On the evening of February 14, 2013 at Barnes & Noble Booksellers in Bowling Green, Kentucky, Dr. John Dizgun, Assistant Director of KIIS, WKU, told WKU and Bowling Green attendees to the WKU Libraries-sponsored talk series Far Away Places about his experiences in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Photo Album | Audio | Podcast
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African American marriage declaration, 1866
Among the many indignities visited upon enslaved African Americans was their disqualification from entering into civil contracts, most notably marriage. Many slaves, nevertheless, performed their own marriage ceremonies in which they pledged themselves to each other as husband and wife.
With emancipation came the freedom to marry and to have the marriage legally recognized. In A History of Blacks in Kentucky, WKU professor Marion B. Lucas writes that “[s]tate laws prohibiting legal marriages for blacks and mulattoes remained in effect until February 14, 1866. Then an 1866 law declared cohabiting blacks legally married and their children legitimate if they paid a fifty-cent fee and recorded with a county clerk their intention to remain husband and wife.”
Exactly 5 months after it became legal to do so, Nancy and Vilindee Beason appeared before the clerk of the Logan County Court and declared that they had lived together and desired to keep living together as husband and wife. Their declaration was duly filed, but like many newly freed slaves, they may have had difficulty paying the extra 25-cent fee required to receive a marriage certificate to take home with them.
A copy of the Beasons’ declaration is part of the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives collections of WKU’s Special Collections Library. Click here to download a finding aid. For more of our collections relating to African Americans, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.
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WKU Libraries honors Black History Month with a display on the fifth floor of Cravens.
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In 1943, World War II was in full swing. U-boats were sinking, London was being bombed, the Trident Conference was taking place, Italy was being liberated by the Allies—and military squadrons were heading to Bowling Green, Kentucky.
Why did so many squadrons come to town? They were using Bowling Green as a part of their troop training. We know that our airport was used for training beginning in 1943. The 11th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron was deployed to the Bowling Green Airport for about four months in 1943 and 1944 and some of the other divisions were probably doing air training as well, though the reasons for a tank division to be deployed here is less clear.
Jim the Pilot
Five military broadsides found in the WKU Archives were apparently made by different squadrons as thank you cards to the citizens of Bowling Green for their hospitality. These broadsides offer some interesting information about soldiers who were about to head off to war. They reveal a sense of humor that underscores the stereotype of the happy-go-lucky, charming, confident American soldier boy. Nicknames like “SNAFU,” “Tough Boy,” and “Toothless” pepper the signatures. Corporal Martin “Snooks” Schnall Jr. is called “Headquarters (Brains of the Outfit)” on one poster. Some posters include references to the battalion’s purpose, like a tank or the outfit’s insignia or a plane, piloted by “Jim,” whose picture has been cut out and pasted into the airplane’s window. [Click on images to enlarge].
Ship
One broadside is a complete mystery, though. Why does it have two ships from different eras passing or a sketch of a dog? Instead of including the signatures of the men in the outfit, there is an illegible inscription at the top and a lot of shorthand at the bottom.
Dog
There are a few other unanswered questions. What brought the tank battalion to town? It was the only part of its division to see engagement; did their training here help them get there and get through? Were hand-drawn posters a typical thank you to towns they visited? And what on earth does this shorthand say?
Shorthand
If you have the answer to these questions or know someone who was attached to any of these squadrons, we would love to hear from you! Please contact archives@wku.edu or leave a comment. Use the links below to take a closer look at the broadsides in TopScholar.
These and other university records are available for researchers to use in the Harrison-Baird Reading Room of the Kentucky Building, Monday-Saturday, 9 to 4.
Blog post written by WKU Archives Assistant Katherine Chappell.
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The Commons at Cravens officially opened Thursday, January 31, with a crowd of more than 200 faculty, staff, students, and community members. Dean Connie Foster officially welcomed the crowd followed by remarks from Provost Gordon Emslie, President Gary A. Ransdell, and graduate student Mark Reeves. The newly renovated Cravens 4th floor space offers a single service desk for research assistance, technology support, and writing center tutoring—all conveniently located across from Circulation Services. Patrons are enjoying the new computer lab access, bistro style chairs overlooking the campus, and the modern chairs and bench tables for both collaborative projects and individual study. For more information about services available at The Commons at Cravens, call 745-6125.
