>> Lynn Weinstein: Welcome
to our class on researching
African Americans in Business:
Doing Historical
Company Research.
We will be providing links in
chat and you will receive a PDF
and links in an email following
the presentation.
My name is Lynn Weinstein
and I am a Business Reference
and Research Specialist
at the Library.
This class is a result of a
Library guide developed on
African Americans in Business
and Entrepreneurship.
And the link will be provided
in the chat for this guide.
The class looks--
This class looks
at the early history
of African Americans
in the barbering and insurance
occupations and industry when
there was a vigorous Black
business movement during the
rise of Jim Crow and due to
the disenfranchisement of the
Black community
through segregation.
Black resistance during this
time took the form of a Black
leadership movement towards the
development of a separate Black
business class education and
a strong Black middle class.
Additional information on the
topics of Barbering and Beauty,
Insurance and Banking and Small
Business can be found in this
Library guide under the
Business and Industry section.
We also have blogs on the
topics of African Americans in
Insurance and in Barbering
featured in our Inside Atoms
blog, which points readers to
the Library's diverse
collections in science,
technology and business.
You can go to this blog in this
link, which is being put in chat
and click on African American
history to further find
information on these
and related topics.
You may also subscribe to this
blog to be alerted to new posts
that are in Inside Atoms.
This class is also inspired by
our Doing Historical Company
Research Library guide.
We have previously done a
Historical Company Research
webinar and it is available in
this Library guide.
The resources and methods that
I'll mention during this class
can be found in
the Library guide,
which is being put in chat.
The Library has a lot of
resources. This is just a start.
The class will include
information with a focus on
resources available to you at
home and tips and tricks we have
picked up and found useful.
I've added our links to the
Doing Company Research Guide,
which is for contemporary
businesses, businesses that are
in existence now and our
Business Reference Services
Reading Room webinar
to the chat.
This class is broken down into
a few specific sections.
We will be reviewing the
history of two prominent
African American barbers turned
entrepreneurs in the insurance,
real estate and other fields.
We will be looking at
information sources, including
directories which are good for
company research, using news
sources and free internet
sources and where else you can
go next for additional
information.
By the end of the class, you
will understand what information
sources are available, when to
use them, and what information
they can provide.
Now, the first individual I'm
going to be talking about is
John Merrick.
He was born enslaved in 1859,
but went on to become
an entrepreneur, a community
leader and a philanthropist.
Based on income he initially
generated through his barbering
establishments in
Durham, North Carolina.
After reconstruction,
Black barbers served a White
clientele, and John Merrick
served the prominent James
Buchanan Duke family in Durham,
North Carolina.
Merrick joined with several
other prominent African American
businessmen to bring needed
services and middle class jobs
to the Durham community that
were not available to
African Americans due to Jim Crow
segregation and discrimination.
He co-founded North Carolina
Life Insurance to sell burial
insurance. He saw the need to
create a real estate company to
sell real estate insurance to
African Americans, since White
companies would not
sell to that community.
And he also created
a bank to lend in
and invest in the community.
These companies brought
middle class jobs and
opportunities to the African
American community in Durham,
and the personal wealth of the
co founders was sometimes used
to keep the insurance company
in business during difficult
times as the
insurance firm matured.
They also also served to
provide mortgages and loans
which were used to build homes,
churches and businesses
in the community.
And this was similar
to how insurance businesses were
grown in African American
communities
throughout the United States.
Now, John Merrick was concerned
about the health of the
community, and he became the
president of Lincoln Hospital,
a segregated hospital
for African Americans.
The hospital had a nursing
school, and some of the early
nursing students
are pictured here.
Merrick formed the Bull Durham
Drug Company and recruited
pharmacy students from
local Black universities.
The area drew college students
from Historically Black Colleges
and Universities in the early
20th century.
Merrick himself learned
to read and write
in a reconstruction school, and
he lacked the formal education
that you might consider someone
who is an entrepreneur
like himself might have.
But he understood the
importance of education and he
funded the College for Blacks
in Durham, which is now
North Carolina
Central University.
And he also funded a public
library to serve the Black
children of the community since
they weren't allowed to use
the White library system.
Another man who traveled a
similar path at the same time
was a contemporary
of John Merrick.
Alonzo Herndon.
Alonzo Herndon was born
enslaved in Walton County,
Georgia, in 1858.
