The stated purpose of the Colored Conventions Project is to “provide further insight into the Colored Conventions and expand our understanding of early black organizing.” From 1830 until well after the Civil War, African Americans gathered across the United States and Canada to participate in political meetings held at the state and national levels. These “Colored Conventions” “brought Black men and women together in a decades-long campaign for civil and human rights.”

            After considering the purpose of this digital archive, we can conclude that anyone can learn from the CCP project. The CCP does mention specific people who this archive can be particularly helpful to. Within the “Teaching” section, there is a sub-section titled “Research Resources and Classroom Modules” which states that the CCP has “developed a range of research-based teaching materials to engage faculty, students, and the general public in the rich documentary record of the Colored Conventions movement.” It goes on to state “CCP scholars and librarians have curated sample writing assignments, research guides, educational resources, and an innovative classroom teaching module, all designed to encourage investigations into the themes and debates that arose for the Black men and women who organized, attended, and supported the Colored Conventions.”

            The CCP meets the needs of the audience it is designed for in several ways. There are many different forms of media within each exhibit that help to illustrate in different ways the depth of black political organizing in the 19^th century.

Within the project is an archive of digital records of the hundreds of collected documents of the Colored Conventions movement, spanning from the 1830s to the 1890s. Listed there are transcripts of each convention with records. Within this records section, there are links so that one can search for conventions by (1) year, (2) by national conventions, and by (3) state conventions. There is also an advanced search feature where one can search for keywords from the transcripts of conventions and can narrow that search by particular “fields” such as convention type, date, location, etc. The results can be shown in a table view or an image view, and for a table view, one has options to view by “type” or “convention” and can view up to 200 results per page or “only items with images or files.”

            There is also a section that lists exhibits. That section states “these curated exhibits draw from our collections to present cultural artifacts and materials related to Black organizing in the nineteenth century.” An exhibit that is illustrative of many of the other types of media in the project’s other exhibits is about Henry McNeal Turner, who was a politician, pastor, and community organizer. One can find not only prose on the life of Turner, but also photographs and drawings of Turner. Within Turner’s biography section there is a Sutori timeline where the viewer can scroll down and read up on events from Turners life and view photographs and drawings of his mother, his wives over the years and of the institutions where he worked.

            Within the biography section is a photograph of a recruitment poster for African Americans from the time of the Civil War and an interactive map where letters from Turner and black soldiers in the Union army detailing their experiences in the war can be read. In the section titled “Turner and the AME Church,” one can view image files of book covers and title pages of works of literature that Turner was involved in. Also within that section can be found Google slides of a sermon Turner gave and image files of historical newspaper pages featuring Turner. In the section, “Turner’s Travels” there can be seen an interactive Google Map detailing Turner’s travels to and from Africa and when they were undertaken. In “Turner and the Conventions,” one can find an interactive map of the United States pinpointing visually Turner’s attendance at various Colored Conventions over the years with short summaries detailing the conventions and photos of convention’s posters. Also in this section is an interactive Google Map pinpointing places where newspaper accounts of the conventions were published.  In the section “Emigration, ” there is a Sutori Timeline detailing the ways in which the idea of emigration was repeatedly invoked during the Colored Conventions movement and it includes various historical excerpts and photos involving emigration.

            The CCP project meets the needs of it’s audience to a great extent by not only providing a wealth of information from various sources, but by having that information illustrated in several different forms of media, which allow for multiple different avenues of understanding this historical period. In reviewing the CCP project Bolter and Grusin’s “Remediation” came to mind. They stated, “digital hypermedia seek the real by multiplying mediation so as to create a feeling of fullness. . . .” This can be seen in all the various forms of media displayed in each exhibit, which gives the viewer many different ways of processing information to create a broader and deeper understanding of black political organizing in the period. The three views of remediation can all be seen within the project. The mediation of mediation can be seen in the way a Sutori timeline can remediate photographs, drawings, and prose in the form of an interactive timeline. Secondly, every form of media in each exhibit comments upon something that is real that explains, illustrates, or comments upon the work that was being done by African Americans during the time period, whether it’s something like a photograph of a newspaper passage that comments upon a specific Colored Convention or a Google Map that traced the voyages Henry McNeal Turner took to Africa to forge connections there between Africans and African Americans. Lastly, remediation functions as a reforming or refashioning of other media in the example of an interactive Google Map which visually documents in map-form the locations of local newspapers around the country which had pieces on Colored Conventions in that local area, with the map refashioning the newspaper excerpts. The CCP project is ultimately a very insightful, creative and thorough project.

