Week 8

This week I was finally able to complete the list of notable alumni that I’ve been working on for quite so time now. Altogether I have a list of 62 notable alumni that I’ve found in the files put together by Mrs.Riekerts. Looking back at what I wrote it’s amazing to see a high school that produced so many interesting people who have had an impact on society after they’ve graduated. Ranging from doctors, to professors, entertainers, and even teachers. Jones High School has produced a lot of talented individuals. As for my list, it seems that now I am moving into the second leg of the project because now I have to search for a few Jones graduates that I was not able to find information on during my first round of searches. Depending on the timing my first plan of action will ideally be to contact a couple of alumni who I’ve had contact with in order to see if I could get any leads from them. My second step was going to be to scour the newspapers to see if any of these individuals generate any hits. But one course of action that I’ve been contemplating using was to see if I could contact someone to see if Mrs.Riekerts might have left any of the archives at her house because I’m more than positive she would have worked on some of them at home in her free time. This week there was still no new information on a timetable for me to return to the museum. Hopefully I’ll be meeting with Dr.Cassanello in order to discuss any more opportunities to get back into the museum in order to finalize seeing everything in the museum and potentially begin to digitize some of the important things in the room.

Week 7

This week was a lot similar to last week in the sense that there was no trip to the museum again this week. Despite that I was able to continue to make advancements on the alumni biography list this week. I should be wrapping up the list most likely this weekend, and once I do that I will be able to move onto the next task of trying to find information on the rest of the alumni I was not able to find in the desk. My initial plan of attack was to go straight to the newspaper archives in order to see what I could find but I’ve now reevaluated this plan and decided to try and see what some of the alumni we’ve been working with might know about the missing people. I chose this new plan because of the fact that looking at the biographies that Mrs.Rickerts wrote, I really admired the personal tone that many of them had and if I could even attempt to recreate them for other alum that would be great. Also speaking on the biographies, this week I was able to finish making an individual folder for each alum on my list. I noticed that before it was a little unorganized when I was trying to locate all the files on each person and now I’ve created a system where everything is in one place.

On the museum side of things this week I was able to meet with Dr.Lester to discuss what me and Kyle’s next move was going to be. She more or less told me that we were on the right path by going ahead and cataloguing each collection in the museum in order to get a general sense of what is in the museum. Moving forward Dr.Lester suggested that once it’s time for us to begin digitizing we should start by focusing on items that are dated before 1950.  Hopefully we’ll be able to apply this new guidance soon because I am itching to get back in the swing of things.

Week 6

I have probably said this about every week so far, but this week was actually calmer than last week. This week we were not able to make a trip to the museum, which was a little disappointing because I felt like we were just about to get the exciting part. Last week we seemed to finally be wrapping up the task of getting a look at our surrounding and seeing what exactly is in the museum. What was in store this week was to begin selecting items on our priority list that we could begin digitizing. Although I am sad that didn’t happen, I am in some ways glad that we weren’t able to go to the museum and begin digitizing because in all honesty the amount of material in the museum itself is a little overwhelming. Although we discussed what we were going to try to take a look at before, which was items that can tell the history of Jones High School and the Parramore neighborhood, it is still a tad bit confusing when you have items that don’t completely relate and might be on the border of what we may or may not need. Hopefully I’ll be able to get with Dr.Cassanello and possibly Dr.Lester to discuss what we have in the museum and what materials I should target first.

Other than that the alumni biographies are coming along well. I have been at work reading up on the information that I found in their folders and using that as a tool to create a short concise view of their lives and the impact they had after they graduated Jones High School. So far with the information Mrs.Rickerts put together on each alum I have not really been stuck on what to write about them and that is something I would graciously thank her for if she was still here. Once I am able to finish up the biographies on the alumni I was able to find I will then have to move to scouring local newspaper archives to see what I can find on those who I could not find information on.