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This month’s book display comes to us from the age of romanticism and mysticism, England’s Victorian Period. The Victorian period, named after Queen Victoria , consists of the years of her reign, from 1827 to 1901. Supplementing the books on display are books on the Gilded Age, in America, which ran concurrent to the latter half of the Victorian era. Despite its reputation for being stodgy and stuffy (in line with Queen Victoria’s own strict personal morality), the Victorian era was actually a period that valued emotion, particularly in artistic and literary works.
Books on Display
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Lieut. Charles L. Taylor, Jr.; Charles L. T. Smith and his children at Taylor’s grave, Netherlands American Cemetery, Margraten (courtesy Charles L. T. Smith)
Among the Hilltoppers who never returned from World War II was Lieutenant Charles Leland Taylor, Jr., son of agriculture professor Charles L. Taylor. When his flying fortress was shot down over Nazi-occupied Holland on July 28, 1943, some of the crew members survived and were captured by the Germans, but Taylor, the pilot, was killed. Rinnie Haadsma, a Dutch woman who lived near the crash site, obtained the names of the victims and wrote to their families after the war with details of the crash and of a local monument honoring their sacrifice.
The story of Haadsma’s letters appeared in Bowling Green’s Park City Daily News, and the article caught the attention of the family of WKU dean Finley Grise, whose son George had served in the Netherlands and befriended a Dutch woman named Mia Kleijnen. The Grises clipped the article about Taylor and later donated it, along with their letters from Mia, to the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives section of WKU’s Special Collections Library.
Fast-forward to today, and to architect Charles Leland Taylor Smith’s search for information about the man after whom he was named. Smith’s father, a neighbor of Lieutenant Taylor, had told him a slightly different story about the pilot, namely that he had survived the crash and was sheltered by the Dutch Underground for some time before dying of his injuries, and that a woman who cared for him had corresponded with his mother or wife. But the death date on Taylor’s grave at Margraten Cemetery–the same day as the crash–seemed to contradict this account.
Through TopSCHOLAR, Smith found out about the Daily News article in the Kleijnen Collection and contacted us. In addition to supplying the article, we were able to provide some further information on Lieutenant Taylor from a collection of clippings about Warren County servicemen maintained by WKU librarians during the war. Those reports confirmed that after Taylor’s plane crashed, there was uncertainty about whether he had died, and his family clung to the hope that he was alive and a prisoner. It was only months later that verification of his death on July 28, 1943 came from the Germans via the Red Cross.
No matter how our collections are discovered, or by whom, we are always glad when something therein helps, as Mr. Smith requested, to “get the story told, and told right.”
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Our New Core Resource for Newspaper Access!
WKU Libraries has added ProQuest Newsstand, a searchable database offering one the of the best full text collections of international, national and regional newspapers, such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Louisville Courier-Journal and the Tennessean.
ProQuest Newstand also provides full-text access to historic issues of the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Tribune. Abstracting and indexing are available for the more than 1,370 newspapers; of these, over 1,270 are full text.
This resource is available through campus computers and off-campus using your WKU NetID and password.
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WKU Libraries is pleased to announce the opening of “The Commons at Cravens” located on the fourth floor of the Cravens Library at Western Kentucky University’s main campus. The Grand Opening will be Thursday, January 31 at 4 pm with remarks at 4:30 pm by the President, Provost, WKU student Mark Reeves, and Dean of Libraries.
“This is an exciting transformation for the Library,” said Connie Foster, Dean of WKU Libraries. “Students can work as a group in one of the collaborative booths, sit at a bistro table overlooking the campus, or just BYOD (bring your own device) and plug into one of the stations at the laptop counter.”
According to Foster, the newly renovated floor offers a single service desk for research assistance, technology support, and writing center tutoring–all conveniently located across from Circulation Services. The space will provide students with more computer access, whiteboards for study, and movable furniture to fit their study needs.
Tiffany Hayes, Project Manager from WKU Planning, Design, and Construction, said the construction began October 1, 2012 on approximately 9,600 square feet of space and was completed January 15, 2013.
“The scope of improvements included new carpet and rubber flooring, fresh paint, vinyl wall covering, a new laptop counter, soffits above circulation and reference desks, and decorative wall panels,” said Hayes. “The furniture company installed new computer workstations, booths, and the reference desk. The existing circulation desk was rearranged.”
“We hope this transformation creates a positive place of possibilities-a place Where Knowledge Unfolds,” said Foster.
For more information on WKU Libraries, go to wku.edu/library.
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