High and low

The secret lives of Tulsa’s history hunters

There’s Tulsa history resting in attics and basements, waiting for word to reach the archivists and for the start of the dance between families and the historians who are charged to preserve the artifacts that ground community memory. Once in the hands of historians, Tulsa’s artifacts are carefully preserved, for reasons both scholastic and civic.

Some elevators are like time machines. A visit to The Tulsa Historical Society’s archival offices is a descent into a chilly, bright basement housing over 100 years of vertical files and artifact donations waiting to be studied and catalogued. Conversely, it’s an ascent through the McFarlin Library to reach the office of The University of Tulsa’s Special Collections, a cozy repository more like a library, with shelves to the ceiling.

I. Marc Carlson, Librarian of Special Collections and University Archives at The University of Tulsa, goes beyond donations to build a vast collection of Tulsa history.

“The way you do that is you find them, you express interest, you let them know that this is important and that the material can be preserved where people can get to it and use it. Most people actually respond very well to that. Sometimes you have to plant the seed, sort of nurture it, but eventually people can understand that this is something that you would want,” said Carlson.

To build the archive’s World War I collection, an area for which Carlson said The University of Tulsa is known, it’s been a slow process and years of turning stones. Carlson made a discovery first-hand: letters from woman to her husband, news from the home front to a soldier serving in a great war.

“I found them at an antique store in Muskogee and decided, ‘Hmm…I should probably buy those!’ I keep thinking someday I’ll get lucky and find one of those hidden caches of photos that no one’s ever seen before and I can pick them up and bring them in—for actually anything dealing with Tulsa,” Carlson said.

Sometimes such acquisitions aren’t easy with small budgets, said Ian Swart, Archivist and Curator of Collections at Tulsa Historical Society. “Usually it’s things that are donated, which is problematic when something really awesome comes up and the current owner wants to sell it,” said Swart.

When an item arrives at Tulsa Historical Society, it’s assigned a number, entered into a database, and digitized with a description before being placed in a climate-controlled facility. TU’s team also documents and files the original artifact, noting from where the donation came and noting also any requirements and restrictions specified in the donation.

Both organizations, while they offer public access, keep special control of any and all original artifacts. It’s about preservation, but security also comes into play. For example, the 1928-1932 roster for the Tulsa chapter of the Ku Klux Klan is under guard.

“We don’t let anybody see the original. We let them look at a photocopy of it, mostly because one of my predecessors had a concern that somebody might come and the page with grandpa’s name on it could fall out,” Carlson explained.

Here in the digital age, Museums like THS weigh open, web-based access to special collections with the desire to attract museum goers, to allow those who search to come face to face with history.

“If things are locked in a closet and preserved but no one has access to them, what’s the point? But if you put it online, does it adversely affect attendance at museum galleries? Being this close to something someone had and held and used…that’s an experience you can’t replicate online,” said Swart.

Not everything can be neatly tucked away in archives and museums. As a unique acquisition, THS was bequeathed the Perryman Cemetery, Tulsa’s oldest known cemetery, in the late 1970s. According to Swart, the donation resulted from the family’s concern that the graves would be relocated to sell the property at a later date. Beyond general maintenance, THS is part of a collaborative effort with The Daughters of the American Revolution and Benchmark Monument to restore the site.

“About half of the graves in the cemetery are unmarked. We had a plot map and we knew who was buried where, a transcription had been done of all of the stones in the late ‘30s, so we know what should be on the stones, what dates and names. We’ve ordered period-correct marble headstones in various shapes and sizes. Some we had photos of what the original stones were like so we were able to get custom cuts that would be the original shape,” said Swart.

Known as a 1921 Tulsa Race Riot expert, Carlson’s quest for photographs to preserve and analyze still drives him after 25 years.

“My take on history is actually somewhat cynical, but it’s also based heavily on documentation. A lot of what we have been told about the Riot is undocumented. There’s no way to prove it. There’s also no way to disprove it. It’s a lot of why when I took this job I went away from research and started dealing strictly with photographs. Because there are no politics in the photographs—you get exactly what you see.

“One of the other goals I have is to try to identify the people in the pictures, because I really object to the use of ruins and just pictures of dead people as stock footage that no one has any idea what these things are,” Carlson said. “We need to know who these people are. We need to know where these pictures were taken. I spend a lot of time and effort doing that.”

Lee Roy Chapman has recovered rare tomes through eBay bids, unearthed Bob Wills’ bus in a Texas field following only rumors and back roads. Chapman annihilates the historian stereotype. He’s no bespectacled bookworm with a teaching gig (though he does, at times, wear glasses). While he digs through plenty of archives, he also brought the first exhibit about the work of Larry Clark, author of “Tulsa,” to town. Once a year he gives a bicycle tour through the timeline and geography of the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot.

Chapman’s venture into historical artifact recovery began with a Myspace page. Chapman dedicated a site to Larry Clark’s “Tulsa” and soon after received a message from Joe Andoe, the renowned Tulsa-born artist. This chance encounter set him on the path to what he calls his first significant find: Ted Berrigan’s copy of “The White Dove Review,” the poetry magazine that brought Tulsa writers and artists into collaboration with legendary beatnik poets and modern artists.

“Low and behold, I was down in the recesses of online catalogs and I found [one],” Chapman said. “It was signed by nine of the contributors, leather bound, all five volumes. In the process, I found some of Joe Brainard’s paintings—he was the arts editor for the magazine.” The collection is now housed in Carlson’s collection at The University of Tulsa.

“Since then I’ve been building their collection of Brainard and Ron Padgett materials. It was shortly after that I found the [magazine’s] Warhol covers,” Chapman said.

“That’s the primary thing that I do with all this stuff. I try first to find an institution to buy it and keep it out of the hands of collectors so people like myself can use it for research,” Chapman said.