Archiving Your Family History with Dr. Mary Marshall

Dr. Mary Marshall shares her amazing personal story as a Historian and archivist.

Your family tree may not be filled with connections to some of America's most iconic African American sites, institutions, and people like Booker T. Washington --but you never know.  Dr. Marshall’s story highlights the richness of African American contributions to the greatness of America.  She reminds us of the importance of preserving and sharing our collective community history. 

For more on Dr. Mary Marshall:

Emory University Library: Mary M. Marshall Collection

Substack: Dr. Mary Marshall (Writings)

YouTube: Mary Marshall's Mission

Event | The Paul Robeson House of Princeton: "Powerful Texts That Change Us" 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello and welcome to Connections and Conversations, an advocacy arena podcast to increase civic engagement and strengthen our communities. Today I have with me Dr. Mary Marshall, a retired history professor and archivist. So welcome, Dr. Marshall. How are you today?

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Good morning, or actually it's afternoon. I'm good.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Well, I'm so glad to have you here, and we're gonna just dive right in. And I'd like people to kind of get to know you. We've had interviews before, and I'm so glad that you're here with us today. I wanted to ask you to tell our audience what drew you to study history?

SPEAKER_01 0:46

That's an interesting story, actually. I didn't start off with any idea of studying history. My undergraduate degree is in speech pathology audiology with a double major in English and a minor in psych. I wanted to be a doctor. When I learned you had to work on a cadaver, I switched in the first three days at Howard to become an English major and speech pathology. Speech pathology I chose because I grew up with a neighbor who couldn't see, and I always wondered how do blind people learn how to read. So I made it my goal as a nine-year-old to grow up and become whomever I needed to be so that I could work with people who are blind. Fast forward, I got my degree, as I said, in a double major. Then I worked as a speech pathologist for a year, experienced my first instance of overt racism, weighed about 100 pounds, but thought I weighed 200 and that I might knock some people out. So I told my mom I needed to change my major or change my career goal. And at that point, I switched to reading development and got a master's in reading development so that I could combine my undergraduate experience. While doing that, I was offered an opportunity to teach, which I laughed at because that wasn't in my career goal anywhere at any time. However, the offer was for me to teach college. I laughed even harder because I just didn't think anyone my age and my size could teach college. But the long and short of the story is I became a college lecturer in study skills later on in teaching English and humanities. When my grand aunt died in 1985, we needed to do something with all of this historic material, pictures, letters, postcards, a lot of black historic memorabilia in our home in Georgia. And by that time, I realized this is what your ancestors, your mother, your grandmother have raised you to be because I was the only one in the family actually. Everyone was interested, of course, in our history, but no one was stepping forward to do anything about it. So I stepped forward and became the curator of all of the family memorabilia. I'd always been interested in history, but that is how I got into history, and I realized that I needed a more formal understanding. And so I always wanted my doctorate, and I applied for a PhD in 19th century studies. I chose 19th century studies because the artifacts, the memorabilia, the pictures, the letters, everything I had was 19th century and 20th century. And I thought in order to better preserve the family history that I was working on, I needed to understand what that century was all about, especially for black people, especially in Georgia, in the South. But I also needed the professional credentials in order to move my career forward. So that's the long, short, and very detailed background as to how I got into formal history. Right. I'd always been in history in that I grew up in a home filled with history.

SPEAKER_00 4:59

Well, I love that, and you touched on it a little bit, but because this is Black History Month, I would like to hear you speak to the importance of our celebrating it and preserving it. Like I met you on social media a few years ago, and one of the remarkable takeaways for me, I was just listening to you. It would be some months later before we actually interacted. But you made me recognize the importance of preserving our personal family history. So could you speak to that a little bit, the importance of celebrating our history? Then we'll move into the significance of preserving our personal family history.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

I grew up in the segregated South. I went to segregated elementary junior high school. And I was raised by my grandparents and my grandaunts, as I mentioned. They absolutely loved talking about their childhood and all of the historic figures that they met who had visited our home. And I was mesmerized by that. We also had in school, it was called Negro History Week. And each year for Negro History, we we'd have to do, we'd do some project, either as a class or as an individual. Because my family members talked so much about these people that they knew. Because I had lots of things from the house that, you know, Mama, please, can I take this? And with great trepidation, they would allow me to take a book or maybe a picture. And if I really wanted it and they were concerned about it, they'd come to school with me for Negro History Week. Through that process, I learned that it was very important for me to know my history. But I also learned that my family already knew how important it was because that's what they taught me every day. It was nothing new to me. It became new when the teacher said, Oh, we're celebrating Negro History Week. Whereas I've been celebrating Negro history every single day of my life. I mean, I knew it was my history, but I didn't know it was the big deal that it was, and that it soon became, insofar as the country and the cult powers that be, ultimately it became Black History Month many years later.

SPEAKER_00 7:48

Right. Thanks to Coretic Scott King and others.

SPEAKER_01 7:52

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 7:53

Because we just recently celebrated Martin Luther King Day, another important figure in our history. And I know that you are from Georgia, and I wanted others to understand like some of the significance of the area that you grew up, because it's so rich with history. You've shared a lot of it with me. But just kind of give us a little bit of an overview of the historical significance of the community that you grew up in.

