Relevant information from Clarke's papers will be incorporated into the current project. Clarke's finding aid had been intended to complement Debra Newman's Black History: A Guide to Civilian Records in the National Archives, but his project never came to fruition. Robert Clarke, who had done some preliminary work on a finding aid to military records relating to African Americans. A most helpful development was the discovery of the working papers of former NARA staff member Dr. Reference archivists reviewed this list and amended it with some additional series. 63, Data Relating to Negro Military Personnel in the 19th Century, no broad-based resource for African American military records exists for the post-World War I through the Korean war period.Īs a starting point for the project, I completed a preliminary survey of the Guide to Federal Records in the National Archives of the United States (1995) to highlight the most relevant military records relating to African Americans and compiled a list of those series. Although at least one attempt was made in 1973 to address this problem for much older records in the form of Reference Information Paper No. I have been working on a project to create a basic reference work, a reference information paper (RIP), on records of military agencies relating to African Americans. Because information is scattered, researchers and staff cannot easily access the records. Many NARA staff members create internal notes on specific military records regarding African Americans for their own use, but this information is not available agency-wide. Even when such aids exist, they are fragmentary or too general to determine if the described records are pertinent to the topic of African Americans. But archivists' ability to respond effectively to reference requests is hampered by the lack of finding aids on records of military agencies, particularly records created immediately before and after World War II. In the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), there are vast quantities of records in numerous record groups (RGs) pertaining to the participation of African Americans in the military. Research interest in military records relating to African Americans has increased steadily over the past twenty years, a phenomenon that can be directly attributed to such factors as the television miniseries Roots and the motion picture Glory. Documenting African Americans in the Records of Military Agenciesįederal Records and African American History (Summer 1997, Vol.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |