(SINGING) Little boxes in the archive. 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]
Fred? Fred?
Yes?
Am I on?
I think you're on.
OK. You would not believe the number of cords in this studio.
You're coming through loud and clear. My headphones are terrible, though. I'm going to have to take them off. It sounds like C-3PO--
Tell the chief engineer.
--talking through my head.
You are listening to WREK Atlanta, and that was a soundcheck. This is Lost in the Stacks, the research library rock and roll radio show. I'm Charlie Bennett in the studio with far too many people. 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're here for, we hope you dig it.
And today's show is called Southern Industry, Family History. It's part of our occasional series on citizen archiving.
The Southern industry in the title is the Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills, a mill complex active in Atlanta from 1881 to 1978. The mill's influence on Georgia industry and Georgia Tech is important enough for the library to create an exhibit about the mills out of its archival collections.
And I can't let that go by without mentioning that it's an award-winning exhibit.
That's right.
Woo-hoo!
Woo-hoo!
The Georgia Association of Museums was very impressed with the work that we did.
The family history part of our title is the Patch Works Art & History Center, dedicated to preserving the history of the mills and of Cabbagetown, the Atlanta neighborhood that grew from the workers' homes around the mills. The Patch Works Art & History Center's executive director is a descendant and namesake of the man who built the mills.
We're going to explore the relationship between the mills, Patch Works, and the Georgia Tech Archives. That includes citizen archiving, community histories, academic archives, multiple collections.
OK, Marlee, it's like I always say. Archivists are troublemakers of the best kind.
It's been proved again and again. Our songs today are about our history, our community, local families, and factory workers. There is a rich history to be found in looking at the industry of the South. So let's start our music today with a song about a building that symbolizes that history. This is "The Factory" by Warren Zevon--
Oh, right on.
--right here on Lost in the Stacks.
[WARREN ZEVON, "THE FACTORY"]
That was "The Factory" by Warren Zevon. This is Lost in the Stacks, and our show today is called Southern Industry, Family History. And our guests are Jody Thompson, Jacob Elsas and Nina Elsas. Jody is the head of the archives records management and digital curation at Georgia Tech. Jacob and Nina are co-owners of the Patch Works Art & History Center, where Jacob is executive director, and Nina is the curator. So welcome, all of you, to the show.
Thank you. Glad to be here.
So, by the way, the studio is crowded. And I hope everyone bears with us as we try out new microphones and move microphones around.
Oh, these are very old microphones, Fred-- new, old microphones.
[LAUGHTER]
Let's start with the Patch Works Art & History Center. Jacob and Nina, what made you start the center?
Well, I should-- do you mind if I go ahead and speak?
Yeah, go ahead.
Well, I had returned to Cabbagetown in 2012. And it was the first time I'd seen the neighborhood in a long time because I had wanderlust in my late teens, early 20s. And I spent a lot of time on the road, going to other cities, living elsewhere in the country. Finally came back and saw the vast changes that had occurred in the neighborhood, and I was dumbfounded. I was like, what happened to all the people I was familiar with? Because I used to go down there in the '70s and early '80s a lot.
And I realized that it would be important for somebody to put together the collection and the stories of how that neighborhood was. And that was kind of the beginning stages, around 2012 and '13. And it just went from there and met Nina. Say something.
[LAUGHTER]
Hi, Nina.
Hi. So when we had met, I don't know, just through conversation, we just were talking about how neat the history was in Cabbagetown. And I knew about some of it but not all of it until our relationship started to develop more. And then we realized that we had a passion, and shared a passion, for art and for history and for-- thank you-- and for what the neighborhood meant. And then it just morphed into, hey, maybe we should start a museum. I have a background in art history, but I never used it.
I went into the medical field. And this was a good opportunity for me to do something that I really loved and to do it with someone that I love. CHARLIE BENNETT: It's nice that it's the opposite story, that your art history degree became useful--
Yeah, that's so true. CHARLIE BENNETT: --after a career.
