The National Association of Educational Broadcasters (NAEB) Collection Now Available on AAPB

The National Association of Educational Broadcasters (NAEB) Collection, now available on the AAPB website, consists of more than 5,500 radio programs from the 1950s and 1960s, created by over 100 NAEB member stations. The collection includes radio documentaries, coverage of events (hearings, meetings, conferences, and seminars), interviews, debates, and lectures on public affairs topics such as civil rights, foreign affairs, health, politics, education, and broadcasting.

These broadcasts, mostly stemming from university and public school-run radio stations, provide an in-depth look at the engagements and events of American history, as they were broadcast to and received by the general public in the twentieth century. Interview subjects and/or program participants feature a “who’s who” of mid-20th century public figures, including Hubert Humphrey, Betty Shabazz, Robert Frost, Frank Lloyd Wright, Alistair Cooke, Dr. Benjamin Spock, Margaret Mead, Studs Terkel, Dr. Albert Schweitzer, Marshall McLuhan, and Aldous Huxley. The collection also contains a notably large percentage of local content and voices, from a WDET Detroit series about local civil defense plans and policies called “Prepare for Survival,” to a series entitled “Document: Deep South,” a documentary series produced by WOUA at the University of Alabama depicting the increasing importance of the South in the economic development of the United States, to a show entitled “Search for Mental Health,” a series of talks about advances in psychiatry from the University of Chicago.

The NAEB was established in 1934 from a precursor organization, the Association of College and University Broadcasting Stations, that formed in 1925. The mission of the NAEB was to use communications technology for education and social purposes. It was an extremely successful and effective trade organization that, throughout its 60 years of existence, ushered in or helped to enable major changes in early educational broadcasting policy. In 1951, NAEB established a tape duplication exchange system in Urbana, IL, where programs produced by university radio stations across the country were copied and distributed to member stations, an early networking scheme that influenced the history of later public radio and television systems. The forerunner of CPB and its arms, NPR and PBS, the NAEB served as the primary organizer, developer, and distributor for noncommercial broadcast production and analysis between 1925 and 1981.

The NAEB Collection was contributed to the AAPB by the University of Maryland’s National Public Broadcasting Archives. The paper records of the NAEB are housed at University of Maryland and additional related materials are located at the Wisconsin Historical Society.

Access the collection here: http://americanarchive.org/special_collections/naeb

Special thanks to Stephanie Sapienza for her contributions to the curation of this collection.

Celebrate Women’s History Month by Preserving Women’s Voices in Public Media

One of the most fascinating aspects of the American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB) is discovering how local broadcasting stations used their platforms to communicate national issues to local audiences.

As second-wave feminism gained momentum between the years 1960 to 1980, WNED from Buffalo, New York documented the movement’s ripple effect in a half-hour public affairs talk show series titled Woman.  Syndicated by over 200 PBS stations during the years 1973-1977, Woman was the only year-round, national public television forum where a wide variety of national experts provided perspectives on the (then) evolving world of women’s history.

To celebrate this milestone in women’s public media history, the American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB) launched a new Special Collection featuring the Woman series! Over 190 episodes are available online via the AAPB website: http://americanarchive.org/special_collections/woman-series.

Woman Series, WNED – Buffalo, NY (1973-1977)

The AAPB invites you to celebrate Women’s History Month by helping preserve and make accessible six Woman transcripts. We’re launching a demo-version of our *NEW* transcript editor tool FIX IT+, a line-by-line editing platform initially developed by the New York Public Library. The six featured interviews include conversations with Gloria Steinem (editor and co-founder of Ms. Magazine), Dorothy Pitman Hughes (African American activist and co-founder of Ms. Magazine), Betty Friedan (author of The Feminine Mystique), Nora Ephron (editor for Esquire magazine and the author of the best-selling book Crazy Salad), Marcia Ann Gillespie (editor-in-chief of Essence Magazine and a board member of Essence communications), Connie Uri, M.D. (on the National Board of Research on the Plutonium Economy and the advisory board of NASC, the Native American Solidarity Committee), and Marie Sanchez (Chief Judge of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, member of the Indian Women United for Social Justice).