SPEAKER_01 8:25

I think what I like best about the community that I grew up in is that I didn't know how historically significant it was when I was growing up. They made it seem like, oh, this is what we do every day. And indeed it was what they did every day, but they included me in it. So my family was a member of the historic Springfield Baptist Church located in Augusta and said to be the oldest black church in the nation. There is still controversy between whether it is the oldest or the first Baptist church in Savannah, I believe it is. However, whether it's the first or second, the church was founded in 1787. And as a kid, what is 1787? There are just some numbers. However, I kept being told about Booker T. Washington coming there, Frederick Douglass coming there, Bishop Henry McNeil Turner coming there. And again, as a kid, I know nothing about this. But fast forward, by the time I've done my doctorate and become a historian and started writing the family history, I'm like, wow, Frederick Douglass, your grandmother and your great-grandmother got to hear Frederick Douglass. They got to hear Booker T. Washington, not just hear him, but see him, because these people spoke either at my church or at the high school, which was five blocks from where we lived. I also later learned that people like Langston Hughes, Marian Anderson, Paul Robeson, just an amazing number of African American men and women came to this little town. And I think the answer to the question is multifold, but simply one, Georgia was founded as a free colony. So early on, enslaved members of the African diaspora came from Florida and from South Carolina into Georgia to freedom. However, Georgia whites didn't like that at all. They didn't like that they were walking on the same ground and being free and having these free blacks and enslaved blacks coming into the town or into the state. So Augusta in particular was a mixture of free and enslaved people. As a result, it just built this rich educational, religious, civic, and social community, and enslaved and free blacks lived side by side along with whites living next door or right across the street. Later on, that became very, very segregated by the time I was born. But it was from these very well-known individuals who weren't just names in a textbook to me. They were people whom my family members who were alive and well told me stories about. So when I write about them now, I feel as though I actually knew them because of how well I knew my ancestors.

SPEAKER_00 11:47

Oh, that's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

The other thing is Springfield Baptist Church is the church where Morehouse College was founded. That was like a Sunday school lesson. If you didn't know that in Sunday school, you could just be put out of Sunday school. Right? Because that's something every member of Springfield Baptist Church then and now would know. Morehouse College was founded in the basement of the original building of Springfield Baptist Church. It stayed there about 15 years before it moved to another black church in Augusta. Then it moved to Atlanta and the name was changed. But it will forever be known as the Augusta Baptist Institute. In my heart, no disrespect to the Morehouse men, but just that kind of history is what I was surrounded by. Yet it never occurred to me until 1985 that I should study history or even be interested in history. As I said, I was interested in my classmate who was blind. How will blind children know how to read? I wanted to do something with my life that would help people in that condition. And only when my family was dying out, and suddenly I had eight bedrooms, a dining room, parlor, kitchen, two-story house filled with like a museum. What is going to happen to this? And I was the one most interested in preserving it. That is when I really became a historian.

SPEAKER_00 13:34

That is an amazing story and such rich history that you had the opportunity to be raised in. I am always amazed when you share these aspects of your youth. I couldn't imagine, you know. We have some historic churches where I'm from as well. And it's interesting because I think in the black community it is not lost on us that many of the churches served as our early places of education as well. And they still do today.

SPEAKER_01 14:04

Just to interrupt you, I might add, I left out a very key part of that history, and that is the life of Lucy Kraft Laney. Yes, yes. Because Lucy Kraft Laney was the founder of Haynes Normal and Industrial Institute, the only school for blacks in Augusta during the time that my great-grandmother and grandmother were children. Well, my grandmother was a child, her mom. But that's where my grandmother, her siblings, and later generations, by the time I'm born, five generations of males and females in my family attended this school, which was part private and yet public. Private in the sense that she wanted so much for her community to be educated, and she felt she had so much to give that even if you didn't have the money to pay, if you had a farm, or if you were a seamstress and you could make uniforms for her students, or you could bring fresh food and they would prepare because some of the students were boarders. Oh wow. Growing up, hearing about Lucy Laney, not just from my family, but other families, and then having among our personal documents, documents of Lucy Laney. My grandmother and Lucy Laney were friends. As a kid, this is just Aunt Lucy, she was a deceased by the time I was born, but yet I felt her presence because there was such admiration for her. So just between all of the people I've already mentioned and Lucy Craflaney, I got an introduction to how important Black history was, my history, our history. I got a lesson into how important it was for women to speak up, that you didn't have to have a man tell you what to do or even support you. If you believed in your story or the thing that you wanted to do, guaranteed there were others in the community who had the same ideas or similar ideas, maybe not the inner strength or courage. And so I didn't know that I grew up in what today might be called a feminist environment. But when I look back on all this history, there was just a lot of feminism going on, or as in the black community, called womanism. And it made me extremely independent, both the information from the community, but also these women in my family who were very independent.

SPEAKER_00 16:56

That's awesome. So we're gonna start to wrap up here, and I want you to just share briefly one of the, I guess, most significant things that you have learned or experiences that you've had in archiving your personal family history.

