Manuscript Collection Walker-Wood Family Papers | Paula S. Kiser

Manusript Collection: Walker-Wood Family Papers

Paula S. Kiser takes a look inside our digital archive and reveals a snapshot into the early 20th century. t his is a rich collection of papers from the Walker and Wood families, two prominent Black families from Lexington. The materials range from 1910-1975; most of the items created are from 1910-1950. The collection is a combination of images, documents, correspondence, and reports that give a glimpse into life in the first half of the 20th Century. These items provide a look into the economic, social, educational, and religious life of the African-American community in Lexington. They also include information about the historic Blandome home and the development and creation of the Lylburn Downing School. This is the first collection of family papers from a Black family given to the W&L University Library Special Collections and Archives and the first collection of family papers in Special Collections to be completely digitized. The University Library is also very excited to share this collection through the Digital Public Library of America. (https://dp.la/) This provides far reaching access to the history of these Lexingtonian families. The Walker-Wood collection has been used as part of the curriculum at W&L already. The digital scholarship done with this collection is only possible thanks to the hard work done by a team of people in the Library and Special Image above: Collections. Former Digital Collection Assistant student workers Nannie Walker Wood Annjoy Gichane ’21 and Madison Williams ’23 digitized many of the and Clarence M. Wood photographs and documents. Cindy Morton, Manager of Digital Image at right: Services, digitized the rest of the collection and created all of the The Wood Family metadata for the items, naming and describing the resources in the photographed June 1954, collection which allows people to find them. All of this was done from left to right: Clarence, Marie, Clarence, Sr, Nannie, with the consultation, training, and support of Byron Faidley, the Rare Materials Digitization Coordinator and Paula Kiser, Assistant Bette Jo, and Alex Professor & Digital Scholarship Librarian, the project manager. n

MATERIALS THAT ARE AVAILABLE RANGE FROM 1910 TO 1975

To view these photos and additional images in our digital archives:

photo below

https://hdl.handle.net/11021/35418

photo at left

http://hdl.handle.net/11021/35628