The University of Oregon Special Collections is extremely pleased to announce the acquisition of the records of the Gum Moon Women’s Residence. The collection consists of resident files, diaries, photographs, and publications from 1870-2007.

Gum Moon was established in 1868 with the goal of providing shelter, education, and vocational training for Chinese girls rescued from human trafficking. The Methodist Mission, also known as the Oriental Home and School, at 916 Washington Street in San Francisco’s Chinatown was established by Otis T. Gibson to provide shelter, education and vocational training for Chinese girls rescued from human trafficking. The dedicated group of women running the home formalized their efforts by becoming the Women’s Missionary Society of the Pacific Coast.

In the 1880’s, the Chinese Exclusion Act was signed into law by President Chester Arthur, suspending Chinese immigration to the United States; as a result, the Oriental Home and School formed a kindergarten for Chinese children that could not attend public schools. The Oriental Home and School was destroyed by the tragic 1906 San Francisco earthquake and was rebuilt at 940 Washington Street in 1912, with Julia Morgan as the architect for the building.

In the 1940’s, the Oriental Home was renamed to Gum Moon, or “Golden Door”, and served as a dormitory for young Chinese women who were employed or in school. Gum Moon expanded its services by starting the Asian Women’s Resource Center and initial services included ESL classes and Employment and Referral programs. Gum Moon began its first Parent-Child development Program with just 10 children using a seed grant from United Methodist Women in 1990 and has expanded its programming to meet the changing needs of the community.

This acquisition adds to an already expanding collection. Since the 1960’s, we have amassed one the nation’s largest archival collections of women missionaries to China. Among these are the papers of women who were teachers, physicians, or social workers. In addition to a desire to help Chinese women and girls attain better health, education, and living conditions, they also found missionary work a path towards their own independence by taking on a profession that was acceptable to American society when opportunities in general were very limiting to women who were usually steered directly to marriage as a career path. The missionary collections also provide a valuable source for the historical, political, and cultural events in the countries they served. The women wrote numerous letters home, kept diaries, and issued newsletters that reflected their work and lives. The Chinese Missionary collection is used so extensively that we decided to recently contract with Gale/Cengage Publishing Company to digitize and make the collections more accessible online.

In the last three decades, we have been especially purposeful in collecting archives that reflect the topics of women’s rights, gender, sexuality, and feminism. Of special interest in social welfare are the papers of Kate Burton Lake and Margaret Lake Garton who aided Chinese and Japanese girls and young women through their work in the Methodist Episcopal Church’s Oriental Home in San Francisco from ca. 1896-1903. More recently, we acquired the papers of Norma Hotaling, who was the founder of SAGE (Standing Against Global Exploitation), a non-profit focused on ending commercial sexual exploitation, headquartered in San Francisco. This collection contains SAGE’s organizational records, photographs, biographical material, awards and artifacts, and publications.

We have built an historical repository focused on some of the most important social movements in the American West. Our collections on issues related to the history of women in the American West is one of the richest in the country. Thus, I am extremely grateful to Dr. Jeffrey Staley, Gum Moon Historian, Gum Moon’s Executive Director, Gloria Tan, and to Gum Moon’s Board of Directors for their generosity in donating their organization’s archive to the University of Oregon. We believe that archives are repositories of social memory and as such we are committed to preserving and making accessible this vital collection, which adds so much to the history of women in the American West.

— David de Lorenzo, Giustina Director, SCUA

 

Special Collections and University Archives announces with palpable excitement the acquisition of the Michael J. Bowen Collection of Black Exploitation Film Posters and Pressbooks.  The genre of film recognizably identified as blaxploitation encompasses almost a decade of films from 1970 to 1979 featuring Black male and female actors in starring roles to a degree previously unprecedented, and also a time of burgeoning presence of Black screenwriters, producers, directors, and composers in the film industry.  The term “blaxploitation cinema” was originally coined by the leader of the Beverly Hills-Hollywood branch NAACP acting president Junius Griffin in the 1970s (Wright, 2014).  Black representation increased steadily in cinema, but could not escape the firm hold of exploitation on the blaxploitation film era.

While blaxploitation films were often directed by white producers, Black directors and writers made headway into the industry and directed, wrote, and composed highly successful films.  Notable Black composers included Marvin Gaye, Isaac Hayes, Willie Hutch, and James Brown (Wright, 2014).  African Americans had an historical presence holding roles in different facets of the entertainment industry.  After the racial and political unrest of the Civil Rights movement and passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, African Americans migrated into increasingly prominent positions in film (Quinn, 2010; Wright, 2014).  This increase of representation brought forth varying camps of thought concerning what may be seen as a dual nature of exploitation and empowerment in blaxploitation films.  Not only was the increased representation of Black people in higher echelon film industry positions – actors, writers, directors, producers, composers – influential to conversations of exploitation and empowerment, but also the portrayal of male and female actors, cultures, environments, and storylines weighed heavily on perception of the era.  Commentator Renee Ward of the Los Angeles Times, in her analysis of the blaxploitation film industry, expressed her perspective as, “‘black films, white profits’” (Quinn, 2010).