[LAUGHTER]
Yeah, believe me, my degree has never been useful.
Don't get any of us started. So what was it about Cabbagetown that returning to it suddenly sparked this, oh, I feel this need to commemorate or record it? What was the difference? What happened?
Well, anybody who was familiar with the neighborhood knows it's gentrified. And what that means is it used to be a mill town supporting the mill. And once the mill itself closed down-- and, in fact, this is a little interesting point of contention. I'm not trying to be correcting everybody all the time.
[LAUGHS]
But, really, there was an operation there until 1981.
'81.
Now, I know that the mills closed in '74. And by '78, all the processing and finishing stopped. But '81, there was still a sewing operation going. Anyway. CHARLIE BENNETT: No, this is good-- I mean, the particulars of the history are important. And there's only so much that I can do when I'm writing a script the night before, dude. No, man, it's not you. We've been learning this.
In fact, we have been learning on the fly over the last 10 years where a lot of this information that is well known, some of it is not quite 100% accurate. And that's what we've been discovering as we've been operating at the Patch Works. But anyway, getting back to your question-- I'm just going to spend the next hour answering this-- so when I came back, what I'm saying is that I visited the neighborhood. My dad had been involved in the neighborhood throughout the '70s and '80s.
He was, actually, executive director of The Patch, Incorporated, which is our namesake, basically. The Patch Works is a little shout-out to a nonprofit that existed in the '70s and '80s supporting the people of the neighborhood when the factory closed. Well, when I returned, like I said in 2012, '13, 99% of those people were gone, replaced by a more affluent-- although, at that time, not as affluent as it is now. There have been subsequent waves of gentrification.
But at that time, I just felt like the people who made the neighborhood what it was, and what it still is today, needed to be remembered. And that had been lost during this transition. And that's what prompted me to do it.
So it was that kind of extreme renovation and cultural transformation that happened when money arrived that shocked you into wanting to look backward?
Absolutely. Well, it was a very-- it was a working class neighborhood. And everybody there was, economically, pretty much on the same level. And, in fact, they were very proud of that. And they even had a saying that no one tried to keep up with the Joneses because there were no Joneses, whereas now that money is there, there does seem to be more of that financial money competition, people trying to have the nicest house or whatever. But yeah, at that time, people lived their lives.
They loved their lives. It was not what we would think of as an easy life, whatsoever. But that's by our standards. By their standards, they were living a great life. And those are the kind of stories that we set out to capture. So we've reached out a lot to what we call originals, the people who lived there while it was a mill town.
I want you to hold that thought till the next segment. We're almost out of time here.
(SING-SONGY) I'm holding on to it.
Could you very quickly talk about the fact that you are a descendant of Jacob Elsas? And how long has the Elsas family been in Cabbagetown, when they went? You have 30 seconds to tell your entire family history.
All right. OK, Jacob Elsas, very original. We're very imaginative. My name is Jacob Elsas, too. He came over from Germany. And he settled, eventually, in Cartersville, Georgia. While he was there, he recognized-- and this is just after the Civil War-- he recognized that there was a lack of bags to help transport dry goods. Cartersville didn't really have the infrastructure, so he moved to Atlanta in 1867, met some other people, and he started a business. They worked out of downtown.
They grew out of that business, and they needed a new location. They found that the grounds, or the ruins, of the Atlanta Rolling Mill would be perfect-- water sources, trains, everything they could ever want. So in 1881, they built what was then called Fulton Cotton Spinning Company. And my family operated that until, well, in 1956, it was sold to different ownership, but my family still continued to run it until 1968, at which point, buh-bye. No more Elsi.
That was-- I'm sorry to put you on the spot, but that was perfect.
OK. Well, I've said it a few times, I guess.
