- (SINGING) Little boxes in the archives, little boxes made by Hollinger. Little boxes in the archives, little boxes all the same. There's a gray one, and a gray one, and a gray one, and a gray one. And they're all made out of cardboard, and they all are acid-free. [MUSIC PLAYING]
You are listening to WREK Atlanta. And this is Lost in the Stacks, the research library of rock and roll radio show. I'm Charlie Bennett in the studio with Fred Rascoe, Marlee Givens, and a couple of archivists. There's going to be trouble. Each week on Lost in the Stacks, we pick a theme and then use it to create a mix of music and library talk. Whichever you tune in for, we hope you dig it.
Today's show is called Reactivated Research. We're speaking with a pair of archivists today about what happens when you contextualize history and then leave that context where someone can find it.
I mean, that sounds like every show we do about archives. The only thing missing from that description is the troublemaking.
Oh, I got a feeling that troublemaking is coming, too.
I wouldn't expect any less. In 2015, an archivist-to-be wrote a thesis called "The Politics of Protection-- the Forgotten History of Georgia Feminists and Doe v. Bolton." Doe v. Bolton is a Supreme Court case that originated in Georgia about abortion rights which was argued and decided the same day as Roe v. Wade. CHARLIE BENNETT: Then, seven years after that thesis, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and that thesis was, as we might say, reactivated.
For today's show, we're going to talk to returning guests Alex McGee, the university archivist at Georgia Tech and author of the thesis, and Morna Gerrard, the archivist for women and gender collections at Georgia State University, for whom Alex was a graduate research assistant back in 2015.
And our songs today are about rights, repetition, and reactivation. There are a lot of tough and frustrating political arguments that we keep having to make again and again. And archivists hold the proof of that. Sometimes the frustration is enough to just make you want to take a running slide tackle. So let's start with one of our guest Alex McGee's favorites. By request, here is "Slide Tackle" by Japanese Breakfast right here on Lost in the Stacks.
[JAPANESE BREAKFAST, "SLIDE TACKLE"]
That was "Slide Tackle" by Japanese Breakfast, and this is Lost in the Stacks. Our show today is called Reactivated Research, and our guests are the archivists Alex McGee and Morna Gerrard.
Alex is the University Archivist here at Georgia Tech, and Morna is the archivist for women and gender collections at Georgia State University. Welcome back to the show, y'all.
Happy to be here.
Very happy to be back.
You all might notice some weird pauses during this show. It's because we're sharing a very small number of mics among a large number of people. All right, will you all tell us why you two come as a pair? What was going on in 2015? What was your working relationship? Basically, tell the audience why we've paired you up for the show.
So in 2015, I was wrapping up my time working as a graduate research assistant for Morna with the women's collections before I went and got my first big-girl archivist job. And I wrote my thesis, "Doe v. Bolton" after I found the inspiration for this topic-- a historian's dream, something that people did not write about yet. And I found it when I was working on my first exhibit as a graduate research assistant all the way back in 2012.
And while working-- it was for the 40th anniversary of Doe v.-- well, Roe v. Wade. And while doing the research for that exhibit, I found this companion case to Roe v. Wade that people didn't talk about and ended up saying, I should write about this.
Yeah, and I was very happy to guide Alex along the way. She actually came to me in 2012, and I was so happy when she arrived on my doorstep. Every couple of years, I have to call for a new graduate research assistant, and Alex answered the call with a whole bunch of other people. And my goodness, her research interests were so aligned with the women's collections, so solidly aligned, that it was an absolute no-brainer. And we have been tied at the hip ever since.
You were doing a history degree, Alex?
Yeah, I was working on my master's in history with a certificate of public history.
And had you already been archives-curious, or was this an interesting GRA--
Hmm. Yeah, interesting. CHARLIE BENNETT: --that brought you in? Yeah, so I think I was archives-curious. But as many jobs in this field, you'll find, if you're trying to get in, they want some sort of experience before you can really get your foot in the door. And so working with Morna-- I remember when I interviewed, Morna was like, this will be great. You can decide if this is something you want to do for the rest of your life or not. So it was great.
