For Your Teducation

Jazz musician and poet Ted Joans was born Ted Jones on July 4, 1928 in Cairo, Illinois. He changed his surname to distinguish it from the familiar spelling and, some say, to honor a woman named Joan. At the time of his death in May 2003, Joans’ career was enjoying a resurgence due, in part, to the publication of his poetry anthology “Teducation” (1999).

Joans earned his B.F.A. from Indiana University and moved to Greenwich Village in 1951. According to historian Robin D.G. Kelley, he "was one of the original Beat poets, though you wouldn't know it from most Beat anthologies. He was the author of over 30 books of poetry, prose, and collage, including Black Pow-Wow, Beat Funk Jazz Poems, Afrodisia, Jazz Is Our Religion, Double Trouble, Wow and Teducation." Kelley calls Joans the "grandaddy of bringing jazz and 'spoken word' together on the bandstand." In the early 1960s, Joans made Timbuktu his home base and traveled the world doing poetry readings and creating "happenings." He also lived in Tangiers, Morocco and Paris, France.

Joans was also a surrealist. Kelley writes, “Joans’ mantra was ‘Jazz is my religion and surrealism is my point of view.’” He describes Joans' “Black Flower” (1968) statement, as “a surrealist manifesto that envisioned a movement of black people in the U.S. bringing down American imperialism from within with the weapon of poetic imagery, ‘black flowers’ sprouting all over the land.” Kelley adds that “all his writing, like his life, was a relentless revolt."

Joans and his companion, artist Laura Corsiglia, moved to Vancouver in 2001, after the acquittal of the New York City police officers who fatally shot Amadou Diallo; he vowed never to live in the United States again. Joans died in Vancouver in May 2003. When jazz great Charlie Parker, his former roommate, died in 1955, Joans wrote “Bird Lives!” on the streets of Lower Manhattan.” Kelley reports that “A few poets in the know have already left chalked salutes in the streets. Let the Village know: ‘Ted Lives!’

-- M. Bryer

Quotes were taken from Robin D.G. Kelley's obituary for Ted Joans, which appeared in The Village Voice, May 20, 2003. Kelley (my favorite historian) is Professor of History, American Studies and Ethnicity at USC. His many books include Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression and Race Rebels: Culture Politics and the Black Working Class. His biography of jazz pianist and composer Thelonious Monk will be published in Fall 2009.

Photos: Top Row, Left: Reading in Amsterdam Artist Club, photo and copyright, Nico van der Stam; Top Row, Right: "Hipster Book Signing"; Second Row, Left: "Compromised Character of Colored Contemporary Co-Op Amateur Artist, Southern Indiana Branch"; Second Row, right: Joans, with Ruth Kligman ("The Liz Taylor of Bohemia") and William de Kooning; Third Row, Left: Joans and poet Don L. Lee, "An automatic poet-chant, 'We Have Come Back, First Pan African Cultural Festival in Algeria, performed with indigenous Algerians"; Third Row, Right: "Avec J.P. Sartre"; Bottom: Stokely Carmichael, Princess Sierra Leone. All captions were written by Ted Joans.

The Ted Joans papers (BANC MSS 99/244) contain manuscript material, including many unpublished poems, and personal and professional correspondence with friends and colleagues, including Amiri Baraka, Stokely Carmichael, Diane di Prima, Bob Kaufmann, Ishmael Reed, Jack Kerouac, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg. There are also -- as seen above -- some fabulous photographs. (For more photos, see the Ted Jones photograph albums -- BANC PIC 1999.097)

Foul Tip: One inmate's take on Folsom Prison life in 1895

The Folsom Prison Magazine collection (BANC MSS C-H 6) gives a colorful and satirical inside look at inmate life at the prison in 1895.

Opened in 1880, Folsom Prison is California's second oldest state prison after San Quentin and one of the earliest maximum security prisons built in the United States. Inmates housed there in the 1890s would have spent most of their time in the dark, locked inside a 4x8' stone cell with a 6" eye slot in the solid boilerplate door.

Despite, and definitely inspired by, this bleak life, one inmate created a magazine of poems, cartoons, and satirical articles concerning life at the prison with subjects ranging from an inmate baseball team and domesticated rats, to a touring ballet revue title Black Crook.