These transcripts will be made available online through the AAPB’s website, allowing women’s voices in public media to be more readily searchable and accessible for future generations.

Below are sample recordings of the six interviews mentioned above. Search the Woman Special Collection for more interviews with activists, journalists, writers, scholars, lawyers, artists, psychologists, and doctors, covering topics such as women in sports, the Equal Rights Amendment, sexuality, marriage, women’s health, divorce, the Women’s Liberation Movement, motherhood, and ageism, among others.

Direct link to FIX IT+: http://54.205.165.195.xip.io/

Sample Recordings of Featured Transcripts:

Connie Uri, M.D. and Marie Sanchez, Chief Judge of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, FIX IT+ Transcript: http://54.205.165.195.xip.io/transcripts/cpb-aacip_81-67wm3fxh

Marcia Ann Gillespie, FIX IT+ Transcript: http://54.205.165.195.xip.io/transcripts/cpb-aacip_81-69z08t6x

Nora Ephron, FIX IT+ Transcript: http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip_81-988gttr0

Gloria Steinem, FIX IT+ Transcript: http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip_81-57np5qgv

Betty Friedan, FIX IT+ Transcript: http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip_81-9995xhm0

Dorothy Pitman Hughes, FIX IT+ Transcript: http://54.205.165.195.xip.io/transcripts/cpb-aacip_81-59c5b5nr

Written by Ryn Marchese, AAPB Engagement and Use Manager

AAPB Debuts New Exhibit “Protecting Places: Historic Preservation and Public Broadcasting”

Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

The American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB) has launched a new digital exhibit titled “Protecting Places: Historic Preservation and Public Broadcasting.” Historic preservation is more than just saving old buildings from the bulldozer. Histories can be shared or silenced depending upon the preservation of places that represent a larger story. AAPB Digital Exhibits Intern Kara Zelasko uncovers how people have used public broadcasting to advocate, negotiate, or protest historic preservation efforts across America. Kara is currently a public history graduate student at Northeastern University interested in exploring history as a tool for placemaking and community engagement.

Using a diverse range of public radio and television content from 1950 – 2012, more than 100 digitized, historic public broadcasting programs, local news reports, radio call-in shows, and interviews document the important relationship historic structures have fostered between people and their neighborhoods. These visual and audio records digitized and preserved by the AAPB reveal the ways people have used or rejected preservation in the ever-changing American landscape to share local and national histories, illuminating the ways Americans have envisioned their communities through buildings and sites that connect past to present.

“Protecting Places: Historic Preservation and Public Broadcasting” is accessible online at http://americanarchive.org/exhibits/historic-preservation.

Listen to sample recordings from the exhibit…

Bill Inge, host of WILL’s radio call-in broadcast “Focus,” asks Richard Moe “how do we decide what buildings are worth saving?” Moe, then president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, answers that the decision essentially lies within the community and what will best serve its current and future needs. This answer underlines the struggle historic preservationists encounter between saving a building to share the past while also serving the community of the present. Listen to the full episode here.

This segment from New Jersey Nightly News explores the Victorian buildings that have come to define Cape May’s community. The interview reveals how Cape May, like many other places, have come to recognize the economic incentive in preserving buildings and landscapes that speak to the neighborhood’s character. Watch the full segment here.

This interview from South Carolina Educational Television’s “Connections” discusses the disappearing cabins of enslaved people in South Carolina.  Historic preservation can be a way to uncover marginalized stories that have been previously ignored. This record and others found in the exhibit reveal how histories have been both erased and uncovered in the American landscape over time. Watch the entire episode here.