[LAUGHTER]
CHARLIE BENNETT: I don't know who's supposed to get us out of this section--
You are. It's you, Charlie. CHARLIE BENNETT: --because I've got my cord on top of the script. This is Lost in the Stacks. We'll get back with more history and archives after a music set.
File this set under Z688.S3, no dot, M37.
[LAUGHS]
[HOT JAM FACTORY, "ALL FAMILY"]
[BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, "MY HOMETOWN"]
That was "All Family" by Hot Jam Factory and "My Hometown" by Bruce Springsteen, songs about family and big changes that come from family decisions.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
This is Lost in the Stacks. And today's show is called Southern Industry, Family History. Our guests are Jody Thompson, head of the Georgia Tech archives, Jacob Elsas, executive director of the Patch Works Art & History Center, and Nina Elsas, curator at Patch Works.
And I'm going to try to take us back to where Charlie cut you off.
Ha. Where I produced the show? Is that--
Yes. And I think that you were talking about how you get stuff. So let's start there.
Well, most of the stuff that we had was from Jake's personal family archives that he has gotten over the years from family members or that he has had himself or from his dad, what have you. The other way that we have gotten some of our collection is just by doing research, just by searching. There were nine mills, and they made a lot of cotton bags that have been floating out there wherever. And you can simply find it on eBay or Etsy. And people really don't know what they have.
And so we would end up buying them that way.
Are people reselling those just because, I've got all these bags, or do they know that this is sort of a historical thing?
Maybe both. I don't know if they realize what it is. Maybe they had a family member that had gotten bags somewhere along their line of work. Who knows? But yeah, they would sell them for super cheap. Sometimes it was $12 for a bag. And I was like, sure, I'll take that.
[LAUGHS]
And then the other way that it has happened is that, the more that we got our name out, the more that we grew as a museum, people would bring us their collections and donate their collections to us. So it was threefold how we got our collection started. And there's holes in our collection. There are some things that we want to have but aren't able to find because, maybe, it doesn't exist anymore. For example, there was tents that the mill had made at one point. And we would love to have a tent.
But you can't find these tents anywhere, except for we did find one, but it was really, really, really expensive. Anyways, but that's basically how it happens. And we also know that Georgia Tech, thank goodness, came in when they did, when the mill had closed and was vacated for many, many years, and took the materials and machinery and bags and all those things that were left behind. And so that has become a resource for us to have artifacts on loan.
And so that helps build our collection, as well.
I think I've seen a picture of Jody in a hard hat and goggles pulling something out of the mill at some point. JODY THOMPSON: No, I don't think. It was, maybe, for another project we have. But I'd love to see that if you have that photo.
That'd be really cute.
[LAUGHTER]
The point I should make, then, is I have seen archivists actually in abandoned buildings pulling materials, what would maybe be considered trash from a distance.
Oh, most definitely. There have been some mills that we've gone into that I probably needed to be updated on my tetanus shot.
So it was a picture from one of those. That's what I said.
Yes, now I know which one. Yes, now I-- yes, you are totally right about that photo. CHARLIE BENNETT: And Jacob mentioned at the end of the last segment talking to people. Are you all collecting personal histories, recorded stories?
Yes. We have been-- well, my background is, actually, in film and video. I have an MFA in film/video from CalArts. And one of the things I really wanted to do is, yes, record their stories as told by them.
[PHONE RINGS]
Ignore the--
Telephone. CHARLIE BENNETT: Ignore the sounds. So once we started reaching out and making connections to some of the people who used to live there, one of the first things I would ask is if they would be willing to be interviewed-- big fan of primary sources. I find it's, really, as accurate as you can get the story to be.
And again, I mentioned a little earlier that one thing that the Patch Works has been doing over the last several years is trying to identify things that are, more or less, tall tales that have been accepted as truth but aren't really 100% accurate. So going back to the original sources has been one way to reveal the truth behind some of these myths and legends.