Yeah. I do remember when I interviewed with her, and I was telling her about the research I had done as an undergrad at the other school in the state that we'd sometimes talk about, the University of Georgia--
There are no rivalries here.
OK. The other-- University of Georgia was where I did history and women's studies. And I remember telling her about my research when I was an undergrad there, and she whispered to herself, oh, my god, you're perfect.
This is true.
Do you normally have history majors-- ah, majors-- history students as your GRAs? What's your normal pool?
My normal pool tends to be history, English, women's gender and sexuality studies.
Nice. So you were doing an exhibit for archives and then encountered something that was interesting to you. And were you looking for a thesis topic? Were you in search, at the time?
I was definitely in search. When you're working on your history master's degree, you know you're going to have to write a thesis. And the hope is that you are writing about something that someone else hasn't already written about. That is the dream. I knew I wanted to do something about women's history. I had done a lot of constitutional history before. And what that would be-- I mean, I was interested in the reproductive rights movements.
So, yeah, I was definitely in search of something, but I didn't know what it was. And when doing the research for this exhibit, that was when-- I knew about Doe v. Bolton, but I think I just assumed that it had been written about by other folks. And it was only when I was doing the research for the exhibit that I realized how much there was about it and how much-- well, in the archives, but how little had been written about it in terms of scholarship.
CHARLIE BENNETT: And in your thesis, you acknowledge Morna as the inspiration. You call that the gift that she gave you. Was that because you were in the archives, or was there a little more than that? Morna, did you push this student into a thesis? I pushed Alex in all sorts of ways--
[LAUGHTER]
--not just this way. But I just want to call it as it is. Alex is an outstanding archivist. And I realized very quickly when she started to work with me that she should have a career in archives, whether she knew it or not. We gave her challenging-- simple work to start with. But within the three years that she was working with us, she did more, and more, and more rigorous archival work.
By the time she was done, she was actually doing professional-level work, which was really an amazing thing to see. And it made me feel really great watching her grow within herself and toward the profession. And I think, Alex, you stayed an extra year to keep working in the archives.
Yeah. I added the certificate in public history, so then I knew I was going to stay around at least another semester. And then I was like, well, no need to rush this, so we'll just do a full year.
Can you remember how long it took you to write the thesis?
I mean, the beautiful thing about grad school is they usually have some classes where you have to start chipping away at things. You have to do the historiography, which is, like, what has been written about this topic? What have other historians said or hinted at? So I had written that, maybe, in 2013-- yeah, maybe 2013.
So a couple of years.
A couple of years.
And do you remember the page count? You don't have to know it exactly. About how many pages?
Oh, gosh, no. I think before it got all weirdly formatted, it was close to 100. But that's not including the footnotes and all that.
Yeah. OK, so, now, you need to take one minute to condense two years and 100 pages for us. No, actually--
Doe v. Bolton-- go.
Yeah, go.
[LAUGHTER]
So Doe v. Bolton is a companion case to Roe v. Wade, as has been said. And, essentially, Georgia feminists sued the state because they were arguing that-- so Georgia had what was called a liberalized abortion law, which was-- unlike the laws that were struck down, the Texas law, in particular, in Roe v. Wade, which outlawed all abortion, Georgia's was liberalized, meaning that there were exceptions where women could get abortions.
The rub was that you had to meet five really strict standards to qualify. You had to prove you were a legal resident of Georgia. You had to have someone else prove-- sign off saying that, yes, they believe that you are a legal resident of Georgia. You had to get doctors to weigh in and say that this was medically necessary. The doctors had to be in Georgia. You then had to have it done at a special, certified hospital.
And, at the time, I mean, we're talking, like, 50 counties in the entire state of Georgia had hospitals that would meet those standards. And what happened was that it became a game of optics. Hospitals didn't want to be seen as doing too many abortions every month, so they had these unofficial quotas that people didn't know about that they were observing.
