Presentation: The Photography of Moneta Sleet, Jr. from Ebony Magazine

 

Presentation: The Photography of Moneta Sleet, Jr. from Ebony Magazine

Friday, 1/17/2025
11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.

Virtual Library

Register on Zoom

Questions: mnc@sfpl.org

Delight in the life and photographic works of Moneta Sleet, Jr., staff photographer at Ebony magazine for over forty years.  

Jehoiada Calvin, Archivist at the Johnson Publishing Company (JPC) Archive, presents on the life and legacy of Pulitzer Prize winning photographer Moneta Sleet, Jr. (1926-1996). Starting in 1955, Sleet captured images of Black people in America and throughout the world for JPC magazines like Ebony and Jet and produced iconic images of the Civil Rights Movement, particularly of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1969 Sleet became the first Black person to win a Pulitzer Prize, which was awarded for his photograph of Coretta Scott King at her husband’s funeral. Jehoiada shares images from the Archive of Sleet's published and unpublished work while exploring how his photographs have impacted visual culture and politics today. 

Jehoiada Calvin is a memory worker, writer, and zine-maker from Chicago. Jehoiada is the Archives Assistant for the Johnson Publishing Company Archive, helping to process the historic photograph collection for Ebony, Jet, and other magazines and programs. Jehoiada is a fellow in the University of Alabama’s Social Justice for Archivists Master of Library and Information Studies program, focusing on memory work that supports practices rooted in culture and politics outside of institutional archives. Read his writings about Sleet and the JPC photo archive at Sixty Inches from Center. 

Connect

Johnson Publishing Company Archive – Website  

Jehoiada Calvin – X/Twitter  

Ebony Magazine Digital Archive – Courtesy of SFPL

Jet Magazine Digital Archive – Courtesy of SFPL

Header image of Geoffrey Holder by Moneta Sleet, Jr. from the Johnson Publishing Company Archive. Courtesy J. Paul Getty Trust and Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Made possible by the Ford Foundation, J. Paul Getty Trust, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Smithsonian Institution.

 

New Resource: The Wall Street Journal Online (WSJ.COM)

NEW: Wall Street Journal (wsj.com)

 

SFPL now offers free three-day digital access to The Wall Street Journal (wsj.com).

 

The subscription includes the following features:

 

• Unlimited articles on WSJ.com
• Four-year archive/article search
• e-Replica of that day’s paper
• Onsite and remote access with SFPL card
• More than 30 newsletters and alerts
• Informative videos and podcasts, featuring interviews with WSJ editors and notable influencers
• For information, visit How do I access The Wall Street Journal (wsj.com)?
   

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You can find the WSJ access links on our eMagazines and eNews webpage as well, in addition to the traditional access option through ProQuest. Click Access eNews Collections to reveal the section that contains the all the access information for WSJ:

• The Wall Street Journal, Eastern Edition
  Access The Wall Street Journal in three formats. 
  Collections:
• The Wall Street Journal (wsj.com) | How do I access The Wall Street Journal (wsj.com)?
• The Wall Street Journal - Eastern Text Edition, 1984 to present (ProQuest)
• The Wall Street Journal - Online Edition, 2010 to present (ProQuest)

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Reminder: we also get three copies of the print newspaper delivered every day to the Magazines and Newspapers Center at the Main Library (5th floor), which we keep until we receive the microfilm of that date. Most SFPL branch libraries also get the WSJ paper delivered, and keep the most current 2 weeks. Check the catalog record to see if your local branch carries it. 

 

What We're Reading: November 2024

Election 2024. It dominated the news cycle for the majority of the year, and now that it has come to pass, we are stuck examining the outcome and figuring out how it happened. The selections for this month feature analysis of the election on the national, state, and local levels. We pull articles from the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the San Francisco Standard for this reflection, with an emphasis on the data graphics each paper employed to tell the story with more than words. And lastly, for a little bit of something else, we have an article from the Chronicle about the ongoing issues around transgendered players in the college women's volleyball scene that puts SJSU at the center of the drama. The Chronicle has been doing in-depth, targeted reporting on the issue, which should be highlighted.

