Now (1987):  traces the evolution of African American music from its African origins today and showcases  of Louis Armstrong, Mahalia Jackson, B.B. King, Leadbelly, Count Basie, Nina Simone, Sly and the Family Stone, Billie Holiday, Cannonball Adderley, and others (F-20448/60)

 

 

 

 

Abstract: The Grigsby family of North Carolina and South Carolina; New Haven, Conn.; Detroit, Mich.; and Phoenix, Ariz., descend from Fred Grigsby (b. 1867), the son of a former slave. The Grigsby family papers consist of correspondence and invitations, funeral and school materials, newspaper clippings and other printed biographical material, photographs, and other materials documenting the Grigsby family, especially publicist, civil rights activist, and editor Snow F. Grigsby, artist and art educator J. Eugene Grigsby (Gene), school principal J. E. Grigsby and school teacher Purry Leone Dixon Grigsby, and the family of teacher Miriam Grigsby Bates. Educational achievement is the central theme of the collection, in evidence in transcripts, diplomas, and photographs of family members receiving degrees. Other education-related materials include a letter from one Grigsby generation to the next providing personal insights on Langston Hughes for a research paper; a 1938 photograph of Purry Leone Dixon Grigsby teaching in a Biddleville (Charlotte, N.C.) elementary school classroom; and a small amount of material relating to the School Workers Federal Credit Union, which was founded in 1941 in Charlotte, N.C., by J. E. Grigsby, for African American teachers and employees of the public school system. Also of note are a 1942 living letter recorded at a USO Club; a 1980 letter that included a then-confidential list of the Detroit chapter of Tuskegee Airmen; a copy of a 1980 letter from Snow F. Grigsby to fellow Republican Strom Thurmond on racism, politics, and the economy; a CORE sit-in songs (Congress of Racial Equality) booklet; and the 1942 program for the women’s West End Book Club of Charlotte, N.C.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Abstract: African-American artist Charles Henry Alston, nicknamed “Spinky,” was born 28 November 1907 in Charlotte, N.C. He was the youngest of five children born to the Reverend Primus Priss Alston, who was born into slavery in Chatham County, N.C., and Anna Miller Alston. After Primus’s death, Anna married Harry Pierce Bearden, artist Romare Bearden’s uncle, and moved the family to New York in 1913. Charles Alston worked as a painter, sculptor, graphic artist, illustrator, and educator, gaining national and international recognition. His works are found among the holdings of individuals and permanent museum and gallery collections around the world. Alston married Myra Logan, a noted surgeon at Harlem Hospital. The collection includes artwork, photographs, correspondence, exhibition catalogs, and publications documenting the life and work of Charles Alston. Included are materials pertaining to Charles’s father, Primus Priss Alston; his wife, surgeon Myra Logan; and other Alston and Logan family members and associates. Also included are letters from Paul Robeson, Langston Hughes, and Hubert Humphrey; cartoons Alston created for the United States Office of War Information during World War II; items relating to commissioned mural paintings; and non-commercial photographs featuring James Earl Jones, Joe Louis, and Lena Horne, all at young ages.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: The collection includes artwork, photographs, correspondence, exhibition catalogs, and publications documenting the life and work of Charles Alston. Included are materials pertaining to Charles’s father, Primus Priss Alston; his wife, surgeon Myra Logan; and other Alston and Logan family members and associates. Also included are letters from Paul Robeson, Langston Hughes, and Hubert Humphrey; cartoons Alston created for the United States Office of War Information during World War II; items relating to commissioned mural paintings; and non-commercial photographs featuring James Earl Jones, Joe Louis, and Lena Horne, all at young ages.

Abstract: Dashiell of Richmond, Va., was an illustrator of scenes in Richmond, Va., Charleston, S.C., and New Orleans, La.; an importer of French fashion prints; and a business woman. Correspondence, 1921-1948, with various literary and artistic figures, including Ellen Glasgow; watercolor illustrations; poems; and French fashion prints, 1798-1914.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Many of the watercolors in Subseries 2.1 depict African Americans working  in Richmond, Va, and New Orleans, LA, including domestic servants caring for children.

