Tag Archives: Urban Studies

T. M Berry Project: Alpha Phi Alpha

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By: Laura Laugle

It (finally!) stopped raining long enough for me to transport some photos from here in the Blegen Library across campus to the Langsam Library to Preservation Services. My favorite among the photos needing repair work are some wonderful panoramic photos from the 1930s of both the Cincinnati chapter and annual conventions of Alpha Phi Alpha, the nation’s first intercollegiate fraternity for African American men. These photos are quite large, around 30-46 inches long and are beautifully done group shots of the members in their spiffiest attire. While those materials are currently undergoing restoration, I would still like to share with you a number of other items I’ve found relating to AΦA. Continue reading →

T. M. Berry Project: Keeping Busy

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By Laura Laugle

I don’t know about you, but when I think of retirement I think of time spent relaxing with cool drinks in a warm climate (at least, I think that’d be the ideal for many of us.) Apparently, Theodore M. Berry didn’t think so. If what I’ve lately found in the collection which he donated to the University of Cincinnati is any indication, I think I can safely say that Berry’s retirement, though most assuredly rewarding, was no walk in the park – not even when he took the neighbor’s dog out for a walk.

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50 Minutes-1 Book

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By Kevin Grace

The final 50 Minutes – 1 Book lunchtime talk for the academic year will be held Thursday, May 26, in the Archives & Rare Books Library, in the Schott Seminar Room, 814 Blegen Library at 12:00 noon.

April’s presentation was by conservator and bookbinding designer Gabrielle Fox, who spoke about the artist’s binding she did for an edition of Bobbie Ann Mason’s With Jazz. For May, we will turn to a bit of local history about Cincinnati’s ill-fated subway project of the 1920s.  Engineering snafus, property damage, political finagling, low financing, and a changing transportation culture in the United States all led to the project’s demise.  This topic of special public transportation is particularly timely, given Cincinnati’s current controversial issue of a publically-funded streetcar network for the Over-the-Rhine historic district.   So from the Miami-Erie Canal to subway tunnels to Central Parkway, May’s talk will focus on one way Cincinnatians considered moving about from street to street, neighborhood to neighborhood. Continue reading →

Cincinnati Artists Group Effort Records at the Archives and Rare Books Library

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By Lilia Walsh

Board Members of CAGE, early 1980s: L-R Jim Duesing, Kate Gallion, Suzanne Fisher, Jason Tannen, Tony Walsh, Maureen France, Photo by Brad Smith at Safari Cage in the parking lot by CAGE.

I grew up in Cincinnati and my parents are both photographers. My mother, Maureen France, is a fine art photographer and teaches photography to the graphic design students at DAAP. My father, Tony Walsh, is a freelance photographer who has done work for The Taft Museum, The Art Museum, The Contemporary Art Center, and Midwest Living, as well as numerous individual artists.

Before my brother and I were born, my mother and father were very involved with the art scene in Cincinnati. While the art community here has been unusually vibrant for a long time, it has always been small and highly interconnected. Just as a result of living here and making art they came to know artists, gallery owners, patrons, and curators all over the city. They were very involved with the Cincinnati Artists Group Effort (CAGE). Continue reading →

T. M. Berry Project: The 1949 Election

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By Laura Laugle

It seems that smear campaigns fueled by fictitious rumors are nothing new to politics. Of course, most have known this to be true for quite some time. In fact, politicians in ancient Greece began pulling the proverbial wool about five minutes after the words demos and cratos were combined, but here we have one more piece of evidence to add to the already mountainous pile.

Headline - "Berry Asks $100,000 for Red Tag Continue reading →

Frank Lloyd Wright on Suicide Watch!