American Archive of Public Broadcasting Releases Exclusive Collections

The Library of Congress and WGBH have acquired and preserved original, full-length interviews from The Civil War, Eyes on the Prize and American Masters

  

The American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB) recently acquired three collections of original, full-length interviews from groundbreaking public television documentaries: Ken Burns’ The Civil War, Eyes on the Prize and American Masters. Only excerpts of these interviews were included in previously released, edited programs. Now, the full-length interviews from these landmark series will be available to view online at americanarchive.org or in person at the Library of Congress and at WGBH, preserved for future generations to learn about our nation’s history.

 

The AAPB, a collaboration between the Library of Congress and Boston public media station WGBH, has digitized and preserved more than 50,000 hours of broadcasts and previously inaccessible programs from public radio and public television’s more than 60-year legacy.

 

Interviews from Ken Burns’ The Civil War

 

The Civil War, an epic nine-episode series by the award-winning documentary filmmaker Ken Burns and produced in conjunction with WETA, Washington, DC and American Documentaries, Inc., first aired in September 1990 to an audience of 40 million viewers. The film is the recipient of 40 major film and television awards, including two Emmys and two Grammys.

 

The AAPB The Civil War collection includes eight digitized, full-length interviews with distinguished historians and commentators Barbara J. Fields, C. Vann Woodward, Robert Penn Warren, William Safire, James Symington, Stephen B. Oates, Ed Bearss and Daisy Turner. The Civil War collection is available online athttp://americanarchive.org/special_collections/ken-burns-civil-war.

 

Interviews from Eyes on the Prize

 

Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years 1954–1965 tells the definitive story of the civil rights era from the point of view of the ordinary men and women whose extraordinary actions launched a movement that changed the fabric of American life, and embodied a struggle whose reverberations continue to be felt today. The award-winning documentary series recounts the fight to end decades of discrimination and segregation from the murder of Emmett Till and the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955 and 1956 to the 1965 Voting Rights Campaign in Selma, Alabama. Eyes on the Prize was produced by Blackside, Inc and aired on PBS in 1987.

 

The Eyes on the Prize interviews collection comes from Washington University Libraries’ Henry Hampton Collection and includes 75 hours of full-length interviews with leaders and activists such as Rosa Parks, Constance Baker Motley, James Farmer, Robert Moses, Andrew Young, John Lewis, Ralph Abernathy, Stokely Carmichael and Myrlie Evers. The Eyes on the Prize collection is available online at http://americanarchive.org/special_collections/eotp-i-interviews.

 

Interviews from American Masters

 

American Masters is an award-winning biography series that celebrates American arts and culture. Launched in 1986 on PBS, the series set the standard for documentary film profiles, and is produced by New York’s flagship PBS station THIRTEEN for WNET.

 

AAPB has preserved more than 800 full-length interviews filmed for American Masters with cultural luminaries such as David Bowie, Yoko Ono, Robert Plant, Tim Burton, Nora Ephron, Denzel Washington, Carol Burnett, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Quincy Jones and Jimmy Carter. The interviews, digitized for In Their Own Words: The American Masters Digital Archive and the American Masters Podcast, will be archived for long-term storage at the Library of Congress to ensure their survival for future generations. Researchers can access the full collection on location at the Library of Congress and at WGBH. Information about the American Masters collection is available at http://americanarchive.org/special_collections/american-masters-interviews.

 

The AAPB is a national effort to preserve at-risk public media and provide a central web portal for access to the programming that public stations and producers have created over the past 60 years. In its initial phase, the AAPB digitized approximately 40,000 hours of radio and television programming and related materials selected by more than 100 public media stations and organizations across the country. The entire collection is available for research on location at the Library of Congress and WGBH, and currently more than 20,000 programs are available in the AAPB’s Online Reading Room at americanarchive.org to anyone in the United States.

 

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About WGBH

WGBH Boston is America’s preeminent public broadcaster and the largest producer of PBS content for TV and the Web, including Masterpiece, Antiques Roadshow, Frontline, Nova, American Experience, Arthur and more than a dozen other prime-time, lifestyle, and children’s series. WGBH also is a leader in educational multimedia, including PBS LearningMedia™, and a pioneer in technologies and services that make media accessible to the 36 million Americans who are deaf, hard of hearing, blind, or visually impaired. WGBH has been recognized with hundreds of honors: Emmys, Peabodys, duPont-Columbia Awards…even two Oscars. Find more information at www.wgbh.org.