He moved to the segregated
Atlanta area, where he opened
several barbershops, including
the upscale Crystal Palace
in 1902, serving a
White male clientele.
In 1905, he purchased a
distressed, small mutual aid
association that became the
Atlanta Life Insurance Company.
Once again, this was to sell
burial insurance.
Black-owned insurance companies
and other businesses in the
early 20th century were
restricted both by law and
custom from participating
competitively in the general
insurance industry and as a
result, catered exclusively to
Black patrons, stressing the
virtues of thrift and protecting
against the economic havoc that
could be caused by the death or
illness of a family member.
These companies served an
important part in society,
and they also provided
employment opportunities
and business training.
Atlanta Life became
one of the country's most
successful Black-owned
businesses in the country.
But this did not spare
Alonzo from having his
barber shop vandalized during
the 1906 Atlanta race massacre.
He and his wife
Adrina Elizabeth McNeill, a
graduate of Atlanta University,
now, Morris Brown College was
deeply affected by this, and
they sent their only
son, Norris, away
for a time during this period.
She built a large mansion on
the edge of Atlanta University,
which is now a national
historic landmark
that is open to the public.
During this time, Alonzo grew
his real estate empire and
founded Atlanta State Savings
Bank in order to invest in the
community and have a place for
the community to
invest their money.
Alonzo was involved
in civil rights and
economic justice movements.
He was a founding member of the
National Business League, which
was organized by 
Booker T. Washington in 1900 to
promote the interests of
African American businesses,
specifically to promote the
commercial and financial
development of individuals and
to bring African Americans into
the middle class mainstream.
This was one of three
organizations that eventually
merged to form the
National Urban League.
Alonzo was also a founding
member of the civil rights
organization, the Niagara Movement,
which was organized by
W.E.B. Du Bois in 1905.
This was somewhat opposed to
Booker T. Washington, mostly
in terms of tactics.
In the end, this movement wasn't
entirely successful, but it
became a predecessor to the
NAACP, and a number of groups
agreed to join their efforts
through the NAACP on a strategy
of opposing Jim Crow laws
and supporting equal
protection and civil rights.
They disagreed previously on
tactics, but they reconciled.
Alonzo is pictured here with
his son, Norris, who went on to
lead the 
Atlanta Life Insurance Company
after Alonzo's death in 1927.
Alonzo was noted for his
involvement in and support of
local organizations devoted to
advancing African Americans in
business and community life,
including orphanages, nursery
schools, churches, the
YMCA and Atlanta University.
The pictures on this page were
taken in Atlanta University in
the 1940s.
Alonzo died in 1927 and was
buried in the South View
Cemetery, which he founded
because he believed in people
being buried with dignity.
And there currently is
a foundation that is for,
put together for Alonzo
and Norris Herndon
that focuses on
equity in business
and ensuring that
businesses have diversity.
We do have a Library guide on
African Americans in Business
and Entrepreneurship,
as I mentioned before.
This is the front page and
we're putting the link in the
chat and you could follow and
find out information about
these gentlemen or people
in your own community
by using this Library guide.
As previously mentioned,
you can look under the
Business and Industries tab here
and there are pages under it for
specific occupations
in industries.
So under this page, you can
also see that there is a tab or
a page on business associations
and this may be of interest to
use as it does list current and
past associations which include
things such as
general print materials
and Library of Congress
collections,
including manuscripts,
resource guides and
blogs that might be of interest.
We do at the Library of Congress
have--for instance--
the NAACP manuscripts and
manuscripts for other
associations that were founded
by African Americans.
This Library guide we do
address small businesses,
insurance, banking, finance
and the beauty industry.
You can see here that they're
on the left hand side under
the tabs for the various pages.
There is an Ask a Librarian
box, and you could click on that
to submit a question.
And if you have a more complex
question or are you thinking of
coming in, you
need some guidance.
This gives us a few days to
look over a question and get
back to you in greater detail.
And this link for the
Library guide is being put into
the queue and will have the link
for the Ask a Librarian
in a couple of places
during this presentation.
This is the front page
of our Doing Historical
Company Research Library guide.
You can see the front page on
the screen and we have sources
and strategies covered
here in this guide.
So if you feel like you're
missing something, don't worry,
because you'll be able
to refer to this guide.
