Week of May 19th 2017

The first week of the internship at the Jones High School History Museum though initially unclear was clarified by a meeting between one of the project leaders Dr. Robert Cassanello and the participants of the internship. An initial itinerary for our work with the Jones High Museum was provided, this included projects which could be worked on immediately such as an in depth written history of Jones High and short biographies of notable alumni.

 The meeting while allocating biographies and histories also discussed other aspects such as organization and investigation of the contents in the museum. Though delayed by the change in Administration of the Public School which houses the museum, the project leaders as well as the internship participants attended a meeting on Friday May 19th at Jones High School  which allowed the students to meet the administration of the school as well as the powerful alumni association which would provide access to the Jones High Museum. The team was provided a period in the beginning of the meeting to introduce ourselves as well as the projects we are associated with around the school and the area. The meeting allowed for glimpses into what the school was like and provided access to the Jones High School History Museum for a short while.

 The Jones High School visit was aided by the connections made in the community and within the school through the connected “Marching Forward” documentary project, which both Oswmer and myself are involved in heavily.  The Jones High Museum visit also provided the opportunity to get the local legend James “Chief” Wilson, as well as his former student, friend, and fellow musician Ernest “Pete” Boyd in the museum to comment on artifacts which they helped to preserve in the museum. We were also able to film this commentary for the upcoming “Marching Forward” film, though not directly related to the internship the film allows for a deeper understanding with the school and history as well as forging connections within the museum and school.

 In addition to the Jones High school and museum, I was also able to attend a Board of Trustees meeting at the University of Central Florida, where I was able to present the poster created for the “Marching Forward” documentary. The presentation provided for the opportunity to bring awareness not only to the feature length documentary on Jones High, but also of the outreach by the College of Arts and Humanities in the Parramore neighborhood. This message was extremely well received at the meeting and drew quite a number of interested individuals including members of the UCF Board of Trustees, Orlando Health executives, and individuals associated with marketing at the university. The event provided an opportunity to speak about the internship as well as the museum in general providing an interest by the UCF community in the ongoing projects.

In the following week I expect to get a good basis for the writing of the history of Jones High School, which will be used by future members of the Jones High Museum to provide a concise and informative basis for educational outreach by the museum. To start the research I am hoping to read into the education of African American schools in America, as well as honing in on the local African American history of Orlando through the Orlando Sentinel, specifically highlighting the “pink or green pages” which was the weekly pamphlet for African Americans in the publication before the integration of Orlando.

The Week of June 23rd

This week saw the finalization of the history of Jones High. As well as completing work which would enable the information collected during the internship to be used by others after the internship ends. The history written will hopefully provide a basis for understanding the significance of the school for those who will hopefully be providing visitors to the Jones High Museum with an educational experience.

The Week of June 16th

This week the group worked multiple times on the actual archiving and organization of the Jones High Museum. This visit to the Jones High Museum enabled us to work for hours on the museum and provided many worthwhile artifacts for the museum, the archive, as well as the educational material being produced by the student interns. Monday saw three hours of individual work by myself in taking photos and digitizing material within the museum, this was done using a flatbed scanner which was checked out of the University of Central Florida library on the main campus through the extremely valuable LibTech program.

Though working solo for the duration of the museum visit on Monday, I was able to add many items to the archive list which enabled for a measurable start on the archiving of the material within the museum on display. Due to covering much of the on display material in the artifacts lists on Monday, Oswmer and myself were able to dig a bit deeper into the Jones High artifacts when we returned to the museum on Thursday.

With Oswmer continuing work on the filing cabinet which contained information on alumni at Jones as well as the Centennial which occurred in 1995, and myself working in the corner titled the “Resource Center.” This corner though small and cluttered contained a plethora of artifacts many of which were recognized as being extremely valuable and some to be worthy only for the garbage bin. It seems for every collected commencement pamphlet and 16mm film of the band there was an outdated Windows software manual or a cheesy band sales film which had not withstood the test of time, deteriorating and smelling of ammonia.

Despite the clutter of the stored items in the corner which at one time had use yet are now deteriorating, there are glimpses into the history of Jones High  through the organization and the archives being created through this internship. Hopefully through such work the internship students can create an educational opportunity for those students at Jones who have come by and expressed interest to take charge in the history of their community. Such opportunity will hopefully be begun through the history and information on alumni of Jones High being worked on currently by myself and Oswmer. Though there are valuable resources in the museum which outline these aspects it seems there are many artifacts which only seem to tell the full story until other artifacts come up with extra information or seem to be more comprehensive.

At the moment it is unclear when we will be able to return to the Jones History Museum to continue our work due to the community nature of the museum. We have been fortunate enough to have extremely strong support from both the Jones High faculty and staff as well as the Jones High Alumni association, which has enabled the students and a professor to enter the museum to conduct work. We are currently working on the history and alumni list which have both been significantly aided by this weeks work in the museum, as well as waiting for information from the Alumni Association on someone who could schedule visits with us to the museum.