And the way that both of you are approaching history and trying to learn it, are you pulling this from, maybe, your experiences as students? Or are you figuring this out as you go along? How did you prepare yourselves to try and record and collect a history?
Both. So a lot of it was just trying and learning and failing and doing it again and finding the correct approach to approach people. It was really, really important for us to make sure that the original residents, or the people that had come and go in the neighborhood, be respected for their stories and how to make them feel like we weren't just taking their stories and using it as our own, as our own voice, I would say. So it took a minute for us to develop that friendship.
And I think that having someone like Jake, who has had experience with filming people and making them feel really comfortable and wanting to share their innermost secrets, I think that had helped gap that bridge. And I think that, once they were telling their stories, and they would tell their friends, hey, you can talk about your Aunt Martha and all these things, and they started connecting themselves, or reconnecting with themselves.
So it had this really cool effect of us learning how to approach people in such a way that our relationships were just growing and growing and growing. And some of it was school, for your other question. I ended up going back to school during COVID and getting my master's in museum studies. And that also helped us figure out another way to incorporate all these stories into a museum properly, instead of just recording it and sticking it on a website.
So thank you, Jake. But you did such a great job.
[LAUGHTER]
You really did a great job with that. But now we have another piece of knowledge on what to do with these fantastic stories.
You're listening to Lost in the Stacks. And we'll talk more about the archival drive on the left side of the hour.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
This is Eira Tansey, troublemaking archivist. You're listening to Lost in the Stacks on WREK Atlanta. I think I'm good.
Classic.
Today's show is called Southern Industry, Family History. We are talking about the role of community archives and their relationship with institutional archives, such as the one here at Georgia Tech. Underlying both types of archives is a relationship, a relationship with and relationship for whom?
We turn to Michelle Caswell and Marika Cifor-- I hope I'm saying that correctly-- in their piece, "From Human Rights to Feminist Ethics-- Radical Empathy and the Archives," offering their take on the power dynamics and relationships between archivists of all kinds and their communities. "In a feminist ethics approach, archivists are seen as caregivers, bound to record creators, subjects, users, and communities through a web of mutually effective responsibility.
By stewarding a collection, the archivist enters into a relationship of care with the record creator in which the archivist must do her best not only to empathize with the record creator but also to allow that empathy to inform the archival decision-making process." You can file this set under identifier MS004 series 1. There's not a dot in there.
[CLEANERS FROM VENUS, "FACTORY BOY"]
[ROLLING STONES, "FACTORY GIRL"]
That was "Factory Girl" by the Rolling Stones and, before that, "Factory Boy" by the Cleaners from Venus. What a pair-- songs about factory workers.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
This is Lost in the Stacks. And today's show is called Southern Industry, Family History. Let's consider the relationship between the Georgia Tech Archives and the Patch Works Art & History Center, an academic archive and a community archive with complementary collections and different approaches.
So yeah, I'm curious if you all could talk about how you came to collaborate with one another. Obviously, Georgia Tech has the records for Fulton Bag and Cotton Mill. You all mentioned that you knew that, and there have been loans, so just curious if you could expand on that.
So I believe it was in 2014 when we decided to have a soft, soft, soft opening of-- CHARLIE BENNETT: That's four softs. Yes. It was so soft.
Extra soft.
--of the Patch Works Art & History Center. And we had taken what Jake already had accumulated. And we went to Georgia Tech to talk to Jody. And we contacted her, and we said, hey, we're this little museum. And you have some stuff that we would like to look at on Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills. And we made an appointment to come in and take a look at the archives.
And from there, we told her what we were doing and that we were going to have this four-soft opening on December 4-- actually, on my birthday. And she was nice enough to loan us some of the artifacts. And one of them was this fantastic sewing machine that was so amazing and so heavy. And from there, we've just been friends ever since. So that's how that happened.
And I'm curious, Jody, from the institutional archives perspective, what do you think we gain-- I say we because I'm also an archivist-- but what do you think we gain from working with community archives like Patch Works?