Week 5

This week was as eventful as the last. I was able to wrap up the search through the alumni desk and I came away with an abundance of names to do further research on. Looking through the information on each alum I was again very pleased with the way Mrs.Rickerts was able to organize all the information in the files. This was especially appreciated in the biographies that she had wrote for many of the alum, which had a special personal touch that could not possibly be mimicked by someone like me who’s only met a handful of the alumni. Now all that I have to do for the alumni list is to research some of the alum that I was not able to find in the alumni desk, most likely by using the Orlando sentinel as a primary resource. And if that fails I might have to try my luck the way Dr.Lester suggested and contact some of the alum I have built a relationship to ask them what they might know about certain people I’m having trouble finding. In addition to finishing the alumni desk I was able to further look around the museum to discover more of the materials that they have. One interesting thing that I was able to find that might be useful is a book entitled We Remember. The book seemed to be about Jones graduates in the 1950’s talking about their experiences going to Jones High School during that era. Although I was only able to scan through the book, I feel like there is going to be some great information on the environment of the high school during that time, which will give us a better understanding of the community as well. I was also able to find a lot of pictures that mostly revolved around the school’s centennial reunion, but some of the pictures were interesting because they were of the first museum that Jones had located in a portable on campus and photos of the current museum being built and its grand opening. For next week it should be more cataloguing the list of alumni I have and now trying to locate those who were not found in the alumni desk.

Week 4

This week was the first of what seems like many more exciting weeks to come. This week we finally began archiving in the museum! We only came in one day on Thursday but we we’re able to begin working immediately on our project, which I will further discuss. First and foremost however when we did arrive we were greeted by two alumni volunteers, who aided us as we began searching for what to do. The two were also very excited to see what we had to do because they were also at the screening for the Marching Forward documentary that we showed last weekend. Nonetheless before we even started looking for things to do one of the alumni named Barbara Burns, who also happened to be in the documentary that we screened last weekend, surprised me with some very crucial information. As we arrived waiting for me was a printed list of distinguished alumni that seemed to be used beforehand for Jones High School’s curriculum for their own version of freshman orientation. She also had a document for my internship partner Kyle, which was two packets that were also used during their freshman orientation that contained detailed histories of Jones High School that dated back to its foundation. Even though for him the histories might have just been useful for scanning and looking for information he might have missed, for me the list of distinguished alumni was great because it contained information that I’d never seen before. I was excited about having this new list of people to research but more good news was on the way for me. As we were figuring out which tasks me and Kyle would do I was told that there was a desk that contained folders with alumni information and the inner historian in me nearly leaped out of my body. As Kyle was off creating a spreadsheet of different potential collection locations, I dove deep into the desk of alumni information and had an absolute field day. Among resumes and newspaper clippings, the most important thing that I found was biographies that seemed to already been written by former museum curator Audrey Rickerts. Now with this new wealth of information I’m going to be able to begin constructing a quick biography of Jones High alum who have gone on to make a difference after their high school career. Next week I should be wrapping up gathering information on the alumni in the desk and hopefully be moving on to a different collection in the museum.

Week 3

This week was more relaxed like last week so this post might be a little short. I continued to work diligently trying to find as many notable alumni on my own by looking at different Orlando newspapers and other Orlando centered literature. I will admit that although this is tedious work, there is something very satisfying about uncovering people who have changed their environment for the better that don’t necessarily get the huge spotlight. And what is surprising to me is that all of these alumni that I have researched no matter how different the fields they have gone into are, they all have one thing in common and that is Jones High School. This school has produced so many important figures to the Parramore community that it is no surprise to me why people protested and fought for it to stay open.

Another advancement this week is that I’ve got major help in my search for notable alumni coming soon. On Saturday we will be hosting a screening of the Marching Forward documentary for the Jones alumni in order to show them the progress we have been making on the film. Dr.Cassanello made the great suggestion that I use this opportunity to create a short questionnaire in order to ask the alum who they felt were notable graduates of the high school that made changes in the community. Hopefully with this short survey I might be able to gather a list of alumni who I can then research further. In addition to that, the survey would allow me to do what Dr.Lester suggested and find alumni who might be knowledgeable when it comes to impactful people who’ve graduated Jones and use them as a guide in uncovering more information.

