The 24th General Hospital, commonly known as the “Tulane Unit” was composed of personnel from the Tulane School of Medicine and was activated in July 1942. Colonel Walter C. Royals (Tulane SOM, 1917) was the commanding officer of the Unit. Thirty Tulane medical graduates and ten Tulane faculty members were included in the complement of forty-two medical doctors. The unit served: Fort Benning (July 15, 1942 to August 8, 1943); Bizerte, Tunisia (September 8, 1943 to May 31, 1944); Grosseto, Italy (July 21, 1944 to September 15, 1944); Army headquarters near Florence, Italy (September 21, 1944- ) and Livorno, Italy (June 1, 1945 to June 11, 1945). The 24th General Hospital Unit received the Fifth Army Plaque and Clasp for meritorious service with the Fifth Army. In the First World War Tulane also sponsored a medical unit organized by Dr. Rudolph Matas.
S.Harvey Colvin. 24th General Hospital negative collection: Digitized negatives from the Colvin collection from the 24th General Hospital, World War II have been added to the digital collections of Tulane (funded by the History of Medicine Society). The collection includes 134 scanned (.tiff) negatives taken of the 24th General Hospital (United States. Army). The sites were visited by Colonel Samuel Harvey Colvin, Jr., M.D. The negatives were a gift of Melba Colvin, 1989.
The Rudolph Matas Library of the Health Sciences has other collections related to the 24th General Hospital in WWII as part of the historic collections, such as the Col. Walter C. Royals, MD photo album and the memorabilia collections of Lt. Col. John J. Archinard, Claudia Weaver Archinard and Dr. Edward Des. Matthews.
This digital collection is drawn from the Robert S. and Lillie Mae Green collection of photography and small gauge films. Robert Green was an amateur photographer in New Orleans. His home movies depict aspects of African American life in New Orleans in the 1950s to 1970s. The Carnival films in the collection record the rich tradition of Carnival costuming and performance integral to the fabric of New Orleans life.
The three films selected for this digital exhibition were preserved and digitized with two grants from the National Film Preservation Foundation. They feature images of balls and parades organized by New Orleans carnival clubs in the 1950s and 1960s. These home movies are rare visual records of private African American balls, which are traditionally closed to non-members. Intriguing themes like “Satan’s Inferno” and “Symphony Variations” provide a lively backdrop to the vintage costumes. Carnival royalty is presented ceremoniously to the hall. Louis Jordan’s band performs silently, and dancing, costumed audience members pose for camera.
A portion of one of the films depicts a parade, with a marching band and costumed youngsters riding floats. The parade appears to have been organized by the African American Catholic lay organization Knights of Peter Claver (one float carries a banner which reads “Krewe of Klaver”). The hosting organizations of the balls depicted in the 1950s films have not been identified, although they may be the Bon Temps organization, portrayed in the 1960s film.
The America at War digital collection includes a significant number of artifacts contributed by members of the Teaching American History in Louisiana (TAHIL) partnership. TAHIL providers include the Louisiana State Archives, Louisiana State Museum, The Historic New Orleans Collection and Tulane University Library Special Collections.
This collection contains the materials from Tulane University Library Special Collection. To view all of the material in this collaborative project, please click here: America at War (louisiana Digital Library)
This digital collection, funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, includes more than 3000 photographs of the activities of and related to the American Missionary Association from the late nineteenth century through the mid twentieth century. Photographers working with the American Missionary Association traveled through urban and rural communities within the continental United States of America, as well as to foreign lands, to visually record the environments and people who lived within them. The photographs document the experiences and lives of various ethnic groups of the world. They provide visual support to the textual documents of the American Missionary Association archives, housed at the Amistad Research Center.
The Andrew Young Oral History Collection encompasses 50 individual interviews conducted from 1980 to 1985 as part of writer and oral historian Tom Dent's research on his childhood friend, activist, congressman, and ambassador Andrew Young. As early as 1979, Dent was conducting research toward the autobiography of Young, though he wasn't officially hired as a consultant until 1981 to 1982 and continued to work on the book until 1986. Dent traveled to Atlanta, Georgia, to conduct a series of interviews with Young, then researched New Orleans and civil rights era history for the draft of the book, with the working title "An Easy Burden." The Young interviews provide a firsthand account of the events, leadership, and various campaigns of the Civil Rights Movement, as well as Young's childhood, work in the National Council of Churches, as a Congressman from Georgia, and United Nations Ambassador. The interviews provide numerous portraits of the SCLC leadership and civil rights workers including Hosea Williams, Ralph Abernathy, Wyatt Walker, Fannie Lou Hamer, Randolph Blackwell, Dorothy Cotton, Stan Levinson and of course Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The events and campaigns of the Civil Rights Movement are detailed for St. Augustine (Florida), Albany (Georgia), Selma (Alabama) and the Voting Rights Campaign, the Chicago Movement, and the Meredith March. Young provides detailed accounts of the FBI's harassment of Martin Luther King and SCLC staff, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis in 1968, and comments on what Young believes were the factors that produced the Civil Rights Movement of the sixties. Additional topics within the interviews include the Poor People's Campaign, the Vietnam Peace Movement, Young's Congressional Campaign and work as the UN Ambassador to Africa. Additional interviews within the oral history collection include interviews with Young's wife, Jean Childs Young, Dorothy Cotton, and Stoney Cooks.
