The Avery Archives
DESCRIPTION OF THE COLLECTIONS:
Between 1700 and 1800, at the height of the Atlantic Slave Trade, approximately 40% of Africans who were forcibly shipped to mainland North America, came to the shores of South Carolina. Specifically, between 1700 and 1775, between 80,000-110,000 came through Charleston harbor and the "pest houses" on Sullivan's Island.
The archives of the Avery Research Center focus on the profound experiences of African peoples, their embarkation on Goree and Bunce Islands in Sierra Leone and Senegal, and the ports of Angola and the Congo, during the Middle Passage, in Barbados and other Caribbean islands, and on the shores and land of Charleston and the Sea Islands. This story is especially vital and important in a region where indigenous African cultural traditions survive.
The Center's archives also tell the story of the prominence of many of the region's citizens, and the unparalleled impact of the skill, talent, and leadership of enslaved and free blacks. This story has produced an unprecedented history in Gullah and Sea Island culture, slavery, emancipation, Civil War and Reconstruction, segregation, migration, the civil rights movement, women's rights, education, business, and the arts.
Since 1985, the Avery Research Center has developed the only collection of its kind in the country. It makes its archives accessible to the academic and general public. Avery's regional focus distinguishes it from other archives in South Carolina and the nation.
The Avery Research Center's archives contain 707.25 linear feet, and 519 feet of documentary material dating from 1777 to the present. These include the following primary and secondary source collections and materials:
- 160 manuscript collections
- 15 photograph collections
- 20 video and audiotape collections
- 100 oral histories
- 650 objects of African and African-American art and artifacts
- 4,000 books, dissertations and other research documents
- 200 journals, periodicals, and miscellaneous documents on microfilm
- 200 copies of 19th century newspapers
- Bibliographies
- Variety of other print and non-print materials including non-circulating reference materials, vertical files, and indexes
Primary Source Material
Manuscript Collections: The Center collects primarily paper and print documents. Of the Center's 160 manuscript collections, these include personal, family, business, and organizational papers. These documents consist of letters, organizational records and minutes of clubs and associations, newspapers, family albums, diaries, church records, scrapbooks, family histories, business records, account books and directories, transcripts of oral histories and interviews, records of educational institutions, and documents of public and elected officials.
Photograph Collections: The Center's fifteen photographic collections and over 500 other photographs and negatives include images of African-American forestry life and work in the 1930s and 1940s; civil rights leaders, rallies, and strikes; and historic buildings and sites including churches and praise houses, cemeteries, and burial sites. Notable collections include:
- Avery Normal Institute Collection
- Black Charleston in Slavery and Freedom: People, Places, and Events (Reconstruction and post Reconstruction black Charleston including protests of white businesses; 1970s production of Porgy and Bess; Tuskegee Airmen Monument in Walterboro, SC; Orangeburg Massacre Marker; Denmark Vesey House; Catfish Row; Old Slave Mart; National Freedmen's Savings Bank; McClennan-Banks Hospital and Training School for Nurses; Septima Clark Expressway Marker)
- Chris Hooper Collection - professional and promotional photographs of Della Reese with Erskine Hawkins Orchestra; Jimmy Grissom with Duke Ellington and his Orchestra; Arthur Prysock; Chuck Berry; The Royal Sultans; and the Louis Jordan Orchestra
- Dr. Joseph A. Towles Archival Collection in African Studies and Anthropology - 3,000 slides and negatives from Central and East Africa
- Ethelyn Parker Collection - 1914 graduate of Avery Normal Institute; educator and columnist for several African-American newspapers in Charleston and the United States; the collection spans 1904-1990.
- Eugene Hunt Collection - graduate of Avery Normal Institute; collection spans 1870-1990
- Gullah Culture Collection (Sea Islands, Johns Island) - 106 photographs of cultural life of Johns Island, South Carolina in the late 1950s and early 1960s donated by collectors/researchers, Guy and Candie Carawan.
- Jack Delano Collection -- Works Progress Administration (WPA) Project
- Philip Simmons Collection - the dean of Charleston blacksmiths recognized by the Smithsonian Institution as a "Living National Treasure;" awarded the National Heritage Fellowship, the highest honor bestowed on a traditional artist in the United States by the National Endowment for the Arts; recognized for "lifetime achievement" by the South Carolina State Legislature; inducted into the South Carolina Hall of Fame
Video and Audiotape Collections: The Center's audio and video holdings total nearly 300 and include approximately twenty large collections. They include taped religious music, including spirituals and gospel music from Lowcountry praise houses and churches on surrounding islands; recordings of Central African chants; children's games; and other recollections that document the life of people and places in Central Africa, and the Lowcountry Sea Islands.