Week 2

This week the first task that I was working on was trying to come up with a list of notable alumni from Jones High School. The way our first project in the internship works is that I am in charge of the alumni aspect and my partner Kyle is in charge of coming up with a narrative history of the high school. Although working on finding notable alumni is entertaining and helps me further understand the history of how this high school has produced students who have made a difference in their community and the world, the project does have its downsides. One of the harder things in the project is actually being able to find the alumni to write biographies on. Now when it comes to researching people like Wesley Snipes or the honorable judge Belvin Perry there is an abundance of information I can use and analyze about them, however when it comes down to local civil rights leaders and other local legends the information on them starts to get more and more cloudy. After running into this problem I began trying to scour different Orlando literature and newspapers to try and find people that were important to the community. I found a few names but i still felt as if some important people were omitted from my list. Luckily all this was solved during a meeting later in the week with Dr.Lester.

I met with Dr.Lester in order to discuss what was going to be digitized for RICHES. In our conversation we talked about how the main documents and photos we should be searching for are items that would benefit in uncovering the rich history of the Parramore neighborhood that Jones High School is located in. The main things that we are meant to try and do is to find items that will help map out Parramore by locating the businesses in the area. And by doing this we can also see what important people and places shaped the neighborhood and the Orlando community as a whole. Also by working through RICHES we can tell what people and locations might also connect the black community of Orlando with other communities just like it in not only the central Florida area, but the state of Florida as well. The other important accomplishment in my interview with Dr.Lester was solving the problem I was having researching local notable Jones graduates that I would not be able to just find online. The solution she offered was to talk to the people that I’ve already come into contact like Dr.Hawkins or some of the people that we’ve interviewed in our documentary and ask them what local people they think should be noted on the list. With this new information hopefully i’ll be able to expand my list come next week.

Week 1

Another year another summer internship at UCF. The internship I am participating in this semester is actually a direct result of the first internship I did last semester. Towards the end of my internship with Dr.Cassanello last summer creating five podcast segments for Florida Frontiers I asked him if there were any other internship opportunities available in the fall because I was so intrigued with public history. It turns out that he did have a program available that in the fall that was not quite an internship, but also was not a standard history class either, which is something that immediately caught my attention. The class in the fall semester was taught by Dr.Cassanello along with a film professor Dr.Lisa Mills. In the class we began the process of producing a documentary on the Jones and Edgewater High School marching bands that both brought the city of Orlando together in order to fund their trips to the 1964 World’s Fair in New York. As a history student of course my biggest task in the project was researching both high schools and the city of Orlando in order to find out exactly how this event took place. And the best thing was that because I had done the internship in the summer and most of the information we were looking for in the film was in the newspapers, I was able to utilize a useful skill I learned and that is how to look through microfilm. The class also helped me learn more about the dynamics of filming a documentary as well with Dr.Mills leading the way and showing everyone how to write the scripts using only soundbites, which again was another skill I picked up in last summer’s internship with Dr.Cassanello, as well as other things that contribute to how a documentary is supposed to look. The class in the fall directly led to me taking part in an independent study in which we created scripts for how the film would go, in addition to more research and film shoots in order to have b roll of the interviewees. However one of the more exciting experiences I was able to take part in during the class in the spring semester was traveling to two history conferences in Florida in order to screen the film and receive feedback. Although I didn’t get a chance to have the full conference experience I did enjoy hearing the feedback that actual historians had about our film because they are essentially the premier audience that watches things like this.

For this internship along with my colleague Kyle Aulow, whom I met during the first course in the fall, will be going through the archives at the Jones Museum in Jones High School in order to set aside items to be digitized in addition to writing out a history of Jones High School that other can use when giving tours of the museum. Essentially we will be creating the groundwork for a host of other projects that will happen between Jones High School and UCF and I am excited to be on the ground floor of it all. Hopefully like last year’s internship this can also lead to more exciting projects in the future.