 

About the Library of Congress

The Library of Congress is the world’s largest library, offering access to the creative record of the United States – and extensive materials from around the world – both on site and online. It is the main research arm of the U.S. Congress and the home of the U.S. Copyright Office.  Explore collections, reference services and other programs and plan a visit at loc.gov, access the official site for U.S. federal legislative information at congress.gov and register creative works of authorship atcopyright.gov.

 

About the American Archive of Public Broadcasting

The American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB) is a collaboration between the Library of Congress and the WGBH Educational Foundation to coordinate a national effort to preserve at-risk public media before its content is lost to posterity and provide a central web portal for access to the unique programming that public stations have aired over the past 60 years. To date, over 40,000 hours of television and radio programming contributed by more than 100 public media organizations and archives across the United States have been digitized for long-term preservation and access. The entire collection is available on location at the Library of Congress and WGBH, and more than 20,000 programs are available online atamericanarchive.org.

Forty Years, Forty Films, Forty Weeks: The Medicine Game

Vision Maker Media’s “Forty Years, Forty Films, Forty Weeks” promotion concludes this week with our final featured Vision Maker Media film.

“The Medicine Game” follows the story of brothers from the Onondaga Nation who pursue their dreams of playing lacrosse for Syracuse University. With their dream nearly in reach, the boys are caught in a constant struggle to define their Native identity, live-up to their family’s expectations and balance challenges on and off the Reservation.

Watch “The Medicine Game” on the American Archive of Public Broadcasting website.

Vision Maker Media would like to thank all the viewers who tuned in to stream 40 Years. 40 Films. 40 Weeks. In the last 40 years, the organization has created more than 500 films, awarded $11 million to independent producers and held hundreds of film-screening events across the nation. While only a portion of that was able to be shared in the last 40 weeks, Vision Maker Media hopes that these films have inspired viewers to look at the world through Indigenous eyes.

The AAAPB has been proud to collaborate with Vision Maker Media to share these films and celebrate the amazing work done by Vision Maker Media over the past forty years.

About Vision Maker Media

Vision Maker Media is the premier source for quality American Indian and Alaska Native educational and home videos. All aspects of Vision Maker Media programs encourage the involvement of young people to learn more about careers in the media – to be the next generation of storytellers. Vision Maker Media envisions a world changed and healed by understanding Native stories and the public conversations they generate.

With funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), Vision Maker Media’s Public Media Content Fund awards support to projects with a Native American theme and significant Native involvement that ultimately benefits the entire public media community. Vision Maker Media, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) empowers and engages Native People to tell stories. For more information, http://www.visionmakermedia.org

Forty Years, Forty Films, Forty Weeks: Silent Thunder

This week’s Vision Maker Media film focuses on Arapaho elder Stanford Addison, a quadriplegic spiritual leader who trains wild horses on the Wind River Reservation.

Told primarily in the voices of Addison and those around him, “Silent Thunder” demonstrates Addison’s unique method of training horses — and people — while encouraging them to keep their spirit.

Watch “Silent Thunder” on the American Archive of Public Broadcasting website.

Check back here every Tuesday, or follow us at @amarchivepub on Twitter to keep up with featured streaming films over the 40 weeks of the celebration. You can find the complete schedule here.

About Vision Maker Media

Vision Maker Media is the premier source for quality American Indian and Alaska Native educational and home videos. All aspects of Vision Maker Media programs encourage the involvement of young people to learn more about careers in the media – to be the next generation of storytellers. Vision Maker Media envisions a world changed and healed by understanding Native stories and the public conversations they generate.

With funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), Vision Maker Media’s Public Media Content Fund awards support to projects with a Native American theme and significant Native involvement that ultimately benefits the entire public media community. Vision Maker Media, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) empowers and engages Native People to tell stories. For more information, www.visionmakermedia.org

Each week for the next forty weeks, a different film featuring Native voices from Native producers will be available to stream free online, in celebration of Vision Maker Media’s 40 years supporting American Indian and Alaska Native film projects.

Follow Vision Maker Media on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Vimeo, Pinterest, or Google+.

Forty Years, Forty Films, Forty Weeks: My Louisiana Love

In this week’s Vision Maker Media film, Monique Verdin returns to Southeast Louisiana to find a place with her Houma Indian family, and becomes a witness to the impact of decades of environmental degradation.  As Monique’s losses mount, she finds herself turning to environmental activism, documenting her family’s struggle to stay close to the land despite the rapidly disappearing coastline and a cycle of disasters that includes two devastating hurricanes and the worst oil spill in US history.

“My Louisiana Love” provides an intimate documentary portrait of the impact on the oil industry and man-made environmental crises on the indigenous community of the Mississippi Delta.

Watch “My Louisiana Love” on the American Archive of Public Broadcasting website.

Check back here every Tuesday, or follow us at @amarchivepub on Twitter to keep up with featured streaming films over the 40 weeks of the celebration. You can find the complete schedule here.

About Vision Maker Media

Vision Maker Media is the premier source for quality American Indian and Alaska Native educational and home videos. All aspects of Vision Maker Media programs encourage the involvement of young people to learn more about careers in the media – to be the next generation of storytellers. Vision Maker Media envisions a world changed and healed by understanding Native stories and the public conversations they generate.

With funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), Vision Maker Media’s Public Media Content Fund awards support to projects with a Native American theme and significant Native involvement that ultimately benefits the entire public media community. Vision Maker Media, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) empowers and engages Native People to tell stories. For more information, www.visionmakermedia.org

Each week for the next forty weeks, a different film featuring Native voices from Native producers will be available to stream free online, in celebration of Vision Maker Media’s 40 years supporting American Indian and Alaska Native film projects.

Follow Vision Maker Media on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Vimeo, Pinterest, or Google+.

 

 

 

Forty Years, Forty Films, Forty Weeks: Smokin’ Fish

This week’s featured Vision Maker Media film follows Cory Mann, a Tlingit businessman hustling to make a dollar in Juneau, Alaska, as he follows an impulse to spend a summer smoking salmon the way his great-grandmother used to do.

“Smokin’ Fish” interweaves the story of Mann’s family, his bills and his business with the untold history of the Tlingit and the process of preparing this traditional food. By turns tragic, bizarre, or just plain ridiculous, Smokin’ Fish illustrates one man’s attempts to navigate the messy zone of collision between the modern world and an ancient culture.

Watch “Smokin’ Fish” on the American Archive of Public Broadcasting website.

Check back here every Tuesday, or follow us at @amarchivepub on Twitter to keep up with featured streaming films over the 40 weeks of the celebration. You can find the complete schedule here.

About Vision Maker Media

Vision Maker Media is the premier source for quality American Indian and Alaska Native educational and home videos. All aspects of Vision Maker Media programs encourage the involvement of young people to learn more about careers in the media – to be the next generation of storytellers. Vision Maker Media envisions a world changed and healed by understanding Native stories and the public conversations they generate.

With funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), Vision Maker Media’s Public Media Content Fund awards support to projects with a Native American theme and significant Native involvement that ultimately benefits the entire public media community. Vision Maker Media, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) empowers and engages Native People to tell stories. For more information, www.visionmakermedia.org

Each week for the next forty weeks, a different film featuring Native voices from Native producers will be available to stream free online, in celebration of Vision Maker Media’s 40 years supporting American Indian and Alaska Native film projects.

Follow Vision Maker Media on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Vimeo, Pinterest, or Google+.

Forty Years, Forty Films, Forty Weeks: Sousa on the Rez

This week’s featured Vision Maker Media film focuses on Native American marching bands, their history, and their players’ relationships with American and Western music. The film contains interviews with musicians in Native American bands and features both contemporary and historical footage of Native players.