"The Architect's Eye" incorporates highlights from the Southeastern Architectural Archive, the largest repository of architectural records in the southern United States. Selected drawings illustrate nineteenth-century architecture as practiced by the Crescent City's leading designers, many of whom were educated in Europe. Building types include residences, commercial and institutional buildings. Selected drawings hint at the ways in which architectural drafting techniques separated the specialist from the layman. In an era of increasing professionalization, one's ability to render the third dimension on a two-dimensional surface elevated the socioeconomic level of one's clientele and the scale of one's commissioned projects. The collection represents some of the most accomplished architectural designs produced in nineteenth-century New Orleans.
Black Natchez (1967) charts early attempts to organize and register Black voters and the formation of a self defense group in the Black community. In 1965, filmmaker Ed Pincus and David Neuman spent ten weeks in Natchez, Mississippi, filming the lives of ordinary people with unedited coverage of public and private civil rights organizational meetings, street demonstrations, and contests of power between young militants and the old guard, as well as secret meetings of African American self-defense organizations and interaction among the Black community. During this period, George Metcalfe, the recently elected president of the local branch of the NAACP, was bombed in his car leaving his job at the Armstong Tire Plant. In the week that followed, the African American community, along with local and national civil rights activists, gathered to address the problem. Pincus captured the fallout and general public sentiment following the event. The film is a genuine, often candid, portrayal of a community in a time of turmoil. At times, Pincus and his partner Neuman, turn the camera on an individual and interview him. Interviewees range from prominent civil rights leaders, including Charles Evers, to more representative residents, and they are asked to express their thoughts and feelings about racial tensions and violence in the city. The film also chronicles the tensions between the NAACP and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, both of which were operating in Natchez.
Access to this film is restricted. Please contact the Amistad Research Center (http://www.amistadresearchcenter.org) to request permission.
The Southeastern Architectural Archive, Tulane University Libraries, is home to the Walter Cook Keenan New Orleans Photographs Collection numbering over 3,000 images. Walter Cook Keenan (1881-1970), the first architect of the Vieux Carré Commission (VCC) and a lifelong member of the Audubon Park Commission, took the photographs in order to document changes to the built environment. In 2013, the Tulane Digital Library undertook to digitize the portion of the collection focused on historic Bourbon Street.
The online Carnival Collection currently features more than 5,500 original float and costume designs. Most are from Carnival’s “Golden Age” (the 1870s through the 1940s) with about three hundred designs from 1950 to 1970. The great majority of designs are from the Carnival krewes of Comus and Proteus, with Rex and Momus also represented. Included are artworks from many of Carnival’s most noted designers, including Jennie Wilde, Bror Anders Wikstrom, and Charles Briton.
The Louisiana Research Collection (LaRC) preserves possibly the largest collection of New Orleans Carnival paper items. LaRC’s collection represents more than two hundred krewes and spans the founding of Carnival in New Orleans to the present. The LaRC Carnival Collection is available in the Schiro Reading Room. We will continually expand the online collection to include more contemporary designs along with invitations, dance cards, table cards, and other printed Carnival items.
We depend on donations to keep our collection current. Please contact us if you have krewe invitations, dance cards, minutes, or other paper krewe materials, or if you would like to discuss how we can help you permanently preserve the records of your krewe. For more information please visit the LaRC website.
Support for the LaRC Carnival Collection comes in part from the continuing generosity of Charles L. "Pie" Dufour (1903-1996), who bequeathed to the Louisiana Research Collection funds for preserving the contributions of Carnival to Louisiana's culture. Digitization of this collection was made possible by the generous support of the Office of the Provost, Tulane University.