And here we also have a
recorded webinar, Doing
Historical Company Research
with a presentation
that you can come here and view.
So one quick note is that while
we have many of the subscription
databases and other sources
mentioned in the class and in
these guides that are available
to researchers, while you're
here at the Library of Congress,
you may have access to
them through a local university
or public library or some other
avenue, like a state library
or a historical society.
So don't forget to look locally.
So what do you need when you're
looking around?
You need to cast a wide net and
look under a lot of rocks and go
under many paths.
Some false.
You'll have to look in places
that you might not have thought
to look and maybe
do it all over again.
If you find new information so
you need to know your resources.
You need to be creative and you
need to have some patience.
So sometimes doing research on
African American Business
History is like putting
together a puzzle.
The different bits by
themselves are only so helpful.
We have in currently working at
the Library of Congress remotely
from Providence, Rhode Island,
a innovator in residence.
Yoo Warren, who is working on
assembling information and
reconstructing Chinatown's
using virtual reality
technology.
And he came here
and visited the Library
and he wrote a blog about it.
And he had a very
interesting quote.
He said, "Visiting the Library
of Congress was a powerful
experience and a reminder that
there is pain in looking through
these materials, just trying to
see people through the records
left by racist newspapers, the
violence itself, of course, but
also the sense of mapping out
a negative space in the archive,
the space of silence.
How many shelves, binders,
directories,
photographs said nothing at all.
There was also
moments of brightness.
Hand scribbled
notes in yearbooks.
Self portraits, moments of
quiet and joy and recognition".
So there are a lot
of missing pieces.
But if you put together, the
pieces of the puzzle might come
together and this
is what you get.
This is a photograph taken by a
US government photographer,
Jack Delano, from the US Farm
Security Administration Office
of War Information in 1942 of a
meeting of agents of the Unity
Life Insurance
Company in Chicago.
The reality is, as our
innovator in residence said,
unfortunately, there's a lot
missing from the record, and
there would be a lot of missing
pieces from your puzzle,
perhaps, but you would get
somewhat of an idea if you look
in different places and
assemble different information.
So we'll look at
some of those places
that you can look
to get information.
I'd like to start with
directories because they can be
one of the most accessible
resources because
many libraries and historical
societies have directories.
They can be useful for
genealogy.
You can find occupational
information.
They can give sometimes
census details,
street addresses and more.
This is a picture of a directory
that we found here
at the Library from Boston.
It's from 1842.
When it comes to using
directories.
And these are some directories
that we have at the Library of
Congress. And when you get the
PDF, these will link to their
records, their catalog records.
When it comes to using
directories, you'll need to know
a general location because most
are organized by city, county,
state or region.
And sometimes those areas
change over time.
So for instance, PG County in
the Washington D.C. area might
sometimes have been filed under
Greater Washington
instead of PG County.
Just to give you an idea.
In the Yellow Pages, for
instance, or in a crisscross
directory, here are some
directories that we have found
at the Library of Congress
that detail information
on African Americans.
These linked to our catalog
records and the Stimson
Directory links to a related
blog in Inside Atoms.
As I said before, these
directories provide genealogical
business and occupational
information.
They can sometimes
have census information.
They can give you an idea of
the business of the African
American community, in
particular towns and cities, and
your local public, academic,
historical society or state
library is likely to have
directories such as these.
These are some digital
resources that are available to
you at home from various
providers, including the Library
of Congress and the
New York Public Library.
And once again, you'll be able
to link from the PDF.
The New York Public Library has
digitized the Green Book Travel
Guide, which was published
between 1936 and 1967
during the segregation
era in the United States.
This identified businesses that
would accept African American
customers. It was compiled by
Victor Hugo Green, a Black
postman who lived in the
Harlem section of New York City.
And in this book, he listed a
variety of businesses from
restaurants and hotels to
beauty salons and drugstores
that were necessary
to make travel
comfortable and safe
for African Americans
in the period before the
passage of the Civil Rights Act
of 1964.
This was necessary because
segregation was pervasive, not
just in the South, but
throughout the country.
And Black travelers were not
only met by inconvenience and
humiliation because they were
sometimes turned away from
businesses, but they also had
to sometimes face the threat of
violence. And there were also
sundown towns where the presence
of people of color was
banned after nightfall.