“Sousa on the Rez” examines the history of American marching music, the influence of boarding schools on Native American musicians, stereotypes, and the continuing legacy of Native American marching bands throughout the country.

Watch “Sousa on the Rez” on the American Archive of Public Broadcasting website.

Check back here every Tuesday, or follow us at @amarchivepub on Twitter to keep up with featured streaming films over the 40 weeks of the celebration. You can find the complete schedule here.

About Vision Maker Media

Vision Maker Media is the premier source for quality American Indian and Alaska Native educational and home videos. All aspects of Vision Maker Media programs encourage the involvement of young people to learn more about careers in the media – to be the next generation of storytellers. Vision Maker Media envisions a world changed and healed by understanding Native stories and the public conversations they generate.

With funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), Vision Maker Media’s Public Media Content Fund awards support to projects with a Native American theme and significant Native involvement that ultimately benefits the entire public media community. Vision Maker Media, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) empowers and engages Native People to tell stories. For more information, www.visionmakermedia.org

Each week for the next forty weeks, a different film featuring Native voices from Native producers will be available to stream free online, in celebration of Vision Maker Media’s 40 years supporting American Indian and Alaska Native film projects.

Follow Vision Maker Media on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Vimeo, Pinterest, or Google+.

Pride in 1978

“Come on out! Join us, bring a friend!” This joyous sentiment, spoken by Harvey Milk at the San Francisco parade for the 8^th Gay Freedom Day in 1978, still resonates today. Over the past month, there have been countless events right here in Boston, and across the country, celebrating LGBTQ+ pride. In the last week of Pride Month, WGBH wanted to take the opportunity to look back on the history of the Pride movement in the United States through some broadcasts in the American Archive of Public Broadcasting.

This particular program is a sound portrait of one of the first pride parades in the United States, and captures the spirit of Pride that we still see today. Upon listening to the program, one can hear many chants and songs, some silly and lighthearted, like, “we’re here because we’re queer because we’re here because we’re queer,” and also serious, “Ain’t gonna let Anita Bryant turn us around,” referencing the famed anti-gay rights activist. Fresh off the heels of the Dade County-Miami decision, and just as the Briggs Initiative was proposed in California, sound bites and interviews in this program captures the sentiment of the LGBTQ+ movement in this moment in time.

Many of those participating in the parade were interviewed about the Briggs Initiative, also known as California Proposition 6, which would have banned gay men and lesbian women, as well as their straight allies, from working in the California public school system. This initiative was one of the most important gay rights issue in California at this time. One parade-goer states, “My friends, anyone who supports my right to be gay, can be fired, just for believing that. People think of it in terms of, it’s a gay rights issue, as opposed to being a free speech issue.” Another states, “If you’re white, male, straight, educated, and, uh, well-off, then that’s who gets the rights in this country. It’s been everyone else who’s had to go out into the streets and fight for their rights.” As is still true today, Pride parades have not only been a space for celebration, but also a space for activism, since their very beginnings.

One thing the listener notes is how diverse the interviewees are. They range from Vietnam veterans, to parents, to straight allies, to Mormons, to businessmen. There are people who believe that others are playing into gay stereotypes, and those who are completely unapologetic of their own flamboyance. There is even one man interviewed who does not even know that there is a gay pride parade happening until he is informed by the interviewer. All of these people unapologetically give their opinions on the parade, as well as gay rights, to the interviewers.

This sound portrait is only one of many broadcasts in the American Archive of Public Broadcasting that traces the LGBTQ+ movement in American history and broadcasting. As one parade-goer, Cathy Patterson, states, “Gay and straight are one and the same really, and we all have the same goal—or at least we should.”

You can enjoy more materials like this at http://americanarchive.org, under the LGBTQ tab in our browsing catalog.

This post was written by Olivia Hess, AAPB Intern and student at St. Lawrence University.