One dark poem, located on page 5, reads:
With iron hand he rules the waiters,
And sleight of hand forbids,
He feeds the Cons on stewed potatoes,
And tries to mash the kids.
--M.T. Stomach


--E. Van Lith

BART - What Could Have Been

In 1997, on the 25^th anniversary of its inaugural service, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers International (ASME) recognized the Bay Area Rapid Transit system (BART) as a Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark. According to ASME, BART's development “was revolutionary, embodying a futuristic spirit that produced historic innovations." ASME called BART “the prototype for most modern rail transit systems.”

Bill Stokes, BART's first general manager, credits Adrien J. Falk, BART's first Board President, for fostering the creative atmosphere that prevailed on the project. He called Falk "a catalyst for spirited, imaginative approaches to engineering challenges. He created a dynamic environment in which creative energy could soar. People could look for quantum leaps in innovation.” Most of the innovations cited by ASME, such as the engineering details in the transbay tube, were not readily visible to the public. However, people did notice the sleek trains. The Adrien Joseph Falk papers (72/39 c) included a "Photographic Record of Progress on Prototype Model for BART."

These photos illustrate what those BART cars could have looked like and show some proud engineers/boosters showing off a BART model.

Quotes taken from “National Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark,” http://files.asme.org/ASMEORG/Communities/History/Landmarks/1496.pdf, 1997. Falk became director and first board president of BART in 1957, when he was 73 years old. According to the biography in the finding aid for his papers, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors recognized Falk's strong sense of civic responsibility when they proclaimed January 17, 1970, “Adrien J. Falk Day" to honor is contributions to civic life and community welfare.

-- M. Bryer

Ode to My Old Stocking!

Journals offer glimpses into people's lives and personalities. Many of the journals that we've surveyed so far are not illustrated and I always look forward to coming across ones with sketches.

Here is an example of a poem and drawing of a sock found in the journal of Isaac W. Baker. It was written on the ship John Q. Adams while he was on a voyage from Boston to California in 1852.

The poem shows his sense of humor and I think his use of the pun 'darn' is great!

The poem says:

Ode to my old stocking!

Heeless and toeless work of art

Alas! thou'st getting old.

So worn and torn I scarcely know

The relics I behold!

Thy foot, sore scratch'd by many a nail

In many a place worn thin,

Indeed 'twould be a darned hard task

To make you whole again!

From the Isaac W. Baker journals, BANC MSS C-F 53

--A. Croft

Therese Bonney- famous photographer, cheese lover!

When I ran across this collection in the stacks one day while surveying, I was immediately charmed by the diversity of its contents. The three main sections of the Therese Bonney manuscript collection (in catalog as BANC MSS 83/111) reflect three major focuses of her career: early fashion photography, war correspondence, and her personal love of and fascination with -- you guessed it -- cheese. I was surprised that a woman with such a serious career- famous for her work exposing the horrors experienced by child victims of World War II- would also be infatuated enough with cheese to capture several hundred images of it and to keep boxes of notecards describing different varieties of cheese (see picture above.)

While there are many paper documents and several photographs and a few negatives in the Therese Bonney papers held by our manuscripts division, I knew there were also a very significant number of photographs and negatives in our photograph collection (BANC PIC 1982.111--PIC). Photo archivist Sara Ferguson was working on them at that time, so I asked her to provide some details about Bonney's collection and Sara's project work overall.

Pictorial Stabilization Project Archivist Sara Ferguson’s primary role is to coordinate the move of Bancroft’s acetate photographic film collections into the library’s new on site cold storage facility and to establish procedures for their access. In addition, Sara has been identifying major photographic collections in need of processing and re-housing work, such as the Therese Bonney Photographic Collection.

Sara Ferguson:

What I love about working on this collection is being able to see the progression of Bonney’s life, from model to author and publisher to photographer, to see how her life experiences influenced the direction her work took.

The collection includes Bonney’s early fashion and editorial work in Paris, but primarily consists of her work throughout Western Europe during WWII. Bonney’s best known photographs illustrate the effects of war and exile on children, taken with the hope of securing aid for civilian victims.

However the collection as a whole shows her work was even more ambitious and far reaching. She photographed not only the effect of war on children but documented daily life in war time society. She recorded entire communities: their families, customs, and industries, their artists and politicians, their schools and their churches. Taken as a whole, the Bonney collection shows not only the horrors of war but the hope and perseverance of those who lived through it.