I also want to note that one of
the items listed here is the
Business Associations page of
the African Americans in
Business and Entrepreneurship
Guide.
Because there are links there
that provide information to
print and digitized
directories.
In terms of a General Directory
collections at the Library of
Congress, I'd like to mention
that we do have the Dun and
Bradstreet collection.
This is Dun and Bradstreet is a
company that was known by
different names. It was a
credit reporting company
that used to code
system for industry
bill paying ability
and revenue range.
Their publications are not
strictly directories, but they
give information that's not
necessarily available elsewhere.
These are for larger businesses
like the insurance companies and
maybe some of the real estate
companies and banks.
The first reference title,
Reference Book of American
Business was published from
the 1860s until it ceased
publication in the early 2000s.
It was primarily leased, but
the Library of Congress keeps
what it gets. So our
set is fairly complete.
It was published several times
a year and there is an inventory
of that on our business
reference services home page and
businesses are listed by state
and then by county and city.
I'm excited to be able to say
now that we are in the process
of digitizing everything before
1924, and I can say that we have
1900 through 1924 on our
website and you can reach that
through the URL that
is orange on this page.
There is also a sister source
called the Million Dollar
Directory that is good for most
business types that are larger.
It was first published in 1957
and it includes both public and
private companies with sales
over $1 million.
But you have to understand that
that criteria has changed over
time in terms of how large it
is, how big $1 million is.
It doesn't mean the same thing,
but this Million Dollar
Directory is now available in
the Merchant Archive's
subscription database,
which we do have.
And you might find that, for
instance, at an academic library
that you might be able to use
as a walk in user.
But I would advise calling
first, and this information is
available in our historical
company research guide in the
directories section, and that
should be put into chat.
That link.
We also have a telephone, books
and City Business directories
which are often available at
local, state and historical
societies, public library
libraries and local historical
collections and similar
collections.
The Library of Congress has
directories for many places
around the US, but our hard
copies are mostly not in our
online public access
catalog or opaque.
Even though some business
directories are.
Also, the Library of Congress
does have some directories
digitized on our home page.
Links for the inventory
and the digital collection
are being put in chat.
Obviously Yellow Pages
are helpful when researching
a business, but the
information is limited.
For younger people Yellow
Pages have businesses in it.
They were local business
directories that were yellow
that you could look up
businesses.
City Business directories
provide a bit more information
and can connect a person to
their business and sometimes
provide information about
owners or officers.
We also have microfilm-- city
directories on micro-form.
There is also a set of
directories that are of interest
that are criss cross or reverse
street addresses that are good
when you are looking for
location and information about
the surrounding businesses.
Some of these may be
available locally through
a library by you.
The library here at the
Library of Congress does have
a number of these directories.
They can be good for like
environmental
remediation purposes.
We do have a lot of people
who come here to look at them
for that purpose, to, for
instance, look at where a gas
station was or a company that
used a lot of chemicals to look
at who lived nearby or what
other companies were nearby.
Here are a few
links to inventories
on the Library's website.
If you can't get to
the Library of Congress,
there are many free sites via
the internet for directories.
If you know a directory title,
you can search on that, but you
will often find them when you
search for a company or an
individual, they'll
just come up.
For instance, I found a
biography of John Merrick in
HappyTrust, an organization
that digitizes content from US
public, academic and state
libraries, mostly content
that is out of copyright.
For instance, the profile
pictures that I use
for John Merrick are from
a book that is digitized
in HappyTrust that's
out of copyright.
These links are just examples
from local public libraries,
historical societies or
genealogical groups.
The links on the
bottom of this page.
There may also be
copies you may be
able to find when you search.
Lastly, the link in
orange is a link to those
directories that the
Library has digitized.
We have some select--
Directories that we've digitized
and we're continuing to do that.
Unfortunately, at the moment
the places we have are limited,
but the link is being
provided in the chat.
There are a few
databases to mention.
Archives Unbound is one of them.
They may not be as widely
available.
They are subscription and
usually Library has to buy their
content, but you might be able
to find those in historical
societies and
libraries near you.
There's also Ancestry.com,
which does have low subscription
rates for individuals, and they
also have the Ancestry Library
edition, which we have here at
the Library and you might have
at your local library.
So they do have a very good
collection of City Business
directories from around the
country with good coverage
dates, though they start
getting thin around the 1930s.