I think being able to really share our expertise with them and then making sure that if they have any needs that, if we can help them out, even if it means donating supplies or offering up-- having exhibits and actually having them be part of the exhibit and being part of the opening that we had for our exhibit.
Go ahead.
Does the Patch Works collection and the archives collection, is it similar? Is it completely different? Are there just a few points of crossover?
I would say there are definite similarities. After all, this is information, a lot of it on the mill itself. So when Georgia Tech acquired the archives, basically in 1985, they managed to get these amazing managerial records and photos and even scrapbooks that my family had been putting together over the decades. And a lot of that is the same kind of material I have, or we have now, as the Patch Works, on a much smaller level.
But it was a foundation from which we could then collaborate and fill in gaps, essentially. I would say the one area that we have branched off in doing that is unique to us is the interviewing of the originals, those discussions like that. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Nina's correcting me.
I think we also have a lot of the rehabilitation photos, as well, which is something that has also been growing in our collection. The Aderhold family donated a lot of those photographs to us. There's binders and binders of the rehab that took place from when the Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills closed and into the renovation of the condominiums there and the apartments there. And so that has started to become part of our archive collection because it's really fascinating.
And there's just tons of information there.
And occasionally, we do discover something that we didn't know was out there that is very different or, at least, it's very personal, I should say. Like, we found Jacob's old book that he had in the 1880s that he basically self-taught in how to operate machinery and to understand machinery. He came from a textile background, but he was, essentially, a peddler back when he was growing up. And when he moved to the United States, he was first working in cloth and paper bags and stuff.
But he wasn't really from that manufacturing side. He would get the materials and then produce that stuff. And now he had to learn how to operate an actual cotton mill. And Fulton Cotton Spinning Company was only the second one in Atlanta, the Atlanta Cotton Factory being the first one.
Yeah. Jody, do you ever feel almost jealous of folks who can concentrate on a single collection and go seeking stuff?
Yes.
[LAUGHTER]
Because we have so many other collections that we're trying to focus on. But yes, I think a lot of us become jealous. But our opportunity, when we got to work on this exhibit that you've mentioned we received the award, that really gave us an opportunity to feel like that we can actually spend some time within a specific archives collection.
And did you go take anything out of there-- don't tell them, but did you just take anything out of the collection?
I would absolutely love to. I actually have a personal interest in the mill and our collection, as well as the Patch Works. I live near the mill, so I've always been just totally fascinated by it.
The thing that caught me, someone said scrapbooks, the family scrapbooks. But Georgia Tech has them because they came from a large-- how do you feel about that, Jacob? This is the reverse of, are you jealous, a question for Jody.
Well, certainly, there's scrapbook envy here. This stuff is amazing. And if you've ever seen a scrapbook, it is-- first of all, it's filled with beautiful artifacts, in and of itself. They managed to actually squeeze these little bags and things into it. So it's not just photos and a few articles clipped here and there. They actually put physical artifacts inside the scrapbook. And of course, it's wonderful.
But I also recognize none of this would be around had Georgia Tech not come in and picked it up. It would be lost forever. So, of course, I feel extremely happy about the fact that Georgia Tech has retained and maintained these materials that would have been lost forever. So thank you.
I think that's an interesting point you just made is, for an institutional archive like Georgia Tech, we do have the ability to maintain a collection, maybe, where we have the conservation budget. If we recognize that something needs a little extra TLC, we can go do that.
Yes, most definitely.
And so I do think that, maybe-- I'd be curious, collaboration between community archives and institutional archives like Georgia Tech, in terms of the preservation piece of things like a scrapbook.
So when we had our second museum--
Soft, soft.
--that was in one of the historic homes located in Cabbagetown, that is where loaning had stopped because it was not appropriate for us to have the materials in this home because of the air conditioning and the humidity and things of that nature. And we totally understood that, and we totally got that. And even we stopped putting things out on display because of the quality of the house.
