Category Archives: Featured Collections

Newly acquired social protest materials

American University Library Special Collections is pleased to announce the acquisition of materials relating to early national protests in Washington, D.C.

The Army of the Commonwealth in Christ/Coxey’s Army

Ohio businessman Jacob Coxey led the first significant popular protest march on Washington, D.C. The purpose of the march was to protest the unemployment caused by the Panic of 1893 and to lobby for the government to create jobs and pay the workers in paper currency. The march originated with 100 men in Massillon, Ohio. Various groups of unemployed workers from the around the country joined en route eventually establishing a camp site in Colmar Manor, Maryland. Items acquired include Volume 1 Number 1 of The Industrial Army News (April 20, 1894) and a copy of the song Coxey’s Commonweal.

Coxey’s Commonweal

The Bonus Expeditionary Force/Bonus Army

17,000 World War I veterans, their families, and affiliated groups gathered in Washington, DC, in June of 1932 to demand cash-payment redemption of their service certificates. The World War Adjusted Compensation Act of 1924 awarded veterans bonuses in the form of certificates that they could not redeem until 1945. Each service certificate’s face value was equal to the soldier’s promised payment plus compound interest.

The first veterans to arrive were accommodated in abandoned buildings on Pennsylvania Avenue that were owned by the government. As the numbers of veterans grew, they established integrated camps on the Anacostia Flats. Veterans were required to register and prove they had been honorably discharged before they could move into the camps. The camps were built from scavenged materials and had streets and sanitation facilities. The veterans held daily parades. The camps were extremely popular with tourists.

In addition to a scrapbook featuring photos and postcards of the camp, we recently acquired a lantern slide show which contains a combination of photos and newspaper articles including several images of the Toledo, Ohio contingent and the main protest at the United States Capitol on June 17.

Bonus Army Lantern Slide Show Introductory Slide

If you would like to see more, several of these items are currently on display on the third floor of Bender Library.

Currently on Display: A Sneak Peak into Social Justice Collections in Special Collections

American University students are recognized as being amongst the most politically active in the United States. To encourage further dialog about social justice both past and present, Special Collections is exhibiting a selection of flyers, brochures, and photographs from four of its social protest collections. The exhibit looks at protests in Washington, DC from the 1890s, 1930s and 1970s as well as protest movements led by international women’s organizations from the 1980s. The exhibit will be on display on the third floor of Bender Library through the end of the fall semester.

Here are few sample items from the exhibit:

Bonus Army 1932

Women Strike for Peace 1982

In Memoriam: Herbert E. Striner

It is with deep sadness, we recognize the passing of Herbert E. Striner, former Dean of the Kogod School of Business (1975-1981) and the College of Continuing Education (1969-1973).

Former Kogod Dean Herb Striner in 1988

Herb Striner earned his A.B. and M.A. degrees in economics from Rutgers University and his Ph.D in economics from Syracuse University. During World War II, he served in the China-Burma-India Theater of War as an infantry officer in the U.S. Army.

Striner worked for both the Federal Government and the private sector including the Brookings Institution, The Johns Hopkins University, the National Planning Association, the Stanford University Research Institute and the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. He specialized in manpower and productivity problems and served as a productivity consultant to corporations as well as the U.S., Australian, Canadian and Italian governments including serving on the U.S. delegation to a NATO conference in Portugal on manpower policies in 1969. Striner published over 90 articles and 5 books.

Exterior of the southeast side of the Washington National Cathedral (1977)

An avid photographer and painter, Striner donated his collection of more than 8,000 negatives, prints, and slides to AU in 2007. His passion for photography began during World War II, when he was an infantry officer and was given his first camera. Striner said of this donation: “What I am most hoping for with this gift is that those whose interests in the history of the years spanned by the work, 1945–99, from whatever perspective—artistic or otherwise—will gain insights and a broadening of horizons that will contribute to their lives, as well as the lives of others.” Striner’s collection captures images ranging from international settings to local architecture to nature scenes, and is available online in our Digital Research Archive.