So that might be a good source
to look at.
The Library of Congress has one
of the world's premier
collections of US and Foreign
genealogical and local
historical publications, with
over 50,000 compiled family
histories, as well as over
100,000 US local histories,
including those that research
the African American experience.
So the Library's genealogical
collection began as early as
1815 with the purchase of
Thomas Jefferson's library.
Here are two Library guides on
African American family
genealogy that might be of
interest, and we're going to put
those links into chat for you
and you'll be able to look
at them from the slides.
I want to mention here where
you can look at images at the
Library of Congress to
look at a bigger picture.
If maps are
available for an area,
they can be very insightful.
One source to mention
that I'm not going to go
into a huge amount of detail is
our Sanborn Fire Insurance maps.
These can add an interesting
perspective.
The maps were made to cover over
12,000 American towns and cities
and were used to help insurance
companies write policies.
They can be used to give
you a physical presence to
cite from a directory.
Though most businesses are not
noted by name, these are free
sources for some places, but
then there's also most of them
are available through a
subscription database
Digital Sanborn maps from 1867
to 1970, which is a ProQuest
database that the Library
subscribes to.
The two images here are
from the Sanborn set.
The image on the
left is an index page
that gives you
sheets to look at.
Here I am looking at the
Parrish tobacco warehouse.
The left hand side
gives me the index, and then on
the right hand side, the large
rectangular red building on the
upper right is an image of the
Parrish Tobacco warehouse on
Parrish Street in
Durham, North Carolina.
This is image four of
the 1898 Sanborn fire map.
And you can look at the image
of that street over time to see
how it's changed from--
For anyone who wants to know
more, I'm including some links
to some blog posts and essays
that can help you with reading
and understanding the
Sanborn maps in the chat.
These Library guides and this
index will also help you getting
into our Fire maps and
understanding them and
understanding how to locate
businesses in your town or area
that you might be researching.
So you could use these Fire
maps to look at African American
communities in Durham, Atlanta,
Tulsa and other areas using our
Sanborn Collection or
our other Fire maps.
Our Prints and
Photographs Division
has many stunning images
of African American communities.
Here are some of our Library
guides to our Prints and
Photographs Division
collections that I have used for
my research on
African Americans in Business.
We have an online
catalog available to search
Prints and Photographs
that you can use from home.
As many of the photographs are
digitized and available for
downloading, you can search no
restrictions in your search to
look for items that have no
restrictions from copyright.
And you can look in the
description to see if there is
any restrictions from copyright.
I'm putting links in the chat
for our Prints and Photographs,
reading room and for their
online catalog, which you can
use from home.
Another good source of
information when looking for
African Americans and African
American companies are trade
publications and newspapers,
while trade publications would
cover the industry.
A company operated in
newspapers cover the place the
company is located in, as well
as company information.
Newspaper articles have useful
bits of information like
advertisements, obituaries,
articles, information about
court proceedings,
profiles and more.
To go back to our puzzle,
you can search for information
in newspapers and periodicals
using the principal or founders
of the company or the various
names of the company that may
have been used over time.
And searching in newspapers can
be a little trying.
The indexing is not the
greatest, so you have to do
a lot through trial and error.
I would recommend searching
chronicling America,
which is a openly
available, Internet based,
searchable database of
US digitized newspapers
from 1777 through 1963.
This database is available free
to you at home and is sponsored
jointly by the National
Endowment for the Humanities and
the Library of Congress.
The links and chat are for
chronicling America and the list
of 238 African American
newspapers that are available
for viewing and
searching on this site.
To the left of this page is a
result from the newspaper
Richmond Planet in a search for
North Carolina Mutual Life
Insurance Company.
It is an advertisement
for the Richmond
office in 1927 and gives the
name of their district manager,
the address, phone number and
some interesting insight into
their marketing and branding.
On the right is an advertisement
for the Atlanta Life Insurance
Policy that gives you some
information on their financial
and operating information,
as well as their branding and
advertising position.
The advertisement that I
located for the North Carolina
Training College on page six
was also from
chronicling America.
It is important to locate
all the variant names and
spellings for a
particular institution
when you're searching.
A search on Alonzo
Herndon resulted in this
portrait and biographical
description.
And because of the
date, which is 1921,
this is prior to copyright.
