My excitement over the museums and history here

Hi!

It's been a while since I posted, to be honest in the two and a half weeks I've been in the US I haven't done too much research because I haven't got to the place yet where most of my research will be (Charleston).

So far our trip has included Washington D.C, New York City, Philadelphia, and we are currently in Richmond, Virginia.
We arrived in the US on the 9th July and stayed 5 days in D.C with a family friend, Hilary, who is absolutely lovely and immediately made us feel at home. She has taken us to so many places we didn't expect to go to, along with her son and daughter-in-law Jake and Kerstin who've been wonderful too, driving us around and giving us so many experiences we wouldn't have gotten otherwise. We're so grateful to them! We went back to D.C after going to NYC and Philly so had a further 5 days with them earlier this week.

Just some of the non-History things we've been up to include Baltimore and Ohio Railroad museum, visiting Luray caverns in Virginia, driving up the Shenandoah Valley, going to a huge shopping mall (I fell in love with Macy's), being at the top of the Rockerfeller centre in NYC, taking a cruise to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis island, the Natural History museum in NYC, Philadelphia art museum, an indoor swim centre in Maryland, D.C national botanical gardens, visiting the National Harbor near Alexandria and going up the big wheel, babysitting for Kerstin and Jake's two boys, going to Harper's Ferry where the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers meet, seeing wild beavers, turtles, deer, hawks and eagles, going to an adventure centre and climbing high ropes and whizzing through trees on zip wires, walking along part of the Appalachian Trail, and eating some very amazing food (my personal highlights are the Mexican grill Chipotle, and Waffle House which I've read about in books and always wanted to go to one!)

So yeah, it's been an amazing and packed two weeks!

In terms of history, all the places we've gone to have been an American History lovers dream, I have loved every second. D.C's Smithsonian museums are all free, an incredible thing when you think of the status of museums in the UK. There are 19 of them in total covering all subjects such as air and space, science, art, and history; we visited some of the art and sculpture ones, the National Museum of the American Indian, and the National American History museum. Both had fantastic displays and exhibits inside and put you right into history itself. The highlight for me was the third floor of the American history museum which was dedicated to America at war, and covered the Revolutionary and Civil wars, as well as the war of 1812 with GB, the French and Indian war, both World Wars, the Cold War, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan... it covered everything you can think of to do with military history, and the displays were absolutely fantastic and included lots of original artefacts, video, pictures, and interactive stations. By the time we got to the third floor we were nearly museum-ed out; I wish we had started at the top and dedicated the most time to that exhibition. Washington monument and Lincoln's memorial are of course must-visits in D.C and were the very first things we saw. It was very humbling to stand beneath the giant statue of Lincoln and read his famous speeches such as the Gettysburg Address and his second inaugural address on the walls beside him. I admit I may have bought out the gift shop buying Lincoln memorabilia. I'm a bit of a fan. (Who isn't?) Though we didn't get to see inside Fords Theatre where he was shot, we saw it from the outside; it looks quite unsuspecting and ordinary, but knowing what happened inside is enough to make anyone take a few seconds to look.

Philadelphia has a lot of importance in America's history. We had a guided tour round Independence Hall where the Declaration of Independence was signed and sat in the very room it was signed in, saw Thomas Jefferson's house where he lived when he wrote the document, saw an exhibit in George Washington's house and read about the lives of his slave servants, got to see the Liberty Bell and learn about its significance in so many people's fights for liberty, visited the Philadelphia Historical society, and saw innumerable statues and memorials to the first presidents' and their memorable feats. All of the above mentioned were free!

Today in Richmond we had a free tour around the Virginia State Capitol, which doesn't look much from the outside, but I found it to be probably the most amazing place we have visited so far. Richmond was the capital city of the confederacy for most of the Civil War, but fell to the Union soldiers in 1865 and was set on fire by its own inhabitants as they fled the city. The original building of the capitol escaped intact and was restored in the early 20th century, and inside is absolutely beautiful. It was designed by Thomas Jefferson himself, and was the very first building in the United States to be modelled based on classical architecture; a new style of building for a new republic and its outlook based on self-governance and liberty. It contains the original State Senate Chamber, the House of Delegates Chamber which still meets and was where the Bill of Rights was ratified into the US constitution, the Virginia Supreme Court, and the General Assembly which still meets in the Capitol every January. The guide who showed us around today was so knowledgeable and had memorized an inceredible amount of information. I know I live in the wrong continent. The sort of career I want, combining my love for American history and the museum industry, can't be found in the uk!

