Time is funny. June 10 was the first day of the Iowa Black History Research Collective’s second internship. The summer seemed vast and never ending. Now it is late July, we have about three weeks left, and students will be back to school in roughly a month.
This summer it has been a tremendous pleasure to host Hayley Carson and Juliana Gaddis as interns. Both are rising fourth year students majoring in Gender, Womens, and Sexuality Studies at Grinnell College. Hayley is pursuing a concentration in Digital Studies and Juliana has extensive coursework in both public health and art history.
In June we had some onboarding, learning about the Agile Framework and how Iowa Black History Research Collective applies Agile to historical research. We refined our resource lists, adding new digital research sites and removing unhelpful links.
Archive research can be a bit of a rollercoaster: you truly never know what you’re going to find. This summer we are researching Maple Street Baptist Church and Bethel AME Church in Des Moines, Iowa, in hopes of gathering sufficient information to submit both properties for state or local historic recognition. Some of the archaic newspaper reporting practices (use of language, printing everyone’s home address) are baffling in 2024. It’s frustrating when Bethel AME Churches from every city but Des Moines pop up in the archives. We’ve concluded that Des Moines Bethel AME is most likely to reveal itself when we’re not looking for it.
Despite frustrations and roadblocks. we’re making good progress in gathering information on both congregations, and we’ve had some time to tackle a few side projects. Hayley prepared and presented training on digital accessibility, which we are in the process of implementing on our website and social media. Juliana has been working through Goldman Sachs Black Womenomics white paper and preparing a series of infographics, as well as adding to our body of knowledge around impactful Black women in Central Iowa. We’ve also been working on a new resources page, which will debut soon.
I’m so proud of all of the work that Hayley and Juliana have accomplished so far this summer!