Abstract: Jefferson Eugene Grigsby Jr., African American artist and art educator, was born in Greensboro, N.C., on 17 October 1918. Grigsby attended Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, N.C., then Morehouse College in Atlanta, Ga., graduating with a degree in art in 1938. During this time, he studied under the painter Hale Woodruff. From 1938 to 1939, he studied at the American Artists School in New York, where he met prominent African American artists including Jacob Lawrence and Romare Bearden. In 1940, Grigsby received a master’s degree from Ohio State University, and in 1963, he received a doctorate in art education from New York University. From 1946 to 1966, Grigsby served as head of the art department at Phoenix Union High School in Phoenix, Ariz., and from 1966 to 1988, he was professor of art at Arizona State University in Tempe, Ariz. In 1943, Grigsby married Rosalyn Thomasena Marshall, with whom he had two sons. In 1958, he was one of six artists selected to represent the United States at the Brussels Universal and International Exposition, and in 1988, he was designated National Art Educator of the Year by the National Art Education Association. The collection contains papers, chiefly correspondence and related materials, pertaining to the life and work of J. Eugene Grigsby. Correspondence (which includes copies of some letters written by Grigsby) is generally of a professional nature, with some personal correspondence interspersed. It largely documents Grigsby’s career from when he lived in New York City to when he worked at Arizona State University. Letters are from artists, art professionals, and others; they discuss Grigsby’s work as an arts educator and artist; art shows he curated; his involvement with art activism groups such as COBA (Consortium of Black Organizations and Others for the Arts), which he founded in 1983; and other topics. There are also materials relating to Grigsby’s masters and doctoral work, finances, and high school art shows, as well as playbills, scripts, invitations, and other items.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Abstract: Francois Mignon (given name Frank VerNooy Mineah) was born in 1899 in Cortland, N.Y. He was a journalist and curator of buildings, furnishings, and gardens at Melrose Plantation, Natchitoches, La. Melrose was a working cotton and pecan plantation, but it was best known in the period between the two World Wars as a writers’ and artists’ colony. Cammie Henry, who bought the plantation in 1899, restored its unique collection of African-inspired buildings. These structures sheltered such authors as Lyle Saxon, James Register, Harnett Kane, Alexander Woollcott, and Rachel Field. Mignon began writing his own weekly column for the Natchitoches Enterprise in the 1950s. In addition to his writing, Mignon designed the gardens at Melrose and promoted the African American folk artist Clementine Hunter. The collection includes Mignon’s journal and correspondence from about 1939 to 1980. Also included are photographs, printed materials, newspapers clippings, writings and other materials collected by, written by, or relating to Mignon and his diverse interests. Mignon’s journal began with his arrival at Melrose Plantation in 1939 and continued until February 1970, when the plantation was sold. Many of the ideas Mignon first expressed in his journal later appeared in his newspaper column, which dealt chiefly with Natchitoches, La., history and traditions. Persons significant in the collection include James Register; the Louisiana naturalist Caroline Dorman; the Louisiana filmmaker Caroline Ramsey; a black soldier named King Solomon, who grew up at Melrose; Eleanor Roosevelt (2 items); Rachel Field; Harnett Thomas Kane; Lyle Saxon; and Alexander Woollcott. After 1970, the correspondence is chiefly from readers of Mignon’s weekly newspaper column and his responses. In addition to these materials, the collection contains the original manuscript of B.L.C. Wailes’s “Report on the Agriculture and Geology of Mississippi” (1854) and letters from Wailes’s granddaughter to Mignon. Also included are 19th-century documents and genealogical information relating to the Metoyer family, which originally built the plantation later called Melrose.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Of particular interest are Folders 576 – 577, describing Mingnon’s work promoting African American female artist Clementine Hunter, who became the first African American woman to have a one-person show at New Orleans’s Delgado Museum. Correspondence in Series 1 includes letters from an African American soldier named King Solomon, who grew up on Melrose Plantation in Louisiana.

Abstract: Opelika Pictures is a film company founded by New York-based filmmaker Macky Alston (Wallace McPherson Alston III). Alston directed the documentary film, “Family Name,” which examines the links between himself and the descendants of former slaves in North Carolina who share the Alston name. Records of Opelika Pictures are comprised of research and genealogy notes, audio and video tapes, film, record albums, publications, photographs, business and personal correspondence, and clippings associated with the making of “Family Name.” Included are photographs of the work of artist Charles Henry Alston and interviews with his sisters and others who knew him. There are also photographs and taped interviews with Macky Alston and members of his family.

Repository: Southern Folklife Collection

Collection Highlights:  Included are photographs of the work of  African American artist Charles Henry Alston and interviews with his sisters and other contemporaries (Box 15 & 16). There are also research files in Series 1 (Papers) on Langston Hughes, Martin Luther King Jr., and other individuals. Also included is an 1843 publication “Psalms & Hymns” (Box 1).

The Southern Historical Collection has a collection of materials, drawings, and documents related to Charles Alston. Click here to link to the finding aid for this collection.