One of the more widely used audio collections is the Gullah Culture Collection. In addition to photographs, the collection consists of fifty hours of taped religious music, children's games, songs, and recollections that document the life of people and places on Johns Island in the late 1950s and 1960s. Donated in 1986 by Guy and Candie Carawan, both their photographs and audiotapes were used as original research for their 1966 publication, Ain't You Got A Right To The Tree of Life. Other audio collections include:
- Auld Audio Collection - fifty-one audiotapes of spirituals and gospel music from Lowcountry praise houses and churches by researcher, Bobbie Auld
- Dr. Joseph A. Towles Archival Collection in African Studies and Anthropology - recordings of Central African chants and other music
- Wadmalaw Island Music Collection - recordings of choirs in six churches and praise houses on Wadmalaw Island by oral historian and resident, Sharon Murray
Oral Histories: The Center's archives contain approximately 100 audiotaped and transcribed interviews documenting oral histories. Among the collections, are the:
- South Carolina African American Political Archives and Oral History Project
- Orangeburg Massacre Oral History Project
- Avery Normal Institute interviews with administrators, teachers, and graduates
- Oral Histories of Lowcountry Women
- South Carolina Voices of the Civil Rights Movement
- Woman's Baptist Educational and Missionary Convention of South Carolina
- Ansonborough Oral History Project in collaboration with Spoleto Festival USA - documents the lives of residents of one of Charleston's first black low income housing projects developed in the 1940s.
Art and Artifacts: The Center has acquired nearly 650 works of art and artifacts. Included among these are twenty-five large collections: original oil paintings by Edwin "Teddy" Harleston; sweetgrass baskets by local craftswomen including renowned practitioners Mary Jackson, Elizabeth Mazyck, and Janie Cohen; iron works by master craftsman, Philip Simmons; African art; and a variety of artifacts, clothing, paintings, and prints.
The Center's most significant collections are The Walter Pantovic Slavery Collection and The Dr. Joseph A. Towles Archival Collection in African Studies and Anthropology. The Pantovic Collection contains over 300 rare items such as slave shackles and slave-era manacles, slave work tags, slave anklets, a swing latch neck collar, nineteenth century daguerreotypes of slaves, and other items related to the enslavement of African Americans. The Towles Collection is one of the Center's largest collections. Items in this collection come from Zaire, Uganda and black America. In addition to personal papers, unfinished short stories, book manuscripts, field notes, recordings of songs, slides and negatives, interviews and legends, a film, and 1,000 books, are original African paintings and prints and 200 African art objects including masks.
SECONDARY SOURCE MATERIAL:
The Center's archives contain books, dissertations, journals, periodicals, microfilm and newspapers. They include:
- 4,000 books, dissertations and other research documents
- 200 scholarly journals and periodicals
- Documents on microfilm including Booker T. Washington's speeches from 1912-1915; Black Abolitionist Papers; W.E.B. DuBois Papers; Freedmen's Bureau Records; South Carolina Records of Antebellum Southern Plantations; Records of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment; and minutes and index of the Charleston City Council from 1860-1900
- 200 copies of nineteenth century newspapers including Harper's Weekly and Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspapers
- Variety of other print and non-print materials including non-circulating reference materials, vertical files, and indexes
SUBJECT GUIDE
The Center's collections are divided into fourteen subject areas: Education; Civil Rights; Civil War and Reconstruction; Slavery; Gullah and Sea Islands; Business and Employment; African American Women; Music and Musicians; Health and Medicine; Churches and Religion; Family Histories; Organizations; Art and Artifacts; and Politics and Government.
BIBLIOGRAPHIES
The Center's archives keeps current six bibliographies of books, journal articles, dissertations and videos on Education in the South; Civil War and Reconstruction; Gullah Culture and the Sea Islands; Slavery in the South; Civil Rights; and Black Women.
DONATING ARCHIVAL MATERIALS
The Avery Research Center acquires materials that document the African-American experience in the South Carolina Lowcountry.
The Center welcomes donations from individuals and organizations of the following types of records, documents, and manuscripts; books, letters, diaries, magazines, scrapbooks, photographs, church records, family histories, business directories, African-American newspapers, oral histories and interviews, account books and business records, records of educational institutions, documents of public and elected officials, and organizational records of clubs/associations.
By donating materials to the Avery Research Center, donors are assured that they will be processed and maintained in a climate-controlled atmosphere that will preserve them for future use.
