Amelia Earhart : what really happened at Howland : report II : based on the unabridged pre-war Coast Guard record now released / by George Carson Carrington
4 videotapes (Reference copies). 9 digital .wmv files and .rm files (Reference copies).
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Videotapes
Transcripts
Date:
1989-1990
Introduction:
The Smithsonian Videohistory Program, funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation from 1986 until 1992, used video in historical research. Additional collections have
been added since the grant project ended. Videohistory uses the video camera as a historical research tool to record moving visual information. Video works best in historical
research when recording people at work in environments, explaining artifacts, demonstrating process, or in group discussion. The experimental program recorded projects that
reflected the Institution's concern with the conduct of contemporary science and technology.
Smithsonian historians participated in the program to document visual aspects of their on-going historical research. Projects covered topics in the physical and biological
sciences as well as in technological design and manufacture. To capture site, process, and interaction most effectively, projects were taped in offices, factories, quarries,
laboratories, observatories, and museums. Resulting footage was duplicated, transcribed, and deposited in the Smithsonian Institution Archives for scholarship, education,
and exhibition. The collection is open to qualified researchers.
Descriptive Entry:
Ted Robinson, an employee of the Federal Aviation Administration, held a two-year appointment at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum as a historian of black
aviation. During that time he recorded two video sessions with five black aviators of the 1930s. The interviewees related how they became interested in flying, how they obtained
airplanes and training, how they publicized their aviation skills at the local and national levels, and how they contended with the prejudices opposing them. Robinson was
especially concerned with visually capturing the survivors of that era since there are few pictorial records of their past.
In Session One, recorded in Washington, D.C., in November 1989, Robinson interviews C. Alfred "Chief" Anderson, Janet Harmon Bragg, and Lewis Jackson on their social and
technical experiences in aviation in the upper Midwest and at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. They discussed their struggles to become accredited pilots and open the United
States Army Air Corps to black fliers.
Session Two was recorded in Chicago, Illinois, in March 1990, where Robinson interviewed Cornelius Coffey and Harold Hurd on their similar efforts in the Chicago metropolitan
area and specifically on Coffey's organization of a licensed flight and mechanic's school before and during World War II. During both interviews Robinson used period photographs
to stimulate and complement the recollections of the participants.
This collection consists of two interview sessions, totalling approximately 7:00 hours of recordings and 201 pages of transcript.
Historical Note:
Black American men and women struggled throughout the 1930s to gain the opportunity and right to fly airplanes. Organization within African American communities, support
by white individuals, and aeronautic feats by blacks working with limited resources all served to challenge the racism and sexism of American society. Despite institutionalized
biases and the persisting effects of the Great Depression, the number of licensed black pilots increased about tenfold, to 102, between 1930 and 1941. This development helped
move the federal government, though not the private sector, into sanctioning black men to operate the twentieth century technology of powered flight during World War II.
C. Alfred "Chief" Anderson was born in 1906 and had his first airplane ride in 1928. In 1933, he became the first African American to earn a transport, or commercial, pilot's
license, and with Dr. Albert E. Forsythe completed a series of long-distance flights in 1933 and 1934 to promote black aviation. In 1940, Anderson instructed students from
Howard University for the Civilian Pilots Training Program (CPTP) until he was recruited by Tuskegee Institute in Alabama to act as its chief primary flight instructor. In
1946, he organized Tuskegee Aviation, Inc., to service aircraft until he was forced out of business by the state's attorney general in the late 1950s. He has continued to
fly and co-founded Negro Airmen International in 1970 to encourage others to enter the field of aviation.
Janet Harmon Bragg was a registered nurse inspired to fly by the exploits of Bessie Coleman, the first licensed black pilot in the United States. She earned her pilot's
license in 1932 at the Aeronautical University, Inc., in Chicago, Illinois, and because she was one of the few black pilots still employed during the Depression, Bragg paid
for most of the airplanes used by the Challenger Air Pilots Association during the 1930s. During World War II she was rebuffed by both the Women's Airforce Service Pilots
and a license examiner in Alabama from contributing to the war effort as a pilot; the government also refused her services as a nurse. After the war, Bragg married and ran
two nursing homes until she retired in Tucson, Arizona.
Lewis A. Jackson was born in 1912 and started flying in 1930. He gained his transport license in 1935; his barnstorming paid for the B.S. he received from Marion College
in Indiana in 1939. Jackson joined Cornelius Coffey in Chicago as flight instructor before leaving for Tuskegee where he became director of training for their CPT Program.
In 1948, he earned his M.A. in education from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and his Ph.D. from Ohio State University in Columbus in 1950. Jackson served in various teaching
and administrative positions, including the presidency, at Central State University. He left in 1972 for an administrative post at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio.
He has maintained an interest in flying, examining applicants for pilot licenses, and designing and building airplanes that could also be used on roads.