This is the only statue of George Washington made out of a mould whilst he was still alive, and is now in the capital building.

I could go on and on for pages about the amazing places we've visited, but I should probably stop there. This blog is supposed to be about my own research!

I spent two days in the Library of Congress this week, the largest library in the world. And it is huge. I talked to a research helper when I arrived and we registered to get ID cards printed out, and he recommeded the places I should go for information. I started in the Performing Arts reading room and a guy there helped me use the library's search facilities for articles on the Jenkins House Band I am focusing on. I found some fascinating stuff and was able to print them out for free. A few articles were by Dr Karen Chandler who is the current director of the Charleston Jazz Initiative where I am visiting to conduct research in a few weeks. I have been in touch with Dr Chandler and will be meeting up with her, so finding her work was exciting. There is also a great article on Booker T. Washington's visit to Charleston and how his path crossed with the band, and some work by James Arthur Briggs, and Frederick J Taylor, on research into black music which discuss the orphanage band. The motion picture and television reading room did not have much relevant for my project, and neither did the photographs and prints room, despite me spending a few hours searching through drawers of stereographs taken of President T. Roosevelt and Taft's inaugarations, to try and see if the orphanage band was anywhere in the photographs as I know they played at those events! I didn't find them anywhere.

The newspaper and periodicals room held much more of interest, and I was able to print out many relevant newspaper articles using the library's subscription databases which I could not access at home. My favourite article that I found (yes, I have a favourite) was a very racist and critical piece on the band's presence in London, which excited me because it was great to have an opinion of the band written from an English point of view. I know that the band travelled outside the US to perform but have not been able to find any other accounts of their travels so far.

This is the Library of Congress' main reading room.
There aren't many photos on this blog yet because most of the photos I'm taking are on my camera and until I get back home in mid August I can't upload any from there.

I know that Charleston holds much more specific information I can access that will be more helpful for my research than the Library of Congress did. I had hoped to find more, and was hoping to find some photographs. But I guess I haven't done too bad finding what I have here.

In summary, apologies for the long post, we are having a really amazing time, and I absolutely can't wait to see what the rest of the US south has in store for us! We're only in Virginia and some people here have such strong southern accents it's hard to understand them sometimes. But everyone here is friendlier by far than the more northern cities: people just getting on a bus or walking past in the street have said hi to us and asked how we are! I can conclude that it is even friendlier here than the North of England.

Hopefully you aren't too bored if you made it to the end... thanks for reading.
Look out for my next post!
Emily

Setting forth

(The tune to sing in your head for this blog post is 'Setting Forth' by Eddie Vedder.)

Hi! I'm Emily Needle, a second year undergraduate student reading History at Newcastle University in England, and I have a particular interest in American History​. I found my love for it at GCSE (aged 15) when studying a course on the American West. Cowboys and Indians and all the other stereotypical stuff. And no other area of History has ever been as exciting to me since. 

I'm really fortunate to have been awarded a vacation scholarship from my University which gives me a grant of money to carry out some research on a project I have designed myself. So I guess I just made this blog to document my trip. I will be in America for 5 weeks, or 37 days, (9th July - 15th August 2015) and my very wonderful other half Joseph is going with me to keep me in check, and for us to be able to have a holiday at the same time!

My research project utilizes the Jenkins Orphanage Band from Charleston (South Carolina) as a case study to explore some of the bigger questions surrounding the development and dissemination of Jazz in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century United States. I will (hopefully) examine the ethnic and economic profile of Jazz audiences in an attempt to assess the reception of Jazz, and the extent to which Jazz, developed in the segregated environment of the ‘Jim Crow’ South, was able to cross class and racial divisions among national audiences.

(I may have copied and pasted some of that from my application...)
The title of my project is 'From Rags Through Race to Ragtime: The Jenkins Orphanage Band and American Audience Response to Jazz in Turn of the Century Charleston' - hence the blog title.