And this search for
North Carolina Mutual resulted
in this information about the
company erecting a large
building in Durham, North
Carolina, as well as information
about the strength of the
insurance company and its
prominence. You can retrieve a
lot of company information
through chronicling America.
Note that in searching
chronicling America and other
databases, you need to be
mindful of the context of the
words and phrases used during
the time of the publication of
the newspaper, as well as any
other journals and trade
literature that you may be
searching.
I am putting a link in the chat
for any age document titled
African American Keywords for
chronicling America so that you
can search for related terms
for Afro American and Black
individuals in
context of the time
that the newspapers
were printed in.
These are a few databases
for searching news and
articles, but again, look to
local public libraries and
historical societies
for access to databases.
The first group are those with
newspapers that have been
digitized. The library has
these databases newspaper
Archive, ProQuest, Historical
newspapers, American
periodical series, etc.
We don't have newspaper.com,
but that's often available
at public libraries.
Chronicling America is listed
here with the link in orange.
I note that most older trade
literature is not in databases,
and many journals didn't do
their own indexing.
So you might have to look
at an old fashioned index
to try to find articles.
So you might have to look at
something like the Reader's
Guide to Periodical Literature,
or it's something like the
Applied Science and Business
Periodical Retrospective.
We do have that available here
as a subscription.
Lastly, I would say that a lot
of full text databases can be
used for historical research
like ABI-Inform,
Business Source Complete
and some of these
other databases that are listed.
And our Library guides do
have these and other sources
that you might want to look for
additional information.
While we don't really have time
to do a demo and I'm not going
to go over individual database
quirks and issues,
there are a few
things to mention.
First, digitized news sources
include articles as well as
advertisements, and both may
provide images of business
products, people and
clarifications regarding
locations, general news, people
and that sort of thing.
For those databases where the
papers are digitized,
advertisements are searchable,
but ads are not included in the
text based full text databases.
Second, because you may get a
lot of results use anyway to
limit the results. So when
you're using a vendor with
indexing options, you may want
to limit your results based on
things like date, item type,
publication and place.
There are a few additional
specific tips when searching
digitized sources.
They don't like ambiguity, so
use simple words and phrases
when available use exact
phrase fields or quotations.
Don't use words like
'company' or 'corporation.'
Just drop those and don't use
abbreviations unless you have
to. Unless it's a real key part
of the name of the company.
You have no way of knowing how
the paper is going to abbreviate
things. Having the name of a
president or owner is a good way
to search. But remember that
there may have been a different
way of abbreviating
things back then.
For example, they might have
used J-O-S for Joseph,
C-H-A-S for Charles
or J-A-S for James,
you would want to do
individual searches with
different variations
to account for
an individual's
initials, for example.
Another potential way to search
is to search a
business's address.
The Internet has a lot
and may seem like it has
everything, but it doesn't.
Not everything has been
digitized.
Not everything is free.
And-- With that said, there
are things it does have and
over time it will
have more and more.
People are putting
material out there
on the Internet all the time.
These include local libraries,
university libraries,
genealogical societies,
collector groups and more.
Each has their own niche.
But please try to look at some
of the more reliable sources
like some of what
is listed here.
Google Book, HappyTrust and
the Internet Archive have
digitized journals,
directories, reports from
companies like annual reports.
One additional Google tip as
you might want to use quotes
around a company name a
person's name that might be
helpful in your searching.
Beyond that, here are a few
additional sources.
First, most states usually
through the Secretary of State,
sometimes a revenue office have
an ability to search for
businesses in that state.
So here's a link for
secretaries of state for
the United States.
So I would recommend going
through a secretary of state
office. If you're looking for
information about a current or
past company, they often have
information about who has
registered as a company in the
state for tax purposes.
Second, I want to mention that.
You might want to look at the
Internet Archive, which is a
good site for websites for both
public and private companies.
That might be a good source of
information for you to look at.
Lastly, I want to mention
patents and trademarks.
You might want to look at the
US Patent and Trademark Office
to see if there's any filings
by an individual or company.
The Ohio State University
really librarian with a
lot of attention to detail put
together in an Excel spreadsheet
on African American
patent holders.
So she put together this great
Excel spreadsheet, and we're
trying to add that to our
collections as a data set.