SPEAKER_01 17:14

Okay, I'll give you the most recent event that happened that, oh, it just I'm still thrilled about it. I grew up seeing a picture of a woman named Charlotte on our mantelpiece. And Charlotte was just Charlotte, Aunt Charlotte. But I thought she was just in the black community, every adult is aunt or auntie. You don't necessarily know if it's DNA blood-related auntie or however the person is auntie. As it turned out, this person is my first cousin two times removed. I had only known her picture. By now, I have letters that she wrote to my grandmother and to other people. And most recently, about six weeks ago, I was given some letters that talk about her and another granduncle. Their letters are from 1939, and I received these letters through a DNA match to me. And I found a branch of my family that I actually thought had died out. Right. But because there was one name, Cicero Grant, Cicero is a very unusual name. And as soon as I saw in the DNA public tree the name Cicero Grant, I jumped on it because I knew this person, whomever tree this was, I knew that person was related to me on some level. And as a result of following that lead, I now have added, I think it's eight new letters written between 1927 and 1940 to the collection that I already have. And I got a call last week that my newly found cousin has pictures for me.

SPEAKER_00 19:14

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 19:15

Because her sister recently passed, and in emptying out the house, everybody now knows Mary collects the pictures or the documents, just call her up. And so I'm just thrilled and excited that my archiving skills have grown, and I know more about what to do, how to do, and I'm moving forward with it.

SPEAKER_00 19:40

That is so awesome. So tell us a little bit about where people may find the work that you have already done, the Marshall Collection.

SPEAKER_01 19:51

The Mary Marshall Collection is partly housed at the Stuart A. Rose Library at Emory University. You can go online and just put in Mary Marshall and Emory University, and a link will come up allowing you to access the collection. You'll be taken to the finding aid and be able to just kind of search it out. Search it out, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 20:24

Awesome.

SPEAKER_01 20:25

The other place is you can go to YouTube and there is a video called Mary Marshall's Mission. I also write on Substack under Dr. Mary Marshall. And those three are the primary ways in which you can learn more information, especially my Substack writings.

SPEAKER_00 20:46

And let me tell you, folks, if you have not gone to Substack, and when you go, please look Dr. Mary Marshall up and subscribe because she is a wonderful writer. Her writing is so rich. She's telling personal stories that could be any of our stories. And she does it in such a way that you just feel like you know her just by her writing. And I would encourage you all to, as I said, look her up, check out her writing. She is a prolific writer, and I love the manner in which she approaches and shares her personal family history. But as I said, I think it's something that we can all take away from the significance of our overall black history, our African American history. And I think we've always known that it was important, but oftentimes we get frequent reminders because it is something that we have an active assault on right now, them trying to take it away. So I am thrilled that you are my first guest here in Connections and Conversations that we are debuting in Black History Month. We're going to continue putting our stakes in the ground. They can't take away our history. We have people like Dr. Mary Marshall who are here to tell us and help us preserve it. So I want to thank you for joining us today, Dr. Marshall, and just giving me a little bit more of your time. Are there any closing words or thoughts that you would like to share with our audience?

SPEAKER_01 22:26

Yes, I have two thoughts. One, while this collection is not really mine, it's my family's, but more importantly, it is our collective history. I just happened to be one of those individuals who came from a family with a lot of foresight, and they documented, wrote information down, preserved the letters, and they knew that there was going to be a Mary Marshall. She might be named Mary, Jane, Susan, Tabitha, whatever her name, they knew there would be a me to preserve this material. So when you look up my name, don't think that you're looking up Dr. Mary Marshall's history. You are looking up black history in America and American history.

SPEAKER_00 23:26

Amen.

SPEAKER_01 23:27

Because our history is American history.

SPEAKER_00 23:31

Absolutely. And you have an event that's coming up soon. Would you like to tell people a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_01 23:36

Yes, I will be the keynote speaker on February 17th in Princeton, New Jersey at the Paul Robson House.

SPEAKER_00 23:46

We will make sure that we have the link to that in the episode when it rolls out. People will have a little time in advance. And also we'll be sharing other links to Dr. Marshall's works and contributions that you will be able to follow and investigate and learn more about. So again, thank you so very much for taking a little time out of your day to talk to me, Dr. Marshall, and to our advocacy arena community. Thank you for having me. Thank you for listening to Connections and Conversations. This is one of many wonderful interviews that we bring to you to help connect you to a larger community of advocates and change makers across the country. You'll get a glimpse into the various ways people are making an impact in their communities. My hope is that it will inspire you to get engaged in some small way as well. We can't all do everything, but at this moment in history, we can all do something. What are you doing? One of the things you can do is to continue to listen, subscribe, and share this Advocacy Arena podcast. You can also join and support the growing grassroots Advocacy Arena community. In other ways, join our weekly live chat hosted on Spotify every Monday at 12 p.m. Eastern. Subscribe to our Substack to get great articles on important topics and exclusive access to extended interview conversations. And don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel as well. We've got some exciting programming lined up. And keep listening to our regular podcast episodes wherever you get your podcast. And of course, subscribe and give us that all important five star review.