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By Kevin Grace

Well, not really.  One of the great things about working with archives is finding a jewel now and then that casts a light on an event or situation, or illuminates more fully the character of someone famous.  The letter you see here provides one of those glimmering moments.  In the Archives & Rare Books Library, we hold the records and documents of the Contemporary Arts Center, a great institution and a prime exhibitor of modern art in the United States.  In fact, it was founded in 1939 as the Modern Art Society, and its exhibitions over the decades have featured groundbreaking and provocative art from Moholy-Nage and the Bauhaus movement to Jasper Johns and Jim Dine.  The controversial showing of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs in 1990 still draws worldwide research and attention. Continue reading →

T. M. Berry Project: 'Stumble upon' Sleuthing

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By Laura Laugle

“Hey, look what I found!” I’ve been saying that an awful lot lately. I can’t help it; I keep coming across interesting and sometimes funny items of historical significance. In the past two weeks I’ve found photos of Berry with Martin Luther King, a letter with an authentic signature from W. E. B. DuBois, photographs of Donald Rumsfeld from 1969, and a frankly terrifying copy of Enquirer Magazine from 1972 which contains both an advertisement for a red shag bedspread and a photo of Burt Reynolds lying on a bearskin rug, clad only in a smile and a strategically placed hand. Luckily for me, not all Telegram to Berry from White Housediscoveries are quite so… errr… revealing. Continue reading →

T. M. BERRY PROJECT: MYSTERY SOLVED!

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Written by Laura Laugle

Click image to see a larger version

Ever since finding the photo below I’ve been attempting to find its origin. As I stated in my previous blog post, Hmmm…, the photo was found in an envelope with other, non-related pictures from the collection. Not too long after posting the picture on the blog, I received a tip from the Berry family that the King photo and the JFK photo I posted along with it may have been taken while Berry was at the White House at the invitation of President Kennedy on June 21, 1963. Looking through Kennedy’s diaries for that time, I found that the meeting Berry attended was specifically for lawyers, so King probably wasn’t present. There was however another meeting listed in Kennedy’s diary for June 22 which Dr. King did attend. It is therefore very possible that Berry and King could have had overlapping visits to the White House and met in that context. Continue reading →

T. M. Berry Project: A Few Words for Sarge and Berry's WWII Service

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Letter from Sargent Shriver

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Written by Laura Laugle, Berry Project Archivist

I’d like to start out this post with a few words for a man with whom Theodore Berry worked closely during his tenure at the Office of Economic Opportunity, R. Sargent Shriver Jr. During the upheaval accompanying the creation of the program and amid controversy over lost memoranda, Shriver stood by his choice of Berry as director of the Community Action Program and continued to be a friend and supporter of Berry’s long after they had both left Washington when President Nixon took office. Shriver was not only the first director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, but was also the first director of the Peace Corps and helped his wife, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, develop and found the Special Olympics in 1968. Shriver died last Tuesday, January 18, 2011 in a Maryland hospital at the age of 95 and was remembered at his funeral on Friday, January 21 by his five children, his nineteen grandchildren and a horde of celebrities and dignitaries from all over the world as a loving family member and friend and a true statesman. Continue reading →

T. M. Berry Project: The UC Connection

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Newspaper Article - "Negro is Winner of Jones Prize"

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By Laura Laugle

Up to now, I have explained to you some (very little actually, but we’ll get there) of what made Berry an important figure. If you’ve been reading regularly, you’ll know that Ted Berry was an attorney, a civil rights activist, a local politician and a key player in “The War on Poverty.” What you would not know, because I have thoughtlessly neglected to tell you, is why he is so important to the University of Cincinnati in particular. The short answer is that he was an alumnus. The complete answer is that he was an important part of UC’s community and he has become part of the University’s history.

While at UC, Berry received many honors, both local and national. Perhaps the most outstanding of which is the Jones Oratorical Prize which he won in 1928 for his speech entitled “The Significance of the Minority.” In that speech Berry, then a senior undergraduate at UC, challenged America “… to live by the principles of the founders of our democracy, and to practice a new ideal of human understanding and fair dealing.” Continue reading →