Currently on Display: Artists Books from the Watkins Collection

In honor of the 70^th anniversary of the establishment of American University’s Watkins Memorial Collection, AU Special Collections will showcase three artists’ books from that collection in its third floor exhibit cases from Memorial Day though mid-August. Please stop by to check out these eye catching works.

Some Poems of Jules LaForgue with images by Patrick Caulfield from the Watkins Collection of Artists Books

Currently on Display: Selections from the Dorothy A. and Charles A. Moore Jr. Japanese Woodblock Print Collection

To celebrate one of its newest acquisitions, AU Special Collections will feature the Dorothy A. and Charles A. Moore Jr. Japanese Woodblock Print Collection in its third floor display cases. A selection of Ukiyoe and modern Japanese prints by a variety of artists including Chikanobu, Konubu Hasegawa, Tomikichiro Tokuriki, and Utamaro will be on exhibit through the end of the spring semester.

Patrick Frazier Political and Social Movements Collection

In addition to his day job as Reference Specialist at the Library of Congress, Patrick Frazier worked as a freelance writer and photographer. He assembled an impressive collection of broadsides, flyers, handbills, photographs and posters. The collection covers all of the major political and social movements of the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s including civil rights, gay and lesbian rights and feminism as well the anti-nuclear and the Vietnam War protests. The focus of the collection is the Washington, DC area.

Dorothy A. and Charles A. Moore Jr. Japanese Woodblock Print Collection

Dorothy A. Moore earned her MA (1959) and EDD (1970) from American University and is a generous donor to campus. Along with her husband, Charles, she built a diverse collection of Japanese woodblock prints.

In the spring of 2014, she donated forty-eight Ukiyoe and Shin-hanga prints by a variety of artists including Chikanobu, Konubu Hasegawa, Hiroshige, Kaoru Kawano, Kunichika, Kuniyoshi, Tomikichiro Tokuriki, Toyokuni, Utamaro, and Yoshitoshi. The subjects are as diverse featuring bathing scenes, Kabuki performances, landscapes, the Meiji government, and samurai. An exhibit of works from this collection is planned for the spring semester.

Rare Book Conservation

In the spring of 2014, AU Library hired Matt Johnson, from ECS Conservation, to perform an assessment of the Artemas Martin Collection in particular the books that were published prior to 1700. He identified a number of books that would benefit from boxing or conservation treatment.

The first two works were sent to ECS Conservation in August and returned from the lab earlier this month. Here are before and after pictures of our copy of Billingsley’s 2 volume Euclid’s Elements of Geometry published in 1570:

After Before

Both the conservation assessment and the treatments were paid for with proceeds from AU Library’s Roger Brown Preservation Fund. In September, AU Library held a fund raising event in support of our initiative to get as many of the books on the list conserved as possible. The monies raised at our September event will be used in 2015 to cover the costs of conservation treatment of additional items from the Martin Collection. For more information on this initiative, please contact the University Archivist at archives@american.edu.

Jack Child Digital Slide Collection is complete

The final digitized image from Jack Child’s Slide Collection went online earlier this week. Jack Child maintained an extensive library of visual images that he regularly used in the classroom. The digital version of the slide collection focuses on the images taken by Child and his companions on his travels – approximately 50 percent of his library. Child visited every Latin American country at least once. He served as staff lecturer and guide aboard expedition cruise vessels to Antarctica and sub-Antarctic islands on fourteen trips. The strengths of the digital collection are as follows: Antarctica; Argentina; Colombia; Cuba; Falklands/Maldives; Mexico; Nicaragua; and Peru. All Latin American countries are represented in the digital collection. Of note are a selection of images from his two tours of duty in Vietnam.

Jack Child Collection Stamp Albums

The second and final installment of the Jack Child Stamp Collection, the albums, went online earlier this month. The subjects of the stamp albums are diverse and include current and historic figures and events, buildings and landscapes, military, native flora and fauna, space, sports, and transportation. The oldest stamps date from the mid-nineteenth century. As with the rest of the Child Collection, the bulk of the stamps relate to Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Falkland Islands with particular strengths in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Cuba and Ecuador.