And hospitals like Grady, which I write about in my thesis, had, like, commissions where a sheriff was on it and would review whether or not this woman deserved to have an abortion. And you ended up seeing where the women that were able to successfully get an abortion done by Grady were actually not the traditional community that Grady was serving. It was wealthier, white women from the suburbs, Buckhead, et cetera, that were the ones actually able to get an abortion.
So the reality was that if you were at the intersection of race, class, you were likely not able to get a legal abortion in the state of Georgia. So these women challenged that law, and it was struck down by the Supreme Court in 1973.
And can I add that, at Grady at the time, you could-- they would allow six women per month to get an abortion. And if you were the seventh, you were out of luck.
It's very hard to go from something like that to a standard radio segue. So I'm going to give Fred the tiniest buffer before he says--
Well, and I will say, masterful job. I mean, who needs Wikipedia when you can summarize Doe v. Bolton like that. So well done. You're listening to Lost in the Stacks, and we'll be back with archivist Alex McGee and Morna Gerrard after a music set.
And you can file this set under HQ 14 10.W683. [JOAN BAEZ AND MIMI FARIÑA, "BREAD AND ROSES"] (SINGING) As we go marching, marching. [LORETTA LYNN, "THE PILL"] (SINGING) Cause mama's got the pill.
That was "The Pill," by Loretta Lynn-- gosh, that was hard to say-- and "Bread and Roses" by Joan Baez and Mimi Fariña-- songs about women's rights which, of course, are synonymous with human rights.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Welcome back to Lost in the Stacks. And our guests today are a pair of archivists-- Alex McGee from Georgia Tech and her advisor from her grad school days, Morna Gerrard from Georgia State University. And it just occurred to me-- we've had Morna on, and I think the last time she was on was 2015.
Yeah.
Alex was her student back when Morna was on the show last. Oh, man. Nice. I just got the thumbs up, there. So we were talking-- this is a very serious, kind of a bummer subject, when you look at the prospects of how things might go in the future. Doe v. Bolton-- your thesis topic-- that's a ruling-- it came down, actually, the same day as Roe v. Wade.
And so can you talk a little bit-- was it because it was limited to Georgia-- there were different limitations-- is that why there were separate cases? Can you talk a little bit about that?
Well, so each case-- it was different people challenging different laws, but they were paired because the Court recognized that they were addressing the same topic. So it made sense to have--
Just at different degrees.
--the arguments the same day. Yeah. And so because Roe v. Wade-- that was a law where all abortion was outlawed, so that was considered a wider-sweeping decision in that it essentially said, well, you can't outlaw abortion like that, whereas Doe v. Bolton was more limited in scope. It was abortion was functionally available but, in practice, wasn't.
And so the point I make with the pairing of them and why one was more popular than the other and why should we care about Doe v. Bolton today is that I do think you can look at the record and see that how these laws were written-- the Doe v. Bolton law, in particular, the Georgia law-- that is the model that we are seeing come back.
More restrictions on--
Functionally, it is legal. In practice, it is a lot harder to get legally.
Yeah. Just as we're recording this, I mean, Florida just came out with a six-week ban, right?
Yeah.
So is that how journalists got connected with you? Was a journalist looking into that? Because a journalist discovered your thesis and asked you about it or maybe asked Morna about it.
So I think the first-- I got a couple articles, journalist requests last year. So with the Supreme Court's decision last year overturning Wade and Doe v. Bolton, journalists were curious about what, would the impact look like in Georgia? And so I was first contacted by a journalist from the SaportaReport last May, and it was a nice piece. It's essentially a CliffsNotes of my thesis, which is good to have, I guess.
But I think they were looking for, what does this mean for Georgia, and what does the past tell us? And so my thesis does answer that question.
Do you have a sense of why that happened? Was it a Google search brought them to you or something like that?
I'm guessing Georgia State ScholarWorks profile comes up. I don't think there's a lot written about Doe v. Bolton.
A win for institutional repositories.
Yeah, totally.
Yeah.
Were you waiting for it to happen? I mean, did you know that your work was going to pop up, since so little had been written about Doe v. Bolton?