Sara does not mention the cheese, but she confirmed verbally to me that there are many, many images of cheese in the Therese Bonney Photographic collection in addition to the more serious matter discussed above. I personally find it heartening that a professional who used her profession to deal so eloquently with such weighty issues could also indulge interests of a lighter nature. It shows great dimension to her personality-- and I never knew how many kinds of cheese there were!

-- D. Miller.

(Left: Some of the "cheese files" in the manuscript collection. The blue folder at top is labeled "cheese correspondence.")

(Right: cheese labels on a folder marked, "cheese research." Triple Creme Brie anyone?)

Experiencing Borneo with Agnes Newton Keith

Agnes Newton Keith was a UC Berkeley grad and a writer who wrote about her experiences living in exotic locations around the world, most famously in Northern Borneo, but also the Philippines and Libya. Keith, who had some harrowing experiences early in her professional life as a journalist at the San Francisco Examiner, married Englishman Henry "Harry" Keith in 1934 and returned with him to Malaysia where he worked for the Government of North Borneo while Borneo was a British protectorate.

Agnes lived with Harry in Sandakan, Borneo for five years. She wrote about her experiences and at Harry's urging she entered and won the 1939 Atlantic Monthly Non-fiction Prize. These writings, which were serialized in the magazine, became her first book, Land Below the Wind, published later that same year to great interest and much positive response.

Some of the publicity materials (1940) for her first book are pictured below.

Also pictured is an unidentified pencil sketch found among her papers which depicts a Borneo jungle scene.

The Keith's first child George was born in Sandakan in April of 1940. Two years later when Japanese forces invaded Borneo, Agnes and baby George were interned in a POW camp near their home, while Harry was interned nearby. The family spent three and a half years shifting between three different internment camps before they were liberated by Australian forces in 1945. In 1947 the Keiths returned to Borneo and Agnes told their story of survival in her bestseller, Three Came Home, which was later turned into a Hollywood movie in 1950. The Keith's daughter Jean was born shortly thereafter*, and Agnes wrote yet again of their return to a changed post-war Borneo in White Man Returns.

The Keiths had further adventures living in the Philippines and Libya throughout the 1950s and 1960s, experiences which she continued to write about in her later non-fiction works. Keith wrote her first novel in 1972 after the Keiths had retired to British Columbia, and she completed her last book in 1975. Remnants of her life abroad that surface in the Bancroft's collection include the daily diaries that were direct sources for her books as well as hundreds of unidentified but nonetheless fascinating photographs.

The Agnes Newton Keith papers are an intriguing (and charming, for this archivist!) look at exotic parts of the globe from a mid-20th century American woman's perspective. They can be requested through the Bancroft off-site request system using title Agnes Newton Kieth Papers and call number Banc MSS 86/161.

-- D. Miller.

* A correction was provided by Jill, a site visitor: "Agnes' daughter Alison Jean was born when Agnes was about 26 years old ( probably within the period of her first marriage which did not work out). In 2007, Jean and her granddaughter Leslie, attended a special ceremony in memory of her mother who would have been 106 years old on that day. Jean was 80 years old and it was her first visit back back to Borneo since she was 17 years old. (Refer to "The Tea House Chronicle" August 2007 -Sandakan) [Alison Jean] was not born in the 1950's as is inferred in this article." (This would mean Agnes Keith's daughter, her first child, was born in 1927.)

Chinese immigration cartoon

The Bancroft holds several collections relating to the history of the Chinese in California, documenting issues ranging from Chinese labor to Chinese-owned and operated businesses, as well as evidence of hostility towards the Chinese. The following cartoon best illustrates the latter, demonstrating the multiple fronts of racial tension and inequality operating in California around the turn of the 19th century. The author of this cartoon, however, seems to be at least somewhat aware of the irony of the situation, as suggested by the caption. (All quotes and other punctuation are from the cartoon author.)

"Every Dog (No Distinction of Color) Has His Day."

Red Gentleman to Yellow Gentleman, "Pale face 'fraid you crowd him out, as he did me."

From Scrapbooks on Chinese immigration collection, Banc MSS 89/151c Volume 1.

-- D. Miller.