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Key to Trump's Win: Big Losses for Harris Across the Country

New York Times, November 23, 2024

So many of us San Francisco voters are wondering what went wrong in the election at the beginning of this month. This piece from the New York Times takes a look at the voting behaviors of the country as a whole, offering compelling graphics that chart the voting change from 2020 to 2024. Read it in PressReader, which offers a digital replica of the print paper, so you can see the graphics in their printed glory, or read it on NYTimes.com where you can interact with the data with this courtesy link.

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Hanging out in SF’s Trumpiest neighborhoods

San Francisco Standard, November 11, 2024

The Standard uses data from the San Francisco Department of Elections and interviews with residents to dig into the trend towards Trump observed in the City's southeast corner, including Visitacion Valley and the Portola District. The handiwork of the Standard's data graphics person, Noah Baustin, is on display in an interactive graphic that maps votes by precinct in this piece as well as others filed under Election 2024, for example the article reporting on the low(er) voter turnout this year. The Chronicle put out a similar piece with interactive maps that explores the Trump trend in the southeast corner of SF, getting even more granular by highlighting, on a map, the two "Trumpiest" precincts in the entire City, showcasing the handiwork of graphics reporter Harsha Devulapalli and deputy data editor Aseem Shukla. 

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2024 Election Results

San Francisco Chronicle, last updated Dec. 7, 2024

As a special project dashboard, the SF Chronicle's 2024 election results page has been updated daily since the election and provides many interactive graphical representations of voting trends on a national, state, and local level. We offer this to you with a gift link to bypass any potential paywalls since this is the type of dynamic reporting not available in the library's subscription to the Chronicle through NewsBank. You can also view their California election dashboard and their San Francisco election dashboard. One of the most striking graphics is the change from blue to red of many counties in California, as well. 

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Legal Bid to Bench Trans Player Spiked 

San Francisco Chronicle, November 27, 2024

This article is the penultimate piece to date in the Chronicle's reporting on the lawsuit barring transgender women from playing college volleyball as brought forth by some players on the San Jose State University team. Now, the SJSU volleyball season is over, but several lawsuits and the future of women's sports remain. You can check out reporter Anne Killion's most recent piece to see where everything stands at the moment.

Workshop: New Years Zines (Thur., December 12)

 

Workshop: New Year Zines

Thursday, 12/12/2024
5:00 - 7:00 p.m.

Learning Studio - 5th Fl

Main Library

100 Larkin Street
San Francisco, CA 94102

Contact Telephone

415-557-4400

mnc@sfpl.org

 

Get ready to ring in 2025 by making a zine—a DIY mini-book—to reflect on the closing year and to envision possibilities of the new year, and then contribute your zine to a pop-up display in the Main Library. 

What did you accomplish in 2024 and how does that prepare you to achieve your goals in 2025? Put that reflection and visioning into a tangible product. Similar to a vision board, your New Year Zine can consist of text, images, drawings, and other visuals arranged together to represent your goals and ambitions. This little self-made publication starts as a single sheet of paper and is then folded in such a way that it becomes an eight page mini-book, also called a zine. Once you make your original, you can photocopy it to make an edition of 10 or 20. Then, you can give the copies as gifts to friends and family to celebrate together.  

Once completed, donate a copy of your New Year Zine to the Magazines and Newspapers Center to be featured in a pop-up display in the month of January 2025.  

Supplies like paper, collage ephemera, old magazines, markers, stickers, stamps and scissors will be provided, in addition to instructions on how to create an 8-page zine out of a single sheet of paper. You are welcome to bring your favorite zine supplies as well.  

This workshop is led by a Magazines and Newspapers Center librarian.  

Resources 

What is a zine? 

How to Make This Very Zine [out of a single sheet of paper]- by Anne Elizabeth Moore  

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See event listing on SFPL event calendar. 

Land Back in California: A Brief Annotated Bibliography for the 2020s

November is First Person, SFPL's celebration of Native American heritage and culture. From our reading list at the Magazines and Newspapers Center, here are five articles we recommend on the status of the Land Back movement and indigenous land ownership attitudes in California. Along with some annotations to guide your engagement with these articles, we provide access notes so you can get the most out of your library card and follow these publications year round. Thanks to Gregory Hom, program manager of the Environmental Center at the Main Library, for help putting together this bibliography.   