The Colored Conventions were meetings held by African American men and women between the 1830s and 1890s to discuss various issues, fight for their rights, and discourse. These conventions were held in both the United States and Canada. Although these conventions started by being dominated by men, soon women took influential roles in them. The Colored Conventions Project assembled all the records of the Colored Conventions on their website to make them easily accessible to a wider public. The first visible on their website is a drawing of how one of these conventions would look like. This image although simple is used as a powerful representation of how these conventions were held. It shows the unity of black people in one space with one common goal: civil and human rights. This website has some illustrations that will give the reader a mental image of the importance of the material. 

The reader is able to explore all the conventions that have been recorded, and for his or her convenience, they can be searched by year, national conventions, or state conventions. When the specific convention is chosen, the reader will be redirected to a new page that will show a scanned copy of the text published after the convention. On this page, before opening the text the reader can know the subject of the text, the creator, source, publisher, date, type, etc. Once the text has been opened the reader has a detailed description of what happened during the convention. There are not many pictures or visuals of each of these conventions, but the information that is being shared is compelling. In spite of the vast information found on this website, these records are not complete; all the titles appear for all the conventions known to have happened, but a lot of them do not have anything recorded. Since this information is influential in understanding and appreciating the fight for black rights, it is critical that all conventions have their own records.

https://omeka.coloredconventions.org/

When looking at the conventions by the state it is relevant to observe that some states had a myriad of conventions, and a few others only held one or two. For example, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Texas had the most conventions; on the other hand, Florida and District of Columbia have one each. The first recorded Colored Convention in New York (1840) is a facsimile document that begins with the call that was given to free black residents of the State of New York calling them to meet and discuss their rights. On this call, the invitation is toward every single person that can attend, which shows how important these meetings were for those who were organizing them. Then what proceeded on the meeting is described, everything that was said by the leaders. The list of the people who were appointed to the business committee is on the first pages. Then, the rules ought to be followed during the convention, followed by the names of the men who attended it. And finally, everything else that was said each day of the convention followed by reports. One of the main purposes of this convention was to expand suffrage rights. Each convention had its own purposes. 

https://omeka.coloredconventions.org/state-conventions

https://omeka.coloredconventions.org/items/show/620

The Colored Conventions Project website, additionally to records of the conventions, has also some exhibits. One of them is an interactive map of the communities of African Americans in Philadelphia from the 1830s; which showed how connected the community was. Another one is showing schools where African American women attended alongside African American men in the 1850s. There was a strong fight for African Americal women to get an education and in 1853 the Colored Convention in Rochester decided to open the doors of a manual labor school for women to attend. Although the exhibits are significant, if someone is looking for information specifically about them, then, the Colored Conventions Project does not hold enough information.

The Colored Conventions Project is a perfect example of remediation. At first, the documents of the conventions were useful for those who want to know exactly what happened during the convention and to point out critical topics that were discussed for future reference. Now all these documents have been put on one website, more organized and accessible, so the person who reads them today can work with them. Some people may choose to use them to learn, others for small or big projects, and they can even be used for activism. Although all these records are in one place, their authenticity has been kept, they have not been edited or corrected before being put on the website. In a lot of cases, they have been typed out to make them more legible. According to the website, all the original collection is conserved in the University of Delaware Library Institutional Repository. 

A lot of times works that are adapted for different purposes and for a different public are misappropriated which can cause conflict to the author, or to anyone who has identified the importance of the original work. However, in the case of the Colored Conventions Project, all the work that has been collected has been well preserved and organized. This project has not changed the original intent of the documents, but it has expanded it. And having it be accessible to a wider public takes away the authoritativeness of them. Because, although not every single person that will come in contact with this project will be an academic, the value of the content of this project will be universally appreciated.

