Kayla Nguyen/VANGUARD STAFF
Special collections processors Marti Clemmons (left) and Meg Langford eye parts of the exhibit.
An exploding whale, Free-masons, and former Gov. Barbara Roberts—what do these have in common?
No, it’s not the latest apocalyptic conspiracy theory. They’re all part of Oregon history and were represented at Portland State’s Millar Library as part of the Oregon Archives Crawl.
The annual event, organized by the Portland Area Archivists and held Saturday, Oct. 6, is in its third year. According to PSU archivist Cris Paschild, the event is the first of its kind in the nation.
This year’s theme was the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in Oregon.
PSU was one of four host sites, along the Archives Crawl, as it’s been every year. More than 20 area archives participated in this year’s event.
Those with tables at PSU included the Portland Art Museum, Oregon Health and Science University and the Oregon Jewish Museum.
Representatives from each archive were eager to discuss what they had brought. PSU’s program highlighted items from the vaults of its Special Collections, including historical photos, film screenings, medieval manuscripts and old yearbooks.
Kicking things off was an intense documentary titled The Seventh Day, chronicling the 1970 Vietnam War protest on campus. The week-long event, though staged for different reasons, dealt with logistical issues not dissimilar to the recent Occupy Portland movement.
Another film offered rare, exclusive footage of a famous attempt to blow up a dead whale on the beach in Florence, Ore. that same year. The disturbing images were set to the echo-laden soundtrack of a humpback whale’s song.
In general, the films focus on topics of local interest. “A lot of them have Portland as a subject,” Paschild said.
Keeping with the theme, a display case was dedicated to figures like Roberts, Oregon State Sen. Avel Gordly, suffragist Abigail Scott Duniway and Oregon Supreme Court Justice Betty Roberts. All of these women helped establish precedents in Oregon law and governance.
The documents came from the Oregon Political Leadership Archive, one of the mainstays of Special Collections.
At the heart of their efforts for this year’s Archives Crawl was the featured exhibit “Say We Are Here: Culture, Community and Activism Across Four Generations of Black Oregonians.”
Drawing from the Verdell Burdine and Otto G. Rutherford Family Collection, the exhibit is based on processing and research by PSU students Marti Clemmons, Meg Langford, Jeanne Roedel and Tasha Triplett.
They worked under the guidance of PSU history professor Patricia Schechter, whose work has included helping Gordly with her autobiography.
Work on the project began last winter, shortly after Schechter and Paschild, with the encouragement of Gordly and the Black Studies Department, helped secure the collection for PSU’s stewardship.
Schechter taught an archiving class and had about 13 students take an initial inventory of the collection. About six students continued working on it in spring term.
A well-attended preview exhibit was held in March, after which Clemmons and Langford continued working with the collection over the summer. The end results—both the archiving work and the exhibit—have exceeded Schechter’s expectations.
“They have accomplished something nothing short of extraordinary,” Schechter said.
Clemmons, a senior history major, and Langford, a postbaccalaureate student, were both drawn to the project because of the hands-on experience it provided them. They were challenged and excited by the breadth and potential uses of the collection.
“It’s a huge collection that keeps growing,” Langford said. She mentioned that one of their colleagues had already begun using documents from it to build a teaching curriculum.
As for the exhibit, both students saw it as a pathway to exploring the collection’s contents at a deeper level: questions begetting questions, keeping scholars busy for years to come.
Clemmons, who focused much of her efforts on researching documents related to the Elks and the Freemasons, liked the idea that the exhibit kept alive the memory of fading landmarks and other places she might see in her day-to-day life.
“It feels like it could be your neighbor’s history,” Clemmons said.
The exhibit will remain on display for the course of the current term. Information about Special Collections, including finding aids, can be found at library.pdx.edu/specialcollections.html.