Who is free to vote

Reading The First Emancipator by Andrew Levy [F229 .C34 L48 2005] has made me wonder a bit about what I really know concerning black history. The concluding sentence of the introduction intrigues me - "The mystery of Robert Carter, then is really two mysteries: why he freed his slaves, and why we couldn't care less."

I went to GALILEO, selected Databases A-Z, selected show all and began to scroll through, looking for a database that might tell me more about emancipation. The Annals of American History which
includes the full text of primary documents in American history, including historical accounts, speeches, memoirs, poems, editorials, landmark court decisions, and cultural criticism seemed like a great place to start.

Searching for emancipation brought up 100 articles. The difficulty with using this database is I can't see how to sort the articles by time/date, author, title, or something. I just get a list of articles. The Help menu notes there should be a Sort By link - I'm not seeing that option after the results come up from a search.

Letting serendipity guide me by scrolling through I noticed an article that refers to African Americans right to vote in Pennsylvania being denied in 1838 ["Appeal of Forty Thousand African Americans, Threatened with Disfranchisement"].
The document is quite clear- African Americans had been voting in Pennsylvania since the Revolution- not all blacks, not everywhere in Pennsylvania but enough to warrant a protest with 40,000 people. Free blacks voting in a northern state prior to the Civil War. Why don't we know about this?

A Google search on Black voting rights turned up the 15th Amendment and the Voting Rights Act and an ACLU voting rights timeline. None of these sites noted blacks voting in
Pennsylvania pre-1838. This article from the Historical Society of Pensylvania shed a bit of light on who was voting and what happened in 1838.

I did get distracted didn't I? Started out looking for emancipation- ended up with voting.

Following a trail can lead you to a destination unthought of- get the password to use GALILEO at home from your Georgia librarian.


-kls

The First Emanicpator

[F 229 .C34 L 48 2005]

Black History month is a time set apart to emphasize the contributions of African Americans. There have been Caucasians who assisted African Americans on the long road to being freely integrated in society. Andrew Levy wrote a biography of one Caucasian who put words into action at a time in our countries history when the words of liberty were frequently used. Robert Carter, a Virginia Planter, Founding Father of the United States, and neighbor to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, freed his slaves in 1791. Mr. Levy pieces together the path Robert Carter took to doing something others said would be nice but they just couldn't do right then.

A search in GALILEO using the basic search tab and typing The First Emancipator as a Keyword search, turned up several reviews of the book including this review from Journal of Southern History.

You may get the password to use GALILEO at home from your Georgia librarian.

-kls

Slave Narratives

My co-worker attended an Ancestry.com webinar. She was sharing a feature I wasn't aware of- the slave narratives.

go to GALILEO.
..select Databases A-Z.
....select A.
......Ancestry.com (only available on campus).
Click the Search tab (middle tab).
Notice on the right side- a column with Browse records.
Scroll down to Stories and Publications.
Select Slave Narratives.

Now here's where the fun begins! See Type and Location?
Click on the drop down box under type - here are wonderful options from Famous Personalities to War stories! You may limit your search to a specific state.

Keep in mind that the stories told by the former slaves were collected by the Works Project Administration. Federal Writers Project. Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves. Washington, D.C.: n.p., n.d. in the 1930's. The people telling the stories and remembering would have been over 70 years old.

This is a wonderful resource to use with students during Black History month. Ancestry.com is only available on campus but it's available through any computer on campus!

A caveat- I searched for Lincoln as a surname, limited the search to Georgia and Lincoln county came up in the results.


-kls

Only the Shadow Knows!

Today is Groundhog Day. The day men in fancy dress disturb Punxsutawney Phils rest to see if spring will come soon to the north east!

For fast news:
GALILEO.
..Databases A-Z.
....L.
.....LexisNexis.
Search for groundhog.
Limit to previous week and newswire services.

LexisNexis has posted multiple articles from the AP wire (8:45am, 2 Feb 2010).

Meanwhile in Lilburn, Georgia General Beauregard Lee noted:

It's an early spring! Beau did NOT see his shadow when he emerged at 7:35a in rainy, 40 degree weather

Georgians are looking forward to living into the truth of Gen. Beau Lee, Ph.D's forecast!

-kls


For those too young to remember, the title refers to the classic mystery, The Shadow!

Grammy

The 52nd Grammy awards were given out on January 31. The official award site has a cornucopia of information about winners past and present!

GALILEO has resources that will offer a different perspective than the industry promotes. I started my quest with
Browse by Subject
...Arts and Humanities
.....Music.
I was disappointed in the search options. I was offered Academic Search Complete and Research Library with GIL and Encyclopedia Britannica as the Show More Options. I thought there might be something more musical in the list.

I went to the Basic GALILEO Search tab at the far right.
I typed in Grammy Awards
...Selected full text
......Selected 2010 only
Clicked on Show More Options which allowed me to add Newspaper Sources and ProQuest Newspapers (though I can not add Lexis Nexis or NewsBank) to the Basic Search alongside Academic Search Complete and Research Library .

Voila- enough articles to satisfy my curiosity about what happened and why!

Interesting to see that Research Library and ProQuest Newspapers offered more stories dated February 1 than the others!

You may get the password to use GALILEO from your Georgia librarian.


-kls

Full Moon Names

Saturday you experienced the Full Wolf Moon. This is the old Native American name for the full moon of January. Lacking formal calendars, some Native American tribes attached names to the full moon for each month as a way of marking the seasons. January is the Full Wolf Moon due to the packs of wolves that were often found near villages during the cold months. You can read more about the various moon names here.

JF