I certainly think, if someone was interested in the case, there is not much written. Mine is going to come to the top pretty quickly. I think you could say that the events of the past couple of years-- people that watch the Court knew that we were going a certain direction and that this research was about to probably become a lot more relevant. So, yeah, I guess you could say I knew it was going to pop at some point.
So you were contacted. And then, Morna, you mentioned that you also got a call or email or something.
Yeah, somebody from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution contacted me and I think originally wanted me to maybe comment a little bit. And I was like, I'm not qualified to do that. There are many reasons why I shouldn't do that. But I directed them both to Alex and to Roger Ritchie over at Emory because Roger worked on the CDC morbidity and mortality reports that fed into the Doe v. Bolton case.
I did check in with Alex before actually giving the journalist her contact information, and Alex said, yes, it's fine to put her in touch. And so, yeah, they were able to talk, too.
I'm very curious, though-- and this may be a little bit of a sidetrack-- but do you get calls from journalists about theses and dissertations that are in your collection or about other papers, perhaps, that are in your collection, and maybe you don't have a person to refer them to?
I think that was probably the first time that that happened with me. It may happen with other collecting areas, but it's the first time that I've dealt with that, and I was pretty excited about it. I mean, I think it's great that something that was created using our collections and giving someone a-- helping someone toward their degree ended up being a piece that so many people were interested in after such a major moment in history.
CHARLIE BENNETT: And, Alex, can you talk about how you felt about having, suddenly, your research unearthed?
Well, to be totally transparent, the May stuff-- that was actually when I was getting ready to move. I was at MIT, so I was living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. And I was selling my condo and packing up all my stuff and leaving my job, so that was a very chaotic time. But, certainly, I mean, it's cool to have your research be relevant but depressing at the same time for the reasons why it's relevant.
Yeah. We'll talk a little bit more about that in the next segment. MARLEE GIVENS: Yeah, I have to say, I have been not asking a lot of questions because I'm sitting here being angry. So while I give our-- I'm going to give us a break--
[LAUGHTER]
--and say, you are all listening to Lost in the Stacks. And we will be back with more from Alex McGee, university archivist at Georgia Tech, and Morna Gerrard, archivist for women and gender collections at Georgia State University on the left side of the hour.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Hi, I'm Morna Gerard from Georgia State University's special collections and archives. You're listening to WREK Atlanta, and this is Lost in the Stacks, the one and only research library rock and roll radio show, which is fine. I'm an archivist. I don't make judgements.
[LOU REED, "TAKE A WALK ON THE WILD SIDE]
(SINGING) Holly came from Miami FLA, hitchhiked away across the USA.
I am delighted to say that we got one of our guests to break into laughter-- possibly embarrassed, possibly joyous, possibly both. Today's show is called Reactivated Research, and we have been discussing the thesis "The Politics of Protection-- the Forgotten History of Georgia Feminists and Doe v. Bolton," written by one of our guests, the archivist Alex McGee. And what else can I do during a midshow break like that then read from the thesis itself?
"As recently as 40 years ago, topics like sexuality, reproduction, contraception, and abortion were rarely viewed as appropriate topics for historical study. Writing in 1965, social historians only had two serious books as resources on reproductive control in the past, Norman E. Himes' Medical History of Contraception, and Frederick Taussig's Abortion, Spontaneous and Induced-- colon-- Medical and Social Aspects.
Both books were written from a medical perspective and remained the only texts, since their publication in 1936. In the years since, there have been multitudes of historical studies about sexuality, reproduction, contraception, and abortion. Depending on one's perspective, the narrative of this history can be separated into two camps. The more liberal camp argues that, over the past few decades, women have made significant strides in the area of reproductive rights.
And, conversely, the conservative camp presents a narrative where traditional values are in sharp decline as a result of increased availability of contraception and wider access to abortions. Both sides of this debate present contraception and abortion as new concerns in American history. However, historians recognize that these are not new issues, and neither the practice of abortion nor the use of contraception was invented in the 20th century." OK, so we can think about that.
And while we do, we'll file this set under a session number GSUDA.History.Theses.1098.
