Honoring a Great-Great Legacy
Chantel Harris (l.) at the ceremony honoring her great-great grandmother, Ethel Hedgeman Lyle, who founded the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.
Chantel Harris, library associate and student coordinator at the Paul Robeson Library, Rutgers–Camden, was a special guest at the ceremonial dedication and unveiling of a school bench at Charles Sumner High School in St. Louis, Missouri, in honor of her great-great-grandmother, Ethel Hedgeman Lyle. Lyle was the originator and founder of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated (AKA). Chantel received a proclamation from the mayor of St. Louis, as well as a resolution from the Board of Aldermen naming April 5, 2018 “Ethel Hedgeman Lyle Day.”
Lyle graduated from Sumner High School in 1904 and founded AKA in 1908 at Howard University. Chantel is pictured with the sorority’s international president, Dr. Dorothy Buckhanan Wilson, central regional director Kathy Walker-Steele, and members of the Board of Directors.
The USPS is considering an Ethel Hedgeman Lyle 2019-2020 USPS Forever Postage Stamp.
You can read more here.
Jazz Ambassadors Premieres on PBS May 4
IJS founder Marshall Stearns and Quincy Jones at the Acropolis.
A new PBS documentary featuring archival material from the Institute of Jazz Studies is slated to premiere at 10 p.m. on Friday, May 4. Here’s a quick synopsis from PBS.org:
“The Cold War and civil rights collide in this remarkable story of music, diplomacy and race. Beginning in 1955, when America asked its greatest jazz artists to travel the world as cultural ambassadors, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington and their racially diverse band members faced a painful dilemma: How could they represent a country that still practiced Jim Crow segregation?”
Congratulations to Tad Hershorn, Adriana Cuervo, and all of our IJS colleagues who contributed to this project. We can’t wait to see the premiere!
Special Collections News Roundup
Helene van Rossum’s new children’s book is titled “The Best Mom in the Universe.”
Lots of great news coming out of Special Collections and University Archives lately:
- The finding aid for the New Brunswick Music Scene Archive is now live. The collection continues to grow, and the finding aid will be updated periodically.
- Speaking of which, the New Brunswick Music Scene Archive has a brand new Facebook page! Be sure to head over and give them a like.
- A new finding aid is also available for the New Brunswick Vertical File in the Sinclair New Jersey collection. This collection of primarily printed material documents a vast array of aspects of New Brunswick history, mostly between 1935 and 1960 and arranged by subject. Special thanks go to School of Communication & Information graduate student Louise Lobello for her work on the finding aid.
- The latest children’s picture book by public services and outreach archivist Helene van Rossum has just been published. Written in Dutch, it’s titled The Best Mom in the Universe. Check it out (along with her other children’s books) over on Helene’s blog.
Busting Students’ Stress
New Stressbusters flyer templates are available from the Communications Department.
It’s finals week, which of course means that #STRESSBUSTERS are back at libraries across Rutgers–New Brunswick. But Rutgers–Camden is joining in the fun this semester, too, with the first-ever pet therapy session at Paul Robeson Library slated for Friday, May 4. Good luck to our colleagues at Robeson! Hopefully this is the beginning of a long and successful tradition.
Are you planning your own stress-relieving finals activities? The Communications Department has created new flyer templates to help promote your events. Check them out here: T:\CENTRAL\Templates\Signage Templates\stressbusters\word templates