Compared two editing forms, documentary editing and critical editing, the former has a historical perspective on dealing with text as a relic, thereby emphasizing the author’s intention and strengthening his authority. The latter, on the other hand, focuses on the current context in which the article is being read, so the author’s authority is reduced while at the same time the editor gets transferred some of it. In other words, each has its pros and cons. For the former, it opens wide possibilities for the reader to interpret the content because it is aimed at faithfully conveying the original to the reader. However, in the obsessive process of pursuing to seek the author’s intentions, there can be some sanctification of the original. The latter, meanwhile, has the advantage of enabling past and present to be connected and helping readers understand through modernized versions. However, at the same time, the fact that the understanding is the result of reinterpretation by the editor as an actor within society may cancel out the advantage.

In this regard, I don’t mean to be imperative, but editors may need to be wary of the possibility of reflecting their intentions while successfully reflecting the modern context to the original. I am aware of that the emergence of numerous subjective voices resulting from the development of the media is an inevitable phenomenon in modern society. I also know that being in a ‘completely neutral’ position is almost impossible. Therefore, I think it is necessary to reexamine the collective intelligence aspect of the ‘critic’ that the critical editing form has. Editing in modern society is done through collaboration and interaction among many parts. I think this process will make communication and reflection possible and move future knowledge away from being ideological in the renewed way.

It is not just the sense of what is to be edited has transformed from the traditional notion of the literary work to the modern concept of the text (as introduced by Rolland Barthes in his essay “From Work to Text” [1]) as well as to the expanded application of Barthes’s conception of the text to include nonlinguistic codes such as images and music, the field of scholarly editing itself is undergoing a dramatic change. Electronic editions of the texts become a new option for editors. As Kenneth M. Price mentioned in his essay “Electronic Scholarly Editions” [2], these electronic editions (such as the digital archives) get a lot of storage space inside. This means that high-resolution color images become affordable for a digital archive while they are not affordable for the printed edition. In addition, multiple versions of a text can be all displayed in one electronic edition for the users to compare those valuable texts symbol for symbol and to reflect on the meanings of the differences. 

Given this multiple-texts approach to editing, it seems that the possibility of presenting all versions of a text online diminishes the authority of an editorial team partly because this type of editing is not based on finding an authoritative text based on “final intentions” of the author or of an editorial team. Nonetheless, the range of responsibilities for those scholarly editors is in fact broadened. Editors still define objects in space by shaping the materials to be presented in a digital archive. Furthermore, in order to produce a functionable electronic edition of texts, they have to collaborate with others, such as “librarians, archivists, graduate students, undergraduate students, academic administrators, funding agencies, and private donors” (those whom Price briefly mentioned in his essay [2]). 

Technical experts and knowledge of technical issues are also indispensable in the editorial decision-making [2]. For instance, besides the standard tasks of investigating the history of texts, making critical judgements about them by identifying the works and applying bibliographical findings in the editing process [3], scholarly editors who choose to work in digital medium have to get familiar with the role that the database played in editing [2]. In contrast to any form or mode of narrative (which assigns variant values to variant objects), the database collects individual items without discriminating between different cultural values [4]. To effectively deal with the neutral data, editors still have to make the data accessible to the general individuals through a multimedia narrative. As Price quotes from Horton’s Designing and Writing Online Documentation for reflecting on the relationship between an editorial team and the readers in the digital age, “[The users] may not like being controlled or manipulated, but they do expect the writer to blaze trails for them [2].” 

Reference

[1]       R. Barthes, The rustle of language, 1st ed. New York: Hill and Wang, 1986.
[2]       K. M. Price, “Electronic Scholarly Editions,” in A Companion to Digital Literary Studies, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2013, pp. 434–450.
[3]       W. P. Williams and C. S. Abbott, An introduction to bibliographical and textual studies, 4th ed. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2009.
[4]       L. Manovich, “Database as a Genre of New Media.” [Online]. Available: http://time.arts.ucla.edu/AI_Society/manovich.html. [Accessed: 10-Mar-2020].

In Martha Nell Smith’s essay “Electronic Scholarly Editing” in A Companion to Digital Humanities, she mentions “digital scholarly editing,” which I find very interesting. It is the editor’s work to deal with literal and artistic components of scholarly publication tasks. She gives an example of CD ROM slipped inside the cover of a book. This could be an outdated example for many, but it is a good point on how an editor accesses information in multimedia formats, especially new media formats in the 2020s. In 1997, Chris Marker made his CD movie/book Immemory, which is a hybrid of book, video, audio, and game. Now, both the form and content of multimedia publications have evolved. Relating to Williams and Abbott’s book bibliographical and textual studies, documentary editing, (which is not the editing of the documentary film, but similarity could be found in both procedures), may involve new questions for editors in terms of fidelity and materiality. For critical editing, the editor has to rethink how to collect, evaluate, and present the evidence about the authority of the text(s). How to determine authorial intention when the editor works with other mediums and what measures he should take to present the result to the intended audience. The chapter “editorial procedure” in Williams and Abbott’s book is also connected with the idea of multimedia, especially in its discussion of collation. Digital imaging technologies and “editing” software provide the editor with possibilities to work with images, photocopy of text, or microfilm.

