Reflection on my time with the Longfellow House – Greening Youth

My journey with the Longfellow House has been an intense experience. The Longfellow House Washington’s Headquarters is a National Historic Site based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. As they approach their 50th anniversary they’ve made a strong commitment to bolster the morale of their site as they continue to transcribe old documentation that is donated, catalog artifacts, and teach the surrounding community about their respective history in context of the United States. My project and offering to my site as I’ve worked remotely has been to transcribe correspondence from Tuskegee and Hampton scholarship recipients, develop profiles of a few individuals that were interesting, and write an article to be published on the National Park Service site in conjunction with the Tuskegee National Historic Site. I am walking in so many steps that have come before me. It sometimes becomes overwhelming emotionally because of the work I am embracing. I spend a lot of time living in the past while also spending an ample amount of time thinking about the future. Transcribing the hundreds of old letters was an initial step to my writing and a necessary one. I needed to see primary sources so I could understand in detail the scope of life in that time period. I have taken careful steps to understand the intention of the United States, the primary educators such as Booker T. Washington and Samuel C. Armstrong, as well the scholarship students that were presented before me. It all became quite extensive fast but this work has been so rewarding. A huge part of why this experience has been a little overwhelming is simply because of the fact that my project is more encompassing than it looks from the surface. The transcribing of hundreds of letters from the late 1800s and early 1900s written by Tuskegee and Hampton constitutes some of the hardest work I have had the opportunity to dive into. Some of these stories are simply chilling considering how relevant they still are. I will serve so many generations of black and indigienous students that I’ve found myself being extremely careful with my research and what I plan to write in my upcoming article for the National Park Service. This has, in part, added to my anxiety a bit. I am having so much fun interacting with this information, it is truly a treat. I have been able to work directly within Tuskegee’s archives alongside their archivists. I spent a few weeks heading into their archives daily scouring during commencement programs, old texts, and articles. I also had the pleasure to just view some interesting artwork I came into contact with, talk to fellow researchers who had been working on their own projects, and I learned groundbreaking information for myself and also my team at the Longfellow House. Hampton Archives has done extensive work with me remotely as well. Donzella Maupin and her team were integral in helping me bring the Hampton portion of my project together. I was in communication with their team for a few weeks developing several exchanges of biographical information and articles. I actually have a few copies of their famed school article, the Southern Workman. I have also had the pleasure of being assisted with the editing of my article by Thomas Kaufmann of the Wilcox C library at Tuskegee. I often brag to my friends about having this access because in our own way we’ve all studied the history of Tuskegee as we’ve matriculated through and interacted with it. To be quite honest, I hold much more reverence for my institution’s history, its mission and vision, and the people that inhabit it and interact with it daily. Without these institutions, I think I say confidently there would have been critical defecture in society considering the lapses in teaching of BIPOC history at the federal level. I think it’s imperative to focus on our future but we can not build it properly without acknowledging our past.

By Will Baker