Flores, Jessica. "Local Indigenous Groups Get Land Grants." San Francisco Chronicle, May 4, 2024, A9. 

➡️ SFPL Full Text Access Link

 

☑️ Our local newspaper reports on indigenous leaders Corrina Gould (Lisjan Ohlone and co-founder of the Sogorea Te' Land Trust, based in Oakland) and Quirina Geary (Tamien Nation, based in San Jose) receiving monetary awards from the state of California to further their tribes' Land Back endeavors. The ultimate goal of the land grant program is to fight climate change by returning California land to the stewardship of native peoples. In the article, Gould and Geary share their plans for the use of the funds. Read more about the Tribal Nature-Based Solutions grant program from the California Natural Resources Agency website.

❇️ Read the San Francisco Chronicle with your SFPL card. The complete backfile from 1865 to the current day is available.

 

Hood, Charles. “Making Better Maps: The Case for Coyote Cartography.” News from Native California, vol. 37, no. 4, June 2024, pp. 10–15. 

 

➡️SFPL Full Text Access Link

 

☑️We can basically recommend everything News from Native California publishes, but this piece about The Friends of the Antelope Valley Indian Museum commissioning a two-feet-by-two-feet map of the Antelope Valley's tribes without borders is particularly fascinating. It gets to the heart of what Indigenous mapping and map making can mean in the 21st century in that it depicts the Paiute, Kawaiisu, Kitanemuk, Tataviam, Serrano, Vanyume, and Chemehuevi cohabitating a topographical depiction of the valley, true to the way the features of the land indicate tribal areas more than any hard boundary.  

 

❇️ Read News from Native California on Flipster, an eMagazine platform SFPL offers, in addition to several other library databases. You can also find it in print at the Main Library or at the Eureka Valley Library

 

Reed, Kaitlin. “We Are a Part of the Land and the Land Is Us: Settler Colonialism, Genocide & Healing in California.” Humboldt Journal of Social Relations, no. 42, 2020, pp. 27–49.

 

➡️SFPL Full Text Access Link  

 

☑️Writing from 2020, shortly after California Governor Gavin Newsom acknowledged and apologized for the genocide of Native Peoples in the state but before the establishment of the Tribal Nature-Based Solutions grant program, Dr. Kaitlin Reed academically deals with the denial and historical facts of the genocide of California Indians that went hand-in-hand with establishing California as a state. She also supposes the way forward to healing, which connects back to land reparations because "theft of land was an important component of genocide and therefore the restitution of lands must be an important component of healing from genocide" (30). It would be interesting to hear Dr. Reed's attitude about the grant program. 

❇️Humboldt Journal of Social Relations is available full text in SFPL's JSTOR package, or you can create a free account on JSTOR to view the article

 

Simons, Eric. “Land Back: Why Is It Hard to Return Land?” Bay Nature, vol. 21, no. 1, Jan. 2021, pp. 20–26. 

 

➡️ SFPL Full Text Link

☑️ This thorough piece not only catalogs the majority, if not all, examples of Indigenous tribes receiving repatriated land in the San Francisco Bay Area/Santa Cruz Mountains through late 2020, it explains the unique challenges tribes face when trying to acquire lands from sellers, even when a seller wants the land protected the way a tribe can protect their ancestral homeland. The narrative drive of the article starts in Big Sur with the story of the Adler Ranch acquisition, originally planned to be sold to the U.S. Park Service through the land trust Western Rivers Conservancy, but that instead was deeded to the Esselen people. Simons writes, "Settlers and displaced natives, a generation of resource extraction, a land trust, and then an end in government ownership: that's how land conservation stories in California usually go" (20), but the Adler Ranch is one example that bucks that trend, largely because of the acknowledgement that tribes do a better job preventing and controlling forest fires than the Park Service. 

❇️ Bay Nature is available through the SFPL database Academic Search Complete from 2002 to present, or you can see if your local branch carries it in print. 

Vulliamy, Ed. "Reclaiming Native Identity in California." New York Review of Books, 22 June 2023, p. 45-48. 