Tian Leng

March 10, 2020

The horrors of editing are hinted at in Williams and Abbott’s An Introduction to Bibliographical and Textual Studies, when the authors describe what occurred to Willard Motley’s novel Knock on Any Door (bolding of text is mine): “…editors at Macmillan and then at Appleton-Century collaborated with Willard Motley to reduce his 600,000-word typescript…to 250,000 words, to eliminate parts of the novel they judged wooden, to soften the depiction of sexuality and political corruption, and to manufacture a book that they could market at three dollars a copy” (74). It is this sort of recounting, in which an artistic work is beheaded for financial gain, which dissects the nature of asking what “needs” an editor has in shaping a text. If we are to follow the logic that “every act is a political act,” espoused by the likes of artist Daniel Buren and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (amongst countless others), then the work of an editor is no exception. There will be those editors, such as the individuals in charge of Motley’s work, whose banal subservience to authority will produce capital, or those whom will edit a work to serve an individual or state ideology. For instance, I am an adherent of the latter group, for one of my ellipses above omitted Motley’s name so as to obscure the fact that Williams and Abbott made it seem as though Motley worked alongside his editors in trying to peddle his book for three dollars. Without the omission, I do not believe I could have easily introduced a critical argument of the financial workings of publishing houses.

In “Who Owns Anne Frank?,” arguably my favorite essay, writer-critic Cynthia Ozick argues that Frank’s autobiography has been “bowdlerized, distorted, transmuted, reduced…infantilized, Americanized…falsified, kistchified, and, in fact, blatantly and arrogantly denied” (77). Part of her blame falls upon the shoulders of Otto Frank, Anne’s father, who sought to magnify “Anne’s idealism” without any regard as to why this idealism was smothered and ultimately obliterated at Bergen-Belsen in 1944. Ozick blames Frank’s meddling with the autobiography on his and Anne’s disparate upbringings. Though Otto too was a victim of the Shoah (the Hebrew term for The Holocaust), his upbringing was defined by petit-bourgeois stability (an especially lasting line: “Otto Frank had breathed the air of the affluent bourgeoisie”), whereas most of Anne’s life was spent in persecution, while her final years were defined by hiding, the backdrop of her existence permeated with sounds of bombs and bullets. Fatherhood does not confer surrogacy. It was the elder Frank’s insistence in Anne’s “optimistical view of life” which allowed the following line to be torn from Anne and “define” her legacy: “I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart” (85). Ozick points out that in the same passage, Anne writes: “I see the world being transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions…” (85). This is the Anne whose work is a direct result of her historical context, as opposed to the Anne who makes universal and abstract calls to optimism. And what of the Anne who observes: “There’s a destructive urge in people, the urge to rage, murder, and kill”? Ozick argues these lines which do not “give the lie to the pervasive horror of her time.” One might find it difficult to consider Anne an optimist when her autobiography remained unfinished, her life enduring a painful end in the snow at Bergen-Belsen, surrounded by hundreds of others soon-to-be ghosts. Ozick posits Otto Frank as editor, and she responsibly builds a milieu for Otto which provides context for his actions. His upbringing was one of assimilation and avoiding confrontation, which resulted in the “diluting” of Anne’s observations of anti-Semitism, not just in Germany but across Europe, and her pulling the veil on the more monstrous aspects of human nature. The essay is a worthy read, as Ozick also writes about the various cinematic and theatre adaptations of Anne’s work, and how these too have further distorted Anne’s self-portrait. At the end of the essay, Ozick muses, with a pain residing within the margins, whether a more “salvational” act than Miep Gies’ rescuing of Anne’s work would’ve been: “Anne Frank’s diary burned, vanished, lost—saved from a world that made of it all things, some of them true, while floating lightly over the heavier truth of named and inhabited evil” (102).