The Center for Engaged Learning and Teaching Research Showcase collection features the individual research projects and supplemental materials produced by CELT Fellows, Tulane students and faculty-mentors. This project documents research projects from between the years 2015 through 2017. The collection will grow to include new projects in future years to come. Research areas highlighted in this collection include the sciences and the humanities as well as inter-disciplinary projects.
CELT collection materials consists of posters, photos, extended abstracts, papers, and data collected from CELT-funded research projects. All of the individuals who participated in submitting work and supplemental materials have agreed to have their materials hosted online, through social media, and through the Library Web site as an exhibition.
The history of Charity Hospital in New Orleans, Louisiana begins on May 10, 1736. On that date, the first Charity Hospital, funded by the estate of shipbuilder Jean Louis, opened in a house on Chartres and Bienville Streets in the historic French Quarter to serve the city's poor and indigent population. Since that time, Charity Hospital has moved from location to location around the city due to fire, flood, and politics. Charity Hospital's last location, the 1939 Art-Deco style complex located on Tulane Avenue in New Orleans, Louisiana, has remained unused since Hurricane Katrina in August of 2005. The responsibility of Charity Hospital was assumed by the State of Louisiana on March 17, 1813, almost one year after Louisiana was granted statehood in 1812.
Charity Hospital produced regular reports for the state government of Louisiana titled Report(s) of the Board of Administrators of the Charity Hospital to the General Assembly of Louisiana, also known as the Charity Hospital Reports. Published from 1842 to 1974, these reports are vital to Louisiana's social and medical history and include information not widely available from the nineteenth century. The Charity Hospital Reports include public health information on morbidity and mortality (including information on the yellow fever epidemics in New Orleans), venereal disease issues, disease incidence, vital statistics, and hospital administration. The reports also have information on the governance and financing of the hospital. Medical milestones and memorials are sometimes included. The reported information varies from year to year, but generally there is a report to the legislature with a statistical report of the diseases treated in the hospital. Names of administrators, physicians, surgeons, residents, interns, and donors to the hospital are included in most reports. Most of the Charity Hospital Reports were published in English, but some early reports were also published in French. The 1853 and 1856 Reports are the only years scanned in the French version.
The Charity Hospital Reports Collection is a valuable historic tool for researchers with a wide range of interests from medical history to the importance of Charity Hospital as both a social and cultural institution in the New Orleans area. All of the reports were published as documents of the State of Louisiana and therefore are in the public domain. The John P. Isché Library at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in New Orleans supplemented the Rudolph Matas Library content by providing replacement copies for scanning as needed to replace damaged or missing content. The documents are available as .pdf documents with the text fully searchable. Every attempt has been made to make these documents accessible according to guidelines and standards for Section 508.
The Charity Hospital Reports have been digitized by the Rudolph Matas Library of the Health Sciences of Tulane University under a NLM grant awarded August 2010-June 2011 for a project titled: Early Medical Journalism of Louisiana, A pilot project for the preservation and sharing of Nineteenth Century Medical Publications of Louisiana [National Library of Medicine (NLM) Prime Contract No. N01-LM-6-3505; HHSN276200663505C]. See also the Matas Library website: Tulane and Charity Hospital: http://matas.tulane.edu/about/tulaneandcharity For more information on the history of Charity Hospital: Matas, Rudolph, and John Duffy. The Rudolph Matas History of Medicine in Louisiana. Baton Rouge: Published for the Rudolph Matas Trust Fund by Louisiana State University Press, 1958. Salvaggio, John E. New Orleans' Charity Hospital: A Story of Physicians, Politics, and Poverty. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992.
The collection consists of gelatin silver prints made by New Orleans photographer Howard 'Cole' Coleman (1883-1969) and donated to Tulane University in memory of his wife, Thelma Hecht Coleman. Most images represent Coleman's professional work in Louisiana; a smaller number consists of copy-stand images taken from historic documents. Most predate his wife's death in August 1963.
In 1926, former school teacher and newspaper publisher O.C.W. (Orlando Capitola Ward) Taylor published a 28-page souvenir booklet dedicated "to the Progress of the Colored Citizens of New Orleans, Louisiana, "America's Most Interesting City." The Crescent City Pictorial was designed by O.T. Griffin and featured the photography of Villard Paddio. This largely visual publication featured images of African American homes, businesses, schools, churches, and social organizations, and serves as one of the best visual documents of African American life in early 20th century New Orleans.