The 1970s presented an era where Black male and female actors were notably cast in leading roles, though in ways that were often stereotypical of society’s perception of Black people and Black culture.  This was exemplified by casting Black actors as violent, drug dealers, gang members, promiscuous or sexualized, and lawless.  The roles often depicted Black actors as residing in urban environments of poverty and violence, which, according to film historian Dan Bogle (2001), “glamorized the ghetto and depicted ghetto dwellers as symbols of authentic blackness” (Wright, 2014).  Conversely, American historian Ed Guererro identifies blaxploitation film as a crucial tool to understanding the black struggle in the years following the Civil Rights movement, and to also highlight the significance of urban life and how it relates to the experiences of African Americans (Wright, 2014).

Wright (2014) identifies common themes of blaxploitation films as the following,

“(1) an urban geographic setting (the ghetto) in the North, Midwest, or West, (2) an overemphasis on outwardly expressive acts of Blackness, (3) a soundtrack of temporary soul or rhythm and blues music, (4) Black protagonists and White antagonists, (5) promiscuous men and women, and (6) an ample supply of action and violence.”

Themes identified by Wright (2014) above, including the use of action and violence in film, are seen in the cover quote of the pressbook for the film Sounder reading, “If you live through the gang wars, the pushers, the back-alley deathtraps … You Gonna Be A Star!”  A promotional article in the pressbook for the movie Monkey Hustle echoed a similar theme of action and violence stating,

“A lighthearted look at a different facet of ghetto life … Filled with vignettes of life in the teeming inner-city, the story concerns itself with the fight of the area’s residents against the proposed encroachment of a freeway and their successful attempts to thwart the bureaucracy.  The main opponents of the freeway are the street hustlers, who realize that the destruction of the buildings and the subsequent exodus of the residents will leave them without a turf – or victims.”

The 1970s were flooded with the release of iconic films like Shaft (1971), Coffy (1973), Foxy Brown (1974), Slaughter (1972), Blacula (1972), and the “credited launch” of the blaxploitation film era, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971), among numerous others (Wright, 2014).  Shaft brought to the forefront actor Richard Roundtree, while Coffy created a role in which actor Pam Grier thrived.  Composer and musician Isaac Hayes experienced a legendary career moment with the win of an Academy Award for the theme song for Shaft.

The Michael J. Bowen Collection of Black Exploitation Film Posters and Pressbooks contains approximately 145 items capturing the blaxploitation film era.  Materials include over fifty pressbooks for films.  Common themes in the pressbooks include synopses of the movies, cast lists, identification of production staff, publicity pages containing articles about starring actors, producers, directors, and composers, information unique to the film, including location of production, etc., pages of varied advertisements for the film, and for many pressbooks, a final page or few final pages entitled “Exploitation,” where strategies were provided to promote the film and the actors in one’s community.  Also included in the collection are large posters advertising many of the approximate one hundred films chronicled in the collection.

The finding aid for this collection may be found on ArchivesSpace.

References

Quinn, E. (2010). “Tryin’ to get over”: Super Fly, Black politics and post-Civil Rights film enterprise.  Cinema Journal, 49(2), 86-105. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25619772

Wright, J.K. (2014). Black outlaws and the struggle for empowerment in blaxploitation cinema. Spectrum: A Journal on Black Men, 2(2), 63-86. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/spectrum.2.2.63

Written by Alexandra Mueller, Special Projects Archivist

University of Oregon Libraries Special Collections and University Archives recently acquired a 1776 manuscript deed for three slaves in Frederick County, Maryland.  The history of Maryland portrays the inextricable tie between slavery, the economy and colonial politics.  Tobacco, rice, coffee, and sugar plantations labored upon by slaves provided fodder for a budding economy, and the fortunes amassed from the plantation system and the exploitation of African Americans in other areas of labor funded political endeavors of individuals of the state of Maryland into positions of high prominence, respect, and power.  Slavery in Maryland took significant hold during the 1660s when the opportunity to import indentured servants from Europe withered due to disagreements.  Slavery and the slave trade, recently legalized in Maryland, presented to plantation owners the most viable and economic option in replacement of European indentured servants.  Between the late 17^th century and the Revolutionary War, the population of Maryland grew with the addition of over 100,000 African slaves.  The constituency of Maryland reflected this substantial influx with over one third of their population being of African descent (The Maryland State Archives and the University of Maryland College Park, 2007).

