| Interview with Dr. Ed Bridges, Director of the Alabama Department of Archives and History The following excerpts are from two interviews with producer Tom Rieland while in production of the documentary, Holding On To History: Alabama's Archive, an episode in The Alabama Experience series on Alabama Public Television. Tell us about the inception of the Alabama State Archives. Thomas Owen was a young University of Alabama graduate who married Marie Bankhead, the daughter of Will Bankhead. He got a patronage appointment in Washington DC in 1890s working at the Post Office. And while there he became interested in Alabama history, started working at the Library of Congress, was involved with the American Historical Association, realized that Alabama historical records were terribly neglected as he tried to use them for his own research and decided to try and come back and form a State Archives in Alabama. When Owen came back in the 1890s and started to work with the legislature to create an archive, a commission was setup and they ended up recommended the creation of a state archive. The law was passed, signed by the Governor in February 1901, and with that law, Alabama became the first state in the Union to form a state archival agency to take care of it's historical records and artifacts and serve as a museum for the state -- 33 years before the national archives were established, as a matter of fact. If you think about the late 1890s and early 1900s, it was a time of great sentiment for the Civil War. The veterans who had fought were by this time old men. Those who were in power tended to be young men who grew up in the shadow of the war. This was a time of high sentiment for those who fought for the Confederacy. So that was part of the effort to create the Archives, but I think there is also a recognition that and Owen stated this in one of his first letters, that "the state has an obligation to preserve the essential records of the people who contributed to building the state, it’s a moral obligation of the state to preserve that information, so the memory of their contribution is not lost." When the archive was first created, Owen had the cloakroom in the old senate chamber, two cloakrooms, he had one of those and accumulated material and after a year or so, he had so much stuff piled in there, the legislature in 1903 voted to build the wing on the South side of the building. The wing was established, but by late teens that space was filled, so worked started on getting support for this building. Was he helped by the connection with the Bankhead family? The Bankhead family was always a power behind him and all that he accomplished. He used those connections, but in turn he helped the Bankhead family too. Tell me your version of the story I heard about how this building was appropriated. He (Owen) died in 1920 and was succeeded by his widow Marie Bankhead Owen who continued as director of the archives for the next 35 years. Before he died in 1919, he had conceived the idea on the centennial of Alabama statehood of building a new archive building, moving from Capitol, where they didn't have any more room. So he had already established a commission and began purchasing land on this block. But because of the agricultural depression of the 20s and Great Depression, there was never enough money to build the building. Finally in the late 30s, Marie Bankhead Owen's two brothers were both in Congress, one of them, Will, was the Speaker of the U.S. House, Tallulah's Father. And her other brother, John, after Hugo Black's appointment to the Supreme Court, was the Senior Senator from Alabama. So her two brothers were in a great position. Miss Owen goes to up to Washington to try and get WPA money to build this building and the story is she goes to meet with Harry Hopkins, the head of the WPA, and he says I'm sorry Miss Owen, there is no more money left and we're closing out these programs and you'll just have to find another way of funding the archive building. "Well," she said, "call one of my brothers to pick me up." He said "who are your brothers?" And she said, "Well, you can call either Will or John over in the Congress." Hopkins said, "Now wait just a minute, let's talk about this a little more, Miss. Owen"…and we got this building from her visit. As you walk the Archive, what strikes you as special about this place and about your job? What I see is the incredible way these collections fit together and as a whole tell a story that is beyond the capacity of one mind to take in. It's just magnificent. Every drawer, every box has a story of the lives of people and it’s just wonderful to see all that in its richness and it's complexity and just know it will be there for others in decades and hopefully generations into the future I know this will sound crazy, but I feel most of us feel a sense of mission and of calling about it in almost religious kind of terms. It’s more than just a job. For me, I really see history as a way of coming to terms with who I am and I think that history is a key for society to understand the common bonds that hold us together as people. So many of the problems I see we have in working together, I think could be overcome if we had a better understanding of the history we share and that we are in so many ways products of conflicts and issues that existed in the past. That if we understand those better, we can work out a lot of those issues much more effectively. In some areas we are doing very well, in last 5-6 years, I think we've gotten control of our map collection, about 15,000 maps. For other collections, video and audio, or color photographs, I am really worried about the materials. Newspapers deteriorate because the newsprint itself is full of acid and they just self destruct over 100 years, and so we microfilmed most of the Ala. newspapers. We still have more to do. In our textile and flag collections, we’ve made a big investment in restoring and preserving those. In some areas we're doing well, in some we have a long way to go. All of this though with some huge problems in front of us. And that is the problems with all this computer generated material now, which is essential to how state government works. How preserve these records, this material? What kind of formats do we preserve them in? How do we preserve that material that needs to be preserved 20-30 years from now? That's a huge challenge for us. For 900 years, in the English speaking world we've had a standard way of keeping records, on parchment or paper, where records are signed and witnessed when you record your deed. Now, much of that is done on computer file or optical disk. There's also the proliferation of the types of records. Incredible quantities of records in different forms (like e-mail). It's perhaps the biggest challenge archivists face, perhaps since the French Revolution when they started creating archives. You have quite a bit of traffic through the archive, especially those looking up their roots. One of the nice things about the fact that we have public records
that these were created by government in conduct of govt. business is they tend to be
inclusive of all people, rich, poor, black, white, male female, when you get tax records,
etc. they tend to be inclusive. When you go into the research area, you tend to see people
from all sorts of backgrounds doing research and finding information on their family. Do you consider this the State's Museum? When this agency was created in 1901, it was the State's history museum, state's library and archive as well as the agency which was involved in preserving historic sites. Those functions have since divided away. There is a separate historical commission for preserving historic sites, the public library service works with libraries across the state, but we still think the museum function should be here. It has been grossly under funded for the past 60 years and frankly I'm embarrassed when I go to other state history museums and I see the quality of the exhibits they have and I come back see that we have wonderful things, but we don't do a good job of interpreting them, we don't do a good job of presenting them to people, we don't tell the story of Alabama the way we should. It is one of our top goals. If we can add the new wing, we will have space to present a new exhibit about Alabama history. Given the resources we have, our fundamental decisions relate to
preservation of collections and working to bring in new materials to continue the chain of
custody we've had for 100 years or so and to continue to add to and build on these
collections. Because we are so oriented toward that, we don't have the resources I'd like
to concentrate on the exhibits. Is the way people use and access the Archive changing? This past year, email correspondence is five times what it was in the year before. It comes in in incredible quantities for us. People are using these resources in a number of ways. One of our challenges is to put into digital form some of the most frequent materials in our collections so people can use the materials from anyplace in Alabama day or night and not come here. If we can digitize these materials that people need to have access to, we could provide a really tremendous service. All they would have to do is type www.archives.state.al.us and they are here! Return to information about: The University of Alabama Center for Public Television |