Businesses include the United Industrial Life Insurance Company, Carr and Llopis Undertakers, Dorsey's Valeteria, Flint-Goodridge Hospital, Geddes and Moss Undertaking and Embalming, George D. Geddes Co. Morticians, Astoria Hotel and Restaurant, as well as various pharmacies, photography studios, and mercantile companies. Social organizations, such as the San Jacinto Club, People's Community Center, Pythian Temple, Autocrat Social and Pleasure Club, and Lions Club are also featured, as well as various schools, including New Orleans College, Xavier University, Straight College, and elementary and secondary schools.
For more information, please visit the Amistad Research Center's website: (http://www.amistadresearchcenter.org/).
Distaff was the first and only women’s newspaper published in New Orleans. Founded in 1972 by Mary Gehmann, Distaff served as a forum for women’s voices in politics, activism and the arts. One of the few newspapers published by and for women in the Gulf South, Distaff covered a wide range of topics and issues, including reproductive rights, pay equity and women’s rights in the workplace, lesbian activism, the Equal Rights Amendment, literature and the arts, and women in politics. The early issues were edited and produced by a coalition of New Orleans women known for their activism in political spheres. Mary Gehmann, Loraine Despres, and Celeste Newbrough served as editors; Clay Latimer, Jackie Langhoff, Bev Overton, Melanie Owen, Phoebe Walmsley, Roseanne Fayard, and Virgina Peyton worked on copy and production. A preview issue of Distaff was published in 1973 and the newspaper continued to be published until 1982. There was a hiatus in publication from 1976-1978.
"Early Images of Latin America" provides over 1,800 images from the Latin American Library’s Image Archive documenting people, places, landscapes, urban and rural scenes in various countries of the region from the mid-19th century to c. 1910. Images come from an array of sources, such as promotional albums compiled as travel souvenirs for tourists, studio portraits, personal photographic albums, glass lantern slides and stereoscopic images, as well as images captured by professional and amateur photographers. The geographic scope of the collection includes Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Cuba, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Panama, Peru, and Uruguay, with particular focus on the cities of Buenos Aires, Havana, Lima, Mexico City, Montevideo, Rio de Janeiro, San José de Costa Rica, and Tegucigalpa.
The collection features a variety of urban inhabitants and street scenes, waterfronts, botanical parks, and city architecture and landmarks. Rural views capture the production of coffee, bananas, tobacco, and sugar in haciendas and estancias, along with some portraits of local indigenous people, rural laborers, gauchos, and peasants. A selection from Panama highlights early phases of the construction of the Panama Canal and the daily life of people living and working along the Canal Zone. Included are several collections by some of the region's earliest and most prominent photographers such as Marc Ferrez, Courret y Hermanos, Abel Briquet, Sanfred Robinson, Antíoco Cruces y Luis Campa, Arturo W. Boote and Cía. among others.
Descripción
La colección “Early Images of Latin America” [“Primeras Imágenes de Latinoamérica”] ofrece un panorama documental fascinante de la vida moderna en las ciudades y sectores rurales de Latinoamérica desde mediados del siglo diecinueve hasta aproximadamente 1910. La colección cuenta con más de 1.800 imágenes del archivo fotográfico de la Biblioteca Latinoamérica de la Universidad de Tulane seleccionadas en torno a varias temáticas tales como transporte fluvial, marítimo y terrestre, turismo, producción agrícola, arte y arquitectura, industrialización, vida cotidiana en centros urbanos, jardines botánicos y parques, paisajes de la naturaleza, inmigración, y el canal de Panamá. Las imágenes provienen de una variedad de fuentes tales como álbumes de fotos comerciales de promoción, álbumes de familia y personales, retratos, placas de linterna e imágenes estereoscópicas. Las imágenes han sido tomadas por fotógrafos profesionales así como aficionados. Geográficamente, la colección abarca gran parte de la región. Aparecen representados Argentina, Brasil, Costa Rica, Cuba, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, México, Panamá, Perú, y Uruguay, con enfoque especial en las ciudades de Buenos Aires, Habana, Lima, México D.F., Montevideo, Rio de Janeiro, San José de Costa Rica, y Tegucigalpa.
Entre las imágenes se encuentran vistas de ciudades y de sus habitantes, escenas costeras y portuarias, así como vistas de parques, estructuras arquitectónicas, y monumentos. Los panoramas rurales captan escenas de la producción de varios alimentos tales como café, banano, azúcar, y tabaco en haciendas y estancias además de retratos de indígenas de varias regiones, labradores, gauchos, y agricultores. Se incluye también un grupo de imágenes que captan las fases iniciales de la construcción del Canal de Panamá y la vida cotidiana de las familias que vivían y trabajaban en la zona del canal. Entre los fotógrafos se destacan algunos de los pioneros y de mayor renombre en la región, tales como Marc Ferrez, Courret y Hermanos, Abel Briquet, Sanfred Robinson, Antíoco Cruces y Luis Campa, Arturo W. Boote and Cía., entre otros.