The patent here is for a
curling tongs or a permanent
wave machine, which was filed
by Marjorie Joyner in 1928.
And Ms. Joyner co-founded the
United Beauty School Owners and
Teachers Association and opened
her first salon on Chicago's
South Slate Street in 1916.
This presentation has mostly
been centered around Library
resources, but some of what has
been mentioned may be available
in other ways. As I've said,
your local state, historical
society, libraries and archives
have a real interest in and
knowledge in their areas.
They will have focus
collections, local papers,
directories, oral histories.
You can use them to tap into
the knowledge that local people
with local knowledge have and
they will have real knowledge
about their institution's
collections.
Also, for anyone looking for
trade catalogues, the Library
does have some, mostly
regarding the building trades
and we do have some of those
collections listed in our
historical company Research
Guide in the Look Beyond the
Library page.
Here are the images of the
intro page of the two Library
guides I referred you to
during this presentation.
The African Americans in
Business and Entrepreneurship
and the Doing Historical
Company Research Guides.
So I would suggest that you
might want to come back to these
guides for more information.
The links are being provided
for you and you can always refer
to them in the PDF of the
presentation.
Here are pages four on John
Merrick and Alonzo Herndon that
I've added to our this month in
Business History which are
entered under their birth
months.
The link to this guide is being
put into chat.
This summer we will have a
junior fellow working on adding
diversity to our collection of
this month and Business History
by adding stories and
information featuring more
underrepresented individuals,
businesses and associations.
And here is an opportunity to
Ask a Librarian right now if we
don't have time to answer your
question or if it's a complex
question, please submit it to
us on our Ask a Librarian
address, which is on the slide.
And we're also putting in our
business reference services
reading room link, which is
where we're physically located
in Washington, D.C. at the
Library of Congress
in the Adams Building.
We hope you'll consider
visiting us here.
I want to thank you for your
time, and I hope that you got
some useful information and
tips from this presentation, and
we're available to take
questions if there are any
questions in the queue
or if anyone has any
additional questions.
>> Natalie Burclaff: Hi, Lynn.
We got a few questions
as we went along,
so I will just read them.
And if anyone needs to clarify,
go ahead and do
that in the chat.
But the first question
wants to know who is
the person who developed the
virtual Chinatowns from records?
That sounds cool.
>> Lynn Weinstein: Oh, yeah.
His name is I believe
Yoo Warren.
Oh, I would have to pull it up.
He did write a blog
about his experience.
And let's see, I do have that
somewhere.
I had it in--
>> Natalie Burclaff:
I just added it to chat.
>> Lynn Weinstein:
Okay, great. Great, great.
Yeah. He did come to our
reading room and looked at some
of the material that we had
here and trying to--
He's trying to
recreate Chinatowns
and develop like
three Chinatowns in a
couple of areas, including
South Dakota,
Provincetown, Rhode Island,
and I believe maybe
someplace in California.
>> Natalie Burclaff:
Correct me if I'm wrong,
who ever asked this question,
but we were talking about
some directories
and other resources I think.
They say I interviewed
someone that owned
three barbershops in the Lehigh
Valley area, Allentown, Easton,
Bethlehem for an
oral history project.
He was born in 1929
in South Carolina
and moved to the area in 1956.
So I think this person's
wondering where information like
that might be collected.
>> Lynn Weinstein: One thing
that's interesting about that
is they probably moved from the
south to the north
during the Great Migration, and
that might be a Library guide
that that person
might be interested in.
It's something that's
referenced in the
Prints and Photographs section
because there was a
series of movements
of African Americans from the
South to more northerly cities.
So that might be something that
would be of interest to them
just to look at some of the
materials that are available at
the Library of Congress about
those great migrations.
And then I would suggest your
local libraries and historical
societies might be a great
place to look, as well as the
directories for those areas and
the digitized newspapers or the
local papers that
you might have there.
They're chronicling
America, you know.
Because I do think we have a
number of papers from those
areas in Pennsylvania.
>> Natalie Burclaff: Oh, someone
thinks maybe they were offering
to give the oral histories
to the Library of Congress.
Do we know if that's
something that is collected?
>> Well, just-- I can
chime in a little bit.
We do have the American
Folklife Center.
So that would be one of the
areas in the Library that does
collect oral histories.
