Learning from Archival Records

This article was written by Jeffery Makala and originally published on September 29, 2017.

As an archivist, I frequently receive questions from students, alumni/ae, and other researchers about many different aspects of Furman’s history. In most cases, I can point to a number of fairly authoritative and well-researched studies: for both citations to primary-source materials (often held here in the University Archives) and to comprehensive, nuanced interpretations by historians about the topics in question. But, when confronted with questions about some aspects of Furman’s origins: who built its early buildings; who helped finance the early university, and what was the source of that capital; how were questions of equal access to democratic processes like voting and civil rights issues taught and practiced by Furman people in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; I often cannot point to well-researched sources, or to collections of original records in my care.