With the American Revolution arose the opportunity for some African Americans to escape slavery by enlisting in the military as soldiers and as laborers.  In 1775, the royal governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, enacted a decree freeing indentured servants and slaves.  However, it would not be until the Civil War and President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation that any momentous change would be set into motion in ending slavery in Maryland.  President Abraham Lincoln excluded Maryland in his 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, though this did not contain the flowing tide of more and more slaves seeking freedom.  The military served as one of the greatest blows to the barriers bolstering slavery in Maryland; thousands of slaves enlisted as soldiers, much to degree that the very infrastructure of slavery in Maryland began to crack.  It was not until 1864 that Maryland officially ratified as state law the prohibition of slavery, a year later than President Lincoln’s seminal proclamation (The Maryland State Archives and the University of Maryland College Park, 2007).

The 1776 manuscript deed for three slaves in Frederick County, Maryland, was decreed during the Revolutionary War era.  While some slaves were able to join the military as soldiers and laborers, the plantation system still tethered African American slaves to a system of exploitation and violence.  The manuscript deed for three slaves reflects the attitude toward African American slaves as merely chattel, property to be passed from white landowner to white landowner.  In the manuscript deed, Rachel, Bess, and Doll are transferred as elements of an estate from Margaret Masters to her son John Chappell and his wife, Verlinda Chappell.  Also transferred by deed alongside Rachel, Bess, and Doll were horses, sheep, cattle, hogs, furniture, and utensils.  Robert Peters witnessed the signing and sealing of the deed on behalf of Margaret Masters.

The first page of the manuscript deed provides an extensive statement by Margaret Masters and witnessed by Robert Peters.  A second page provides a shorter statement, dated 16 November 1776, also witnessed by Robert Peters.  The outside panel succinctly marks the names of those involved in the deed, the dates, and legal notation.

This Deed adds to previous items recently acquired that document the history of slavery in the United States:

Statement Attesting that a ‘Negro Woman’ is Free Born, Frederick County, MD, 1832

An Account of the Sales and the Real and Personal Estate of Henry Holeman Deceased

Kentucky Manumission, 1801

Pay Document to Black Connecticut Revolutionary War Soldier, Pomp Cyrus, 1782

Sources

The Maryland State Archives and the University of Maryland College Park. (2007). A guide to the history of slavery in Maryland. https://msa.maryland.gov/msa/intromsa/pdf/slavery_pamphlet.pdf

Written by Alexandra Mueller, Special Projects Archivist

Special Collections is extremely pleased to announce the generous and significant gift of works produced by Clinker Press, a private letterpress studio printing material relating to the art of printing as well as the Arts and Crafts Movement, by Dr. Andre Chaves, proprietor and printer.

A graduate of Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro medical school, Dr. Chaves specialized in hand surgery. The hand is a complex instrument having the largest set of nerve endings in the human body. Hand surgeons are required one of the longest residency programs and must maintain the highest level of attention to detail and care. It is these skillsets that have ensured the output of the Clinker Press to be of the highest quality.

Clinker Press was started in 1996 in Pasadena, California and is currently located in Tualatin, Oregon. The name was derived not only from the clinker brick of his Pasadena garage but also because clinker implies something not very important and keeps things in perspective. Dr. Chaves writes: “Within this focus I print subjects relating to art and literature. Although I do not do job printing, some special projects would be considered upon their own merits, as long as it falls within these parameters.” Many of his colophons reflect this perspective with whimsical statements like, “Too Bad” “Not So Idle Hands,” “During Discussions About Debt Ceiling,” etc.

The donation includes 15 monographs and as many broadsides. The influence of the Arts and Crafts Movement are obvious in several publications written by or about Ruskin, Morris (Kelmscott Press) and Cobden-Sanderson (Doves Press). In his production of Cobden-Sanderson’s Journals on Doves Press, for example, you can clearly see the integration of illustration with text, a benchmark of the Arts and Crafts philosophy.

Beyond the publication of Arts and Crafts founders, Dr. Chaves has, like many letterpress printers, selected poetry that clearly reflects his own world view and the place of the fine press printer in that understanding. The renown Harvard rare book curator, Roger Stoddard, once remarked that it was not the author of a book, but the printer, who made a book come alive. Chaves printing of Binsey Poplars, by Gerard Manley Hopkins, makes this connection most clear. The choice of font, paper, binding, and illustration bring the text of the poem alive. You can literally envision the poplars being cut and feel the emotion of Hopkins by their loss.

This tickling of the senses is the work of a great printer. We are most fortunate to have received this wonderful gift.

— David de Lorenzo, Director