And so we had received a grant to have a conservator come out and look at the house to see if it was even appropriate for us to keep a museum there, if it was viable. And we decided that it was not. And we vacated the place because we want this story to continue, and we'd rather not do harm to what we have. And so it's always nice to know that these things are still going to be maintained. Right now, we don't have a place.
We just have storage because we lost our space and COVID happened-- yada, yada yada. But again, thank goodness that you are able to have the funding to have a collection and have an archives space where you can continue to keep these precious items in house.
Alex, you've been taking notes on all the shows we have to do on basically every other sentence of this show. We are out of time. This is Lost in the Stacks. And our show today is called Southern Industry, Family History. We've been speaking with Jody Thompson, head of the archives records management and digital curation at Georgia Tech, and Jacob and Nina Elsas, co-owners of the Patch Works Art & History Center in Cabbagetown, Atlanta. Thanks, everybody, for being here.
Our pleasure.
Thank you.
Thank you for having us.
You can file this set of 55 flat file drawers under identifier VAMD004. CHARLIE BENNETT: That's too many.
[LAURIE LEWIS, "THE MILL"]
(SINGING) Well, I dream that I have died and gone to my reward.
[CASS MCCOMBS, "COUNTY LINE"]
You have been listening to "County Line" by Cass McCombs. And before that, we heard "The Mill" by Laurie Lewis, songs about the things around us being a part of who we are as a community.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Today's show is called Southern Industry, Family History. It's part of our Citizen Archiving series, although I think we have to rename the series.
We do. OK, Alex, what is the weakness of the Citizen Archiving name? And what should we change it to?
Well, to me, as an archivist, I always think of citizen archiving where it's a member of the general public, and they're aiding an archival organization like Georgia Tech, let's say, by helping with tasks for description. We see this popularly used by the National Archives for help with transcribing oral histories or recordings and identifying unknown people in photographs.
I think community archives actually captures what we're talking about better, where we have members of a group seizing control of their history and the narrative and documenting it and maintaining it themselves, usually outside of a traditional archive. It's meant to be this liberatory practice, and it's about owning your own history.
OK, Alex is a producer now, officially.
100%. (SINGING) Look out!
[MUSIC PLAYING]
MARLEE GIVENS: Lost in the Stacks is a collaboration between WREK Atlanta and the Georgia Tech Library, written and produced by Alex McGee, Charlie Bennett, Fred Rascoe, and Marlee Givens. Legal counsel and a Fulton Bag and Mill Tent-- finally got one of those-- CHARLIE BENNETT: Oh, he's got one. --provided by the Burrus Intellectual Property Law Group in Atlanta, Georgia.
Special thanks to Jacob, Nina, and Jody for being on the show, to the Georgia Tech Library exhibits crew, who have an award-winning exhibit, and thanks, as always, to each and every one of you for listening.
Our web page is library.gatech.e du/lostinthestacks, where you'll find our most recent episode, a link to our podcast feed, and a web form if you want to get in touch with us.
Our episode next week features the authors of Making Virtual Reality a Reality, which is dangerously close to an AI show, Fred.
Fred.
Can neither confirm nor deny. It's time for our last song today. The places where Atlanteans work are important to archive, as they are inextricably linked to our community history. As long as citizens are working, it will remain important to document the lives, records, struggles, progress, and impacts of those working for a living. So let's close with another song for the working person. This is "Workin for a Livin" by Huey Lewis and the News.
CHARLIE BENNETT: There's celebration in the studio over this, Fred.
Tyler's thrilled.
He was advocating for this, yeah.
You know, the heart of rock and roll is still beating.
It is.
It's almost Friday, and the work week is almost over. Have a great weekend, everybody.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[HUEY LEWIS AND THE NEWS, "WORKIN FOR A LIVIN"]