[BRITTANY HOWARD, "HISTORY REPEATS"]
[KISSISSIPPI, "RINSE, REPEAT] (SINGING) You'll make yours again. You'll make yours again.
That was "Rinse, Repeat" by Kississippi, and before that, "History Repeats" by Brittany Howard. Those were songs about things that get repeated.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
This is Lost in the Stacks, and our show today is called Reactivated Research. That research is the thesis entitled "The Politics of Protection-- the Forgotten History of Georgia Feminists and Doe v. Bolton," written by one of our guests, the archivist Alex McGee. She is here with fellow archivist Morna Gerrard, who provided Alex with the inspiration to write the thesis. And it's not often that we, as librarians and archivists, get to make a statement by writing.
So I was thinking about, especially working with women's history and gender issues, that you probably have a lot of emotion in dealing with the collections that come your way. And I was talking before our break about being angry, and we don't always have a place to put that anger, either. But we can make exhibits. So that's my segue into asking about the exhibit that's coming up.
Yeah, I would love to talk about it. So just giving you a little bit of background is, pretty much every five years, we create an exhibit around this topic. This year's exhibit is called Conceptions of Choice. And one of my graduate research assistants created it. She is just about to graduate from the Women's Gender and Sexuality Institute at Georgia State University. And it looks at, again, the legal history of abortion rights. And it's a wonderful exhibit, and it's open to the public.
And we're really excited. It went live last week, and so it's on the eighth floor of Library South in Special Collections.
So it's interesting to think about how the thesis was the thing that made this into a show idea. Like, oh, that's exciting. Let's talk about this research coming back and suddenly being used or activated. But that's what happens all the time in archives.
And I just want to throw that to you to wax poetic or philosophical about archives a little bit-- all of this material that's basically waiting for the moment when it becomes necessary, whether that's for context, education, activism, or even resetting the popular narrative.
It's actually kind of funny because one of the reasons-- one of the things I talk to students about the importance of using archives, especially if you're in a research institution, and you're trying to write your thesis or impress your professor, is there are amazing resources that very few people have touched in the archives. And you can make a name for yourself, just as Alex did, by finding a topic that hasn't been touched before and really doing a deep dive into them.
And that's often my encouragement to students to use the archives. But looking more broadly, big-picture, you do see that we've been collecting these materials-- I've been collecting these materials for a very long time now. And I didn't collect them thinking that they would be needed one day because the world is changing around us. I just always thought that it's really important that you document women's histories and all facets of women's history, the good and the bad.
We have we have other very challenging topics at Georgia State, including domestic violence and things like that. They are not happy topics, but they're very important, and they're very central to women's lives. And so we shouldn't shy away from documenting that. And then, all of a sudden, something happens, and thank goodness we've documented all of these things because we have a very rich and strong collection at Georgia State, and it is absolutely being used.
And we say documentation, which I'm sure implies, in some people's heads, paper or research. But, recently, you were remembered to me, Morna, when I was holding a button from the late '60s, possibly early '70s, as part of someone's digital project. And you're nodding your head. Do you remember the details of this? She says no.
But I will say we have a lot of buttons.
Yeah.
And that's one of the things about the communities that I document is we have to protest a lot. And so there are buttons, and there are T-shirts, and there are things that express your anger or your desires in something that you wear. And they're very cool. And I will say that professors love working with them. Our English department at Georgia State loves to work with material culture, and they're a regular user of these collections with me.
CHARLIE BENNETT: We have a phrase at Lost in the Stacks-- the material oomph. And that I felt that very strongly when I picked up this-- it felt like a Vietnam-era protest button, but it was a little bit later. It was about gay rights or women's rights or both. I can't remember the exact button. But, I mean, we can picture that. And it was nostalgic. I had buttons that my parents owned and wore at the time that were like those.
But, also, it was something that just doesn't happen now, even the style of buttons now. And when I say button, I mean a little pin behind a laminated circle. Anyway, the actual touching of the button, the holding that is as important in archives as being able to read texts that's been generated in the past. I just want to say again, the archivists are all nodding. They think I've got it right, so I'm very happy about that.
