This blog post was written by graduate assistant Aaron Ramos, a master’s student in the History Department. We are excited to announce that the Lane Denton papers are currently in processing! This collection will be of interest to students and scholars of the 1970s. Denton, an alumnus of Baylor University, witnessed many significant events as he represented McLennan County in…
(BCPM) Waco’s War on Poverty: The Political Responses of a Community
This blog post was composed by former graduate assistant Emma Fenske, a Ph.D. student in the History Department. On January 8, 1964, Lyndon B. Johnson announced a program that would become known as the War on Poverty. In his presidential address to Congress, Johnson highlighted that poverty was a significant problem within the United States, one that need to be…
(A&SCRC) Baylor’s Florence Nightingale Letters: How the School of Nursing Came to Hold A Piece of the Legacy of “the Lady with the Lamp” – And How You Can View Them Online
The nursing profession’s ties to Baylor date to 1909, when a diploma program was established at what is now known as the Baylor University Medical Center. Over the past century-plus, nursing education has been an integral part of the Baylor story, through decades of partnership with the Waco campus, the BUMC, and the present-day Louise Herrington School of Nursing in…
[BCPM] It Began in Kimble: O.C. Fisher and the Process of Processing his Papers
This blog post was composed by graduate assistant Aaron Ramos, a master’s student in the History Department. The W. R. Poage Library is thrilled to announce that the O.C. Fisher papers are now research ready with a completed finding aid. This collection is well-suited to those interested in researching 20th century American foreign policy, civil rights issues, agriculture, and commerce.…
(A&SCRC) Square Roots: The Story of the 1880 Grand Square Piano Now on Display in the Arts & Special Collections Research Center
This post was written by music librarian Bethany Stewart, Ph.D. In your first Fall semester foray to Moody Memorial Library’s third floor, you may notice a new tenant: a large and unusually shaped keyboard instrument. In short, our new resident wooden dinosaur is a square grand piano—which yes, is in fact rectangular and not new at all—built in 1880 and…
(BCPM) My Transformative Internship at the Poage Library
This blog post was written by Toyosi Stephen Adedara, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction and the 2024 Dowdy Summer Intern. My Dowdy summer internship experience at the Poage Library humbled me. Before this summer, I had always thought of libraries as mere repositories for books and documents. However, my time at Poage taught me that…
Unlocking History: Highlighting World War II Primary Sources in Baylor Libraries’ Special Collections and Archives
Collaborative writing project by Sinai Wood, Bethany Stewart, Elizabeth Rivera, Sylvia Hernandez, and Beth Farwell This summer marked the 80th anniversary of D-Day, the pivotal moment in the Second World War when Allied forces launched their invasion on the beaches of Normandy and thus opened a crucial front in Western Europe which eventually allowed Allied troops to liberate occupied territories.…
(BCPM) Introducing Mr. Agriculture! The Opening of the Bob Poage Papers
This blog post was written by Thomas DeShong, the Processing Archivist at the Baylor Collections of Political Materials. In April 2019, I joined the Baylor Collections of Political Materials housed at the W. R. Poage Library. My colleagues gave me a few weeks to wet my feet and explore the collections before I was charged with processing the W. R.…
(BCPM) A 2005 Juneteenth Message from U.S. Rep. (Ret.) Chet Edwards
Today, we celebrate Juneteenth, a day set apart to commemorate the emancipation of enslaved persons in Texas following the end of the Civil War. On June 18, 2005, Representative Chet Edwards visited Cleburne, a small city in Johnson County, to speak at their Juneteenth Festival. His speech, titled “The Story of the Emancipation Proclamation” traced the path of freedom for…
(BCPM) School Desegregation vs. School Integration
This blog post was written by Isaiah Horne, a recent MA graduate of the History Department. Read Isaiah’s previous related blog post on “School Choice:” Its Origins and Long History here. In the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case, the Supreme Court unanimously declared that racial segregation was unconstitutional and “inherently unequal,” thus ushering in a new era…