The band itself was formed in the 1890s and came out of an orphanage founded in Charleston in 1891 by Reverend Daniel Joseph Jenkins. He discovered some young black boys sleeping on the street who said they had no parents, and he took them home and gave them some food. This continued, with more and more boys from around the city coming for food, until he managed to purchase a warehouse and turned it into Jenkins Institute. To raise funds for the orphanage Jenkins asked for people to donate old instruments, and the boys began to play on the streets of Charleston. At first they played traditional American tunes that the people would know, but the influence of their ancestors and the African Gullah rhythms they had been taught naturally infused in the music as they played. This new sound was something the American people had not heard before, and they loved it. The popular dance 'The Charleston' originated in this city and came from an series of steps known to African-Americans as they danced to this new type of music which eventually became known as 'Jazz'. The band soon became so popular that they toured all round the US, and visited London and Paris. Musicians such as Jazz trumpeters William 'Cat' Anderson and Jabbo Smith were Jenkins orphanage alumni. The band disbanded in the 1980s. 

It is this band that forms the core of my research. So little is known or has been written about them and I feel it is so important for their story to be heard. As a musician myself and a lover of Jazz music, it seemed natural for me to combine my love of American history and music to discover the history of these orphan boys who captured so many hearts. The backdrop of the US South during this period is one of extreme racial tension and violence. The civil war ended in 1865 and slavery was deemed unconstitutional, and yet black people's lives were scarcely much better than their ancestors' had been. Laws against their freedom and citizenship were introduced and the increasingly segregated South became known as 'Jim Crow'. It fascinates me how the American public could love this band so much, and yet at the same time a few streets away white mobs were murdering black people for crimes such as simply living in the same area as them. Finding a newspaper from 1911 advertising a concert the Jenkins band were doing in New York, underneath an article about the first lynching in Pennsylvania the previous day, really put everything in perspective for me. 
Of course only a few weeks ago 9 people were shot in one of Charleston's oldest black churches, by a white man associated with beliefs about white supremacy. This hate and racial prejudice still continues. It is bizarre and wrong that in 2015 the subject I am researching as 'history' has been brought alive again in such a raw and painful way. 

I am travelling down the East Coast this summer to try and answer some of the questions I have about the connections between Jazz and race, and to hopefully enlighten other people too. This research will form the basis of my dissertation as I start my 3rd and final year of my undergraduate degree in September. For the vacation scholarship I have to produce an academic poster from my findings. I don't pretend to be an expert on music, or Jazz, but my boyfriend is studying music at the Royal Northern College of Music and knows a lot more than I do and so it will be so helpful to have him with me.

We will be visiting Washington D.C, New York City, Philadelphia (PA) , Richmond (VA), Williamsburg (VA), Charleston, Birmingham (Al) and New Orleans. 

I'm not sure how often I'll post, and there is a chance of course that I will find not much of interest. But I doubt that. Though there are no academic books I can find about Jazz music in Charleston and on the Jenkins Orphanage Band, I know the material is all there, waiting to be studied and collected. From the research I have been doing online in the last few weeks there is a mountain of information available. I will be visiting the Library of Congress, the archives in Birmingham, and in Charleston the Avery Research Centre, the Charleston Jazz Initiative, and the College of Charleston collections which includes the documents from the Jenkins Institute.

Everyone I have been in touch with about my research has shown such kindness and given me a lot of help and advice that I am very grateful for. I will be meeting some incredible people whilst in the US who are very high in their respective fields, and I am humbled to be starting out my research and following in their shoes as a mere undergraduate.

To anyone reading this who is a first or second year student at Newcastle University, I highly recommend that you look into the vacation scholarships and apply for one. It's a really incredible opportunity! And of course you decide yourself what you are going to study, so you can do it on anything.

If after my project, just a few more people are aware and appreciative of the impacts of Charleston on the history of Jazz music, and on race relations, then I'll be happy.

So please follow my blog to keep up-to-date with what me and Joseph are up to in the US! This project really means a lot to me as you can probably tell. And we are incredibly, incredibly excited for this trip!

Here, have a photo so you know what we look like!

Emily x