Archivist approval. CHARLIE BENNETT: Yeah, we all need it. Alex, how does it feel to be on the other end of the archival process? You often make sure that people's work is available, but your work was made available and then was reactivated by what was going on around you.
I think having run the full gamut of using archives, creating something that is in the archives-- my thesis is at Georgia State in the special collections, as well as the digital repository ScholarWorks. And I think it is a testament to why I ended up doing what I do. I see the value of the work and preserving collections to tell a story, to make it available so that someone else can come in and do the research and create something from it.
And, certainly, I'm very proud to have done it, and I'm very proud to be a good example of what can come of doing archival research. There's a lot of talk-- you hear a lot of people talk about discovering things in the archives. I don't love that because I know that that discovery was really enabled by an archivist who did a good job--
We have a whole show about that, yes.
--describing it so that you could find it. But I certainly-- I know the value of the journey, of finding something and interpreting it and building out an argument and then having it become-- I mean, become a secondary source. I work with primary sources all day in my job is as the university archivist. But I created a secondary source that people look at now, yeah.
CHARLIE BENNETT: Our guests today were Alex McGee, the university archivist at Georgia Tech, and Morna Gerrard, the archivist for women and gender collections at Georgia State University. Thanks for coming back to both of you. Thanks for having us. MORNA GERRARD: Thank you very much.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Hey, guess what we're going to play? Some rock and roll.
Yeah.
Sorry, Marlee.
It's all right. That's all right. You can file this set under Georgia State Archives finding aid RCB65470C620661.
OK, now I'm pushing play.
Get it.
[NEIL YOUNG AND PEARL JAM, "ACT OF LOVE"]
[ELVIS COSTELLO & THE ATTRACTIONS, "BEYOND BELIEF"] (SINGING) I'm going to get a lot of grief. Once this seemed so appealing. Now I am beyond belief. I've got a feeling I'm going to get a lot of grief.
That was "Beyond Belief" by Elvis Costello and the Attractions. And before that, we heard "Act of Love" by Neil Young with Pearl Jam-- songs about reawakening the discussion of tough social issues.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Today's show is called Reactivated Research, referring to a 2015 master's thesis titled "The Politics of Protection-- the Forgotten History of Georgia Feminists and Doe v. Bolton," which became quite important last year after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
You can find that paper at Georgia State University's open access digital repository--
He's so happy to say that.
--ScholarWorks. And Georgia State is also the location of the annual Georgia Women's Movement Spring Event. This year's event, Conceptions of Choice, will be held on Thursday, April 20 5:00 PM. MARLEE GIVENS: Conceptions of Choice will consider laws and legislation that affect women's reproductive rights, with speakers from Georgia State and the ACLU, along with our guest Alex McGee.
So Alex can consider her research fully reactivated. With that, let's roll the credits.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Lost in the Stacks is a collaboration between WREK Atlanta and the Georgia Tech Library, written and produced by Charlie Bennett, Fred Rascoe, and Marlee Givens.
Legal counsel and a protest button chock full of archival oomph were provided by the Burrus Intellectual Property Law Group in Atlanta, Georgia.
Special thanks to Alex and Morna for being on the show, to John Rush-- Rush?
Ruch.
Ruch-- John Ruch. Sorry, John-- of the-- CHARLIE BENNETT: Oh, I don't know. I'm just guessing. --SaportaReport for looking up Alex's thesis. And thanks, as always, to each and every one of you for listening.
I mean, it's got to be one of those, right? Find us online at LostInTheStacks.org, and you can subscribe to our podcast. I mean, look, you can subscribe to our podcast, folks. I don't have to tell you anything else.
On the next Lost in the Stacks, we answer the question, who are the book jackets?
Who?
That's right. Not what, but who.
It's time for our last song today. As we've discussed a lot today and many times on the show before, archives are about bringing to light things that have been hidden from the predominant narrative of history. So let's close with a song about rediscovering the work of women who have been marginalized. This is "Hidden From History" by Bright Girls, right here on Lost in the Stacks. And have a great weekend, everybody.
[BRIGHT GIRLS, "HIDDEN FROM HISTORY"]