Cornelius Coffey was born in 1903 and had his first airplane ride in 1919. He graduated from an automotive engineering school in 1925 and an aviation mechanics school in
Chicago, Illinois, in 1931. He co-organized the Challenger Air Pilots Association with John Robinson to promote flying among blacks in the Chicago area, built an airport in
Robbins, Illinois, and opened an aeronautics school. In 1937 he earned his transport license and opened the Coffey School of Aeronautics. In 1939 the African-American communities
in Chicago and Washington, D.C., successfully lobbied to have Coffey's school included in the CPT Program; Coffey trained black pilots and flight instructors throughout World
War II. After the war, Coffey joined the Chicago Board of Education and established an aircraft mechanics training and licensing program in the city's high schools. Coffey
retired in 1969 and has since acted as a licensed mechanic examiner and aircraft inspector.
Harold Hurd first saw a black man fly an airplane at an airshow in 1929. Three years later, he was one of the first class of all black graduates from Aeronautical University
in Chicago. After graduation Hurd helped organize the Challenger Air Pilots Association and its 1937 successor organization, the National Airmen's Association of America,
in efforts to expand black interest in flying. He underwrote his aviation interests by working at the Chicago Defender newspaper. He later worked for several local papers
on Chicago's Southside.
6 videotapes and 1 audiotape (Reference copies). 7 digital .wmv files and .rm files (Reference copies).
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Videotapes
Audiotapes
Transcripts
Date:
1989
Introduction:
The Smithsonian Videohistory Program, funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation from 1986 until 1992, used video in historical research. Additional collections have
been added since the grant project ended. Videohistory uses the video camera as a historical research tool to record moving visual information. Video works best in historical
research when recording people at work in environments, explaining artifacts, demonstrating process, or in group discussion. The experimental program recorded projects that
reflected the Institution's concern with the conduct of contemporary science and technology.
Smithsonian historians participated in the program to document visual aspects of their on-going historical research. Projects covered topics in the physical and biological
sciences as well as in technological design and manufacture. To capture site, process, and interaction most effectively, projects were taped in offices, factories, quarries,
laboratories, observatories, and museums. Resulting footage was duplicated, transcribed, and deposited in the Smithsonian Institution Archives for scholarship, education,
and exhibition. The collection is open to qualified researchers.
Descriptive Entry:
Cathleen S. Lewis, curator at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum (NASM), interviewed Oleg Gazenko, Evgenii Shepelev, and Abraham Genin about their research
and participation in the Soviet aviation and space medicine program prior to 1964, as well as their work at the Institute. Lewis was primarily interested in documenting early
work in the fields of aviation and space medicine. She also visually documented museum exhibits about the Institute's work in space exploration.
Session one took place at the museum of The Institute for Biomedical Problems. Cathleen Lewis and Andreas Tamberg (interpreter) conducted a group discussion with Gazenko,
Genin, and Shepelev. In session two, Gazenko narrated a tour of the museum gallery of IMBP, which showed the use of animals in space exploration. In session three, Genin narrated
a tour of the museum gallery of manned space exploration, which documented the development of the spacesuit, parachute systems, and factors for life maintenance in space.
In session four, Gireeva and Magedov led tours in the Institute's Primate Space Flight Training Facility, where they discussed primate training and conditioning in preparation
for space flight. Session five documented interior and exterior shots of IMBP, without narration. Finally, an audio interview with Shepelev described his work in space medicine.
This collection consists of five videotaped interview sessions, totalling approximately 5:00 hours of recordings and 86 pages of transcript. Also included is one audio
interview, totaling approximately 1:15 hours of audiotape and 19 pages of transcript.
All sessions were conducted in Russian with some English translation. Sessions were transcribed verbatim in Russian and were then translated to English.
Historical Note:
The Institute for Biomedical Problems (Institut mediko-biologicheskikh problem, IMBP) was founded in 1963 to undertake the study of space medicine. It is located in
Moscow, USSR, and consists of a Primate Space Flight Training Center, research laboratories and a small museum.
Oleg Gazenko attended The Second Moscow Medical School and The Military Medical Academy in Leningrad. He was a director of the IMBP (1967-1987) and was a specialist in
gravitational physiology. He was a member of the first group of Soviet scientists to study the gravitational effects of acceleration and weightlessness on-board Soviet sounding
rockets in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Gazenko participated in cooperative projects with the Life Sciences Division of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(NASA), and oversaw preparation and evaluation of cosmonauts for long duration spaceflights.
Abram Moiseevich Genin attended The Second Moscow Medical School and The Central Institute for Advanced Training of Doctors in Moscow. A specialist in biophysics, Genin's
early work dealt with biophysical problems of aviation, especially the mechanics of decompression disease. Genin also worked on the factors of life support in space: cabin
pressure, weightlessness, and gravitational effects on the blood circulation.
Evgenii Shepelev attended The Second Moscow Medical School and specialized in the physiological effects of artificial environments. This work was essential for the successful
execution of the Soviet space station program and would be critical for sending people to Mars. Shepelev used himself as the subject of the first Soviet isolation experiments
in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Irina Gireeva and Vladimir Magedov were also interviewed. Gireeva was an animal technician at the center; Magedov directed computer operations in the building.