Free People of Color - Materials contributed by Tulane University Special Collections to the main Free People of Color that is hosted by the Louisiana Digital Library. The entire Free People of Color project is located here: http://www.louisianadigitallibrary.org/islandora/object/fpoc-p16313coll51%3Acollection
This project brings together materials from LSU Libraries Special Collections, The Historic New Orleans Collection, the Louisiana Research Collection in Tulane University Special Collections, the Historical Center at the Louisiana State Museum, and the Louisiana Division of the New Orleans Public Library. In Digitizing, these records allow us to reunite collections from the same families that were divided across repositories as well as scattered documents, making these materials accessible in one place for the use of historians, genealogists, students, teachers, and the general public.
Digitized collections include entire collections of papers from families or individuals that were free people of color. Many of these extend, chronologically, beyond the end of slavery. Being a free person of color ceased to have legal meaning after emancipation and the passage of the 13th Amendment, but having been a member of that class continued to have cultural, racial, social, economic, and political implications for those who had been free people of color in the antebellum period, and for generations of their descendants. For this reason, we have chosen to digitize entire collections and not set an arbitrary cut-off date for materials.
Because of the relative dearth lack of personal and family papers for free people of color, public records are a particularly important source for researchers. This project will digitize significant collections of public records from the New Orleans Public Library's Louisiana Division, including a four-volume "Register of free persons of color entitled to remain in the state" (1840-1864), four different collections of emancipation records, which often include testimony regarding why the slave was deserving of freedom and provide other information about the slave and slave owner, and an extensive collection of indenture records (1809-1843) in which at least one participant (the person being indentured, his/her sponsor, or the artisan/merchant to whom the servant was being bound) was a free person of color.
Finally, many items have been selected for digitization from larger collections that are not primarily related to free people of color. Bringing these items together from the disparate collections in which they exist will facilitate comparison and help to provide a larger body of information for researchers about the norms of living conditions and race relations for free people of color during the colonial and antebellum eras.
Get more information about this project See the complete annotated list of the selected collections, including links to finding aids when available
Louisiana documents from 1655 to 1924 with a strong emphasis on the French colonial, Spanish colonial, and early national periods. Includes correspondence, land sales, slave sales, plantation journals, business licenses, property sales, professional and family papers, legal documents, land grants, tax receipts, theater programs, broadsides, engravings, and more. A noted Louisiana document collector, Felix Kuntz (1890-1971) donated his collection to Tulane University in four installments beginning in 1954 and requested that it be named after his parents. Today, the Rosemond E. and Emile Kuntz Collection (LaRC Manuscripts Collection 600) is a renowned resource for studying Louisiana with a special emphasis on New Orleans. Particularly noteworthy are records from the Company of the Indies, papers of Francisco Bouligny describing early French and Spanish authority over Louisiana, documents spanning Louisiana's entry into the United States through the Civil War and New Orleans? growth as a major commercial center, New Orleans municipal records (1805-1850s, including an 1805 census), and several small personal and family collections such as those of John McDonogh, the Pontalba family, and the Pierson family.
This digital collection is comprised of audio recordings of seventy-nine folktales recorded by Calvin Claudel in Avoyelles Parish in the 1940s.
All recordings are by persons who were natives of Avoyelles Parish and were bilingual in French and English. Claudel had a special interest in magic tales and numbskull tales (about the humorous misadventures of fools) and sought to demonstrate a connection between Louisiana and French folk traditions.
According to Thomas Klingler, Associate Professor of French, the recordings “are a treasure trove for linguistic studies that give us a rare window onto Louisiana French from over 70 years ago.” Barry Jean Ancelet, folklorist and emeritus Granger & Debaillon Endowed Professor in Francophone Studies at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette, said the collection is “an important one in the history of Louisiana French oral tradition studies.”
A folklorist and professor of romance languages, Calvin Andre Claudel (1916-1988) was born in Avoyelles Parish. He completed his dissertation, “A Study of Louisiana French Folktales in Avoyelles Parish,” at the University of North Carolina in 1948. He used Presto recording equipment to record the interviews. Presto was an instantaneous recording technique using aluminum plates coated with a cellulose nitrate based lacquer. LaRC sent the plates to an audio conservator in Philadelphia who created the archival digital files that are now available online.