But if you submit it in our--
I'm sorry. We have a link to
items that you want to see at
the Library would be interested
in collecting, and that would
get routed to the American
Folklife Center,
which has a lot
of oral histories.
>> Lynn Weinstein: Yeah, they
usually have specific projects
where people collect oral
histories in certain areas.
And in my-- I did a blog on
African American barbers and I
included some barbers that were
featured through the oral
history project
in Paterson, New Jersey.
>> Natalie Burclaff: Okay.
Another question from the chat.
Is there an estimated date for
completion of the digitization
of the Dun Mercantile
Reference Books published from
1859 to 1899?
They say the 1900
and 1924 editions
that have already been digitized
have been a tremendous resource.
>> Lynn Weinstein: So what are
those that are being digitized?
>> Natalie Burclaff: Asking
if we know when the older
1859 to 1899
Dun Mercantile Reference
books might be digitized?
>> Lynn Weinstein:
Dun and Bradstreet.
>> I can answer that
also, if you don't mind.
>> Lynn Weinstein:
Yeah, go ahead.
>> Very soon.
We just got another batch
that I am working on
as we speak to approve,
and we hope to have the early
Dun and Bradstreet
credit directory.
1859 to 1899.
Posted soon.
I can't give a specific date,
but we have a lot of them have
now been scanned and that was
kind of our big holdup was
scanning these giant
big oversized volumes
with thin paper.
So it is moving along.
>> Natalie Burclaff: Okay.
Another question from chat.
Does the library have maps of
historic D.C. specifically
residential areas?
>> Lynn Weinstein: I think
that I would go to the
D.C. Public Library for
that information
to the Washingtonian room.
They have a tremendous
map collection there.
>> Natalie Burclaff:
Hey, and a specific question.
I don't know if you'll know
this, Lynn, but is there
a listing or I guess a resource
for barbershops in Marion and
Roanoke, Virginia?
>> Lynn Weinstein:
Oh, I really don't know.
For barbershops.
I wish I was that I think
you would have to look for old
directories in your area.
You might want to start with
the local public library or
local public library there.
Or you could look at our
directories link to see if we
have coverage of that area here.
But I would check your local
library first or historical
society to see if they have
directories.
I think that might be one of
your best bets to start.
>> Natalie Burclaff:
Okay. A question about
Elsie Subject headings. Hello.
As you catalog new resources
in your collections, do you
encounter any
difficulties with selecting
Elsie subject headings?
In a previous internship,
I catalogued LGBTQ
collection and old terminology
didn't quite match up.
How do you handle such
situations?
>> Lynn Weinstein: Yeah,
the subject headings are
pretty old sometimes,
especially when you're
talking about science
and business.
In fact, with science and
business, we run into that a lot
with all sorts of different
classifications because
things move a little
bit too quickly
unless there's a
special group working on
finding new subject headings.
I think there was recently a
group that was looking at like
fin-tech, like
cryptocurrency type.
>> Lynn, weren't you also
involved with helping update
some terminology and some.
>> Lynn Weinstein: Yeah, I did.
For the Tulsa race massacre.
I did ask for terminology to be
updated on some of the
photographs for a blog that I
used because it was still being
called the Tulsa Race Riot, and
they added some new terminology
so that people today would be
able to more easily search for
it and related items.
They added some new terms that
people today would more likely
use to search. I can't
remember them offhand.
But yeah, they did actually
update them like over the
weekend when I asked them to,
I was very pleasantly surprised.
>> Natalie Burclaff: We
have one more question.
Unless anyone has any more
questions, but this one is any
suggested starting point for
researching African Americans
employed by the federal
government?
>> Lynn Weinstein: I haven't
really thought about that.
I know that I think there
used to be an association.
In fact, I had an
association in the guide
and I think I might
have removed it
because the link wasn't working
and I didn't have time to try
to find the new link,
but I would think that would
be one place to go if there was.
Yeah, maybe that was it.
Blacks in government.
If there's-- Associations
are a great place to look.
Trade associations or unions.
>> I can also share.
We just--in our business
reference section,
had a Salary and Compensation
guide which has a sub page
specifically on researching
government employee data.
>> Lynn Weinstein: Yeah,
that might be great.
Yeah, I'd have to
brainstorm that about.
That might be a good thing to
submit as an Ask a Librarian
question so we could think
about it for a few days
and get back to you.