 

The Week of June 9th

This week saw the first actual visit to the Jones High Museum. Though our time there was fairly brief we were able to dive into the archives as well as the formation of an organizational structure and the beginnings of a archived list of artifacts at the museum. Currently the archived list includes columns with identifying features such as the name of the artifact, a given ID number, as well as a collection designation, space for the identification of dates or date ranges related to the artifact, and additional data which can hopefully be translated to provide a level of metadata. This allows for the creation of online archives or the inclusion of this archive into resources which are already up and running within the University of Central Florida such as RICHES. At the moment all the information pertaining to the Jones High Museum Internship is located in online repositories which are backed up through the cloud. Although this information is expected to be published online for the general public it is set to private views in the current state as the project is still in progress an is largely incomplete.

If anybody wishes to see the data archived the storage format currently being used by the internship team is the Google family of business tools such as the Drive, our archive currently resides on the Google Sheets program, while the key for the identification of collection locations is formatted in the Google Docs program. As the project is part of an ongoing body of work by the students, the material regarding the internship is housed in a Google account which is dedicated to the “Marching Forward” documentary project. This account provides a stable platform which not only houses the files but also makes such files available to the individuals who would find this information useful even in the unfinished state. The use of Google and the cloud based storage and functionality can be perfectly tailored for use in public history as the suite of business tools akin to Microsoft Word provides the resources needed to produce high quality work which can be duplicated and edited. This provides for both the dissemination as well as professionalism needed by a field which requires the production of history related documents as well as conveying such work to a community which is heavily invested in the history being presented. The platform also enables the ability to add new viewers and editors on the fly, as well as an easily maintained calendar and address book which allows for the coordination of a schedule and contacts at the museum for the team members involved.

 

In addition to the trip to the Jones High History Museum I continued my work in the creation of a comprehensive history of Jones High, as well as attended meetings both with the supervisor to the project Dr. Cassanello and Dr. Lester. The meeting with Dr. Lester provided valuable insight into the philosophy of archiving material allowing for the information needed to format an approach to archiving the museum.

Week of June 2nd 2017

This week consisted of more of the research needed to complete the brief history of Jones High School being compiled. Instead of focusing on the route of direct historical analysis of the schools history as was undertaken last week, this week saw the analysis of African American education in general, especially in the South. Though not directly related to the happenings at Jones High School, performing research on the African American schooling within the South provides for a top down understanding of the position Jones High School had within not only the community of Parramore and Orlando, but also within the scope of the general educational landscape of the United States throughout history. As the history of Jones High being written is aimed at the possibility of being used as a basis for knowledge for volunteers and even students who will translate the knowledge to others, a conscious effort is being made to include information which not only approaches a concept of local history but also simply proposes the significance of the Jones High School legacy in a national sense.

In addition to working on the history and timeline of Jones High, this week saw meetings associated with establishing the schedule and logistics of the actual internship on site at the Jones High Museum, as well as a film screening of our documentary “Marching Forward” at the University of Central Florida’s “Center for Emerging Media.” This screening brought out a good number of people both associated with Jones High School as well as the University of Central Florida to present the documentary being produced on the Jones High 1964 World’s Fair trip, as well as presenting the internship and the goals of the project to those in attendance. This event provided the opportunity to demonstrate the work the College of Arts and Humanities has been producing in conjunction with the Parramore neighborhood and especially with Jones High School. The event also brought out some of the most influential alumni from Jones High who the students in the internship were able to converse with  which provided the opportunity to understand the significance of Jones High not through cut and dry research but instead by vivid oral history as recounted by those who attended the school.

 

Week of May 26th 2017

     This week was largely devoted to gathering the research needed to compile a history of Jones High. I have been attempting to comb through the microfilm of the Orlando Sentinel to find information on influential events in the school’s history. Jones High though being one of the Central Florida’s only historically African American high schools today, it has been surprisingly difficult to isolate specific events which would provide the ability to construct a preliminary timeline which would provide an outline for writing the actual history of the school. Most of the “Pink or Green Pages” which provided news to the African American community of Orlando before around 1962 seem to provide incredibly far reaching information on other African American schools and communities in Central Florida.

Though running into issues this week of research has provided a wealth of valuable material which  has provided the opportunity to begin the timeline of Jones High School from 1960. Though there is a large amount of microfilm to sift through, the weekly status of the “Pink or Green Pages” facilitates and makes the process of microfilm possible. When the microfilm has been exhausted, I hope to use the “Newspapers.com” resource to explore the periods not covered by the microfilm at the University of Central Florida library.