 

➡️ SFPL Full Text Access link

☑️ In an update for 2023 on the topics explored by Reed and Simon, Vulliamy frames this piece around the people and activities of the California Truth and Healing Council. With a brush both broad and precise, Vulliamy covers the history of genocide, slavery, and land dispossession of indigenous Californians through a concise literature review on monographs on the topic. The blockquote from Abby Abinanti at the end sums it up well: "We can't go back to the villages, because the world is too different, but we can go back to the values of the village... We can evoke the practices of the village, to create new practices, based on those value systems" (48).

❇️ Read The New York Review of Books on Flipster, an eMagazine platform SFPL offers, in addition to several other library databases. You can also catch it in print at several library locations.

Flashback: October 1909 at the Park Branch

MNC Blog Editor Note: Please enjoy this guest post by Doreen Horstin, SFPL Park Branch Manager

Park Branch Library, located in the Haight Ashbury neighborhood, recently celebrated 115 years of service to the community at their annual Open House. Placed near the front door was an October 1909 bound volume of the San Francisco Call, a local newspaper that ran, under various names, from 1859 to 1959 and that was published by Charles M. Shortridge and John D. Spreckels. 

A bound volume of the San Francisco Call containing issues from 1909 invites browsing at the Park Branch Library Open House

 

What was happening in 1909? Theodore Roosevelt was President, followed by William Howard Taft in March of that year, the NAACP was founded on February 12th, the 100th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, Sigmund Freud arrived in New York City to deliver a series of lectures on psychoanalysis, and in the Haight Ashbury neighborhood, San Francisco Public Library Branch Number 5 – the Park Branch – opened to the public on October 29th. The Park Branch has operated continuously in the same building ever since.

This year, during the Park Branch Open House, patrons carefully flipped through the pages of the October 1909 San Francisco Call. Many news items are recognizable even today:

President Taft toured San Francisco's post-earthquake recovery, laying the cornerstone for the YMCA building at Golden Gate Avenue and Leavenworth, amongst other activities; Secretary of the Interior R. A. Ballinger visited Sacramento to weigh in on the Hetch Hetchy dam project, assuring the public that they would continue to have public access rights to Lake Tahoe; In Berkeley, local members of the SPCA met to discuss the treatment of animals held in shelters; in Manila, a local man was arrested for his role in smuggling opium; pickpockets continued to torment passengers on streetcars; and in baseball, the Philadelphia Athletics headed to San Francisco for a match against the Seals.

Many more eye-catching items are contained within the pages of the San Francisco Call and other archived newspapers. One can easily spend hours marveling at ads for shoes and clothes (such low prices!), chuckling at remedies for dandruff, eczema and varicose veins and gazing at the society pages. To see more, visit the friendly staff at the Magazine and Newspaper Center at the Main Library where this newspaper is available on microfilm. 

An advertisement for Sterling Furniture, $1 per yard of carpet and lace curtains for $0.35 each. October 2, 1909, the Morning Call

 

A political cartoon of President Taft on the eve of his visit to California, Daily Morning Call, October 2, 1909.

Page from October 5, 1909 Daily Morning Call reporting on the activities of Taft during his visit to California, including laying the cornerstone for the YMCA building at Golden Gate Avenue and Leavenworth in San Francisco.

100th Anniversary of the Legion of Honor

"It's art that keeps us thinking" - Virginia Ernster (San Francisco Fine Art Museums Docent) 

Rodin's Thinker, a crown jewel of the Legion of Honor

Happy 100 year anniversary to a fine art museum of San Francisco, the Legion of Honor, an edifice fashioned after the Palais de la Légion d’Honneur in Paris—one that stands at a Californian's edge of the world, Land's End at the Golden Gate rather than on the Seine—on the Western coast of the United States, looking out on the Marin Headlands and the Pacific Ocean. 

View from the Legion of Honor toward the Marin Headlands on a rainy April day

 

The museum was the passion project of Alma de Bretteville Spreckels, nicknamed "the great grandmother of San Francisco" for the impact her philanthropy had on the development of the City's culture and environmental form. Her vision took hold when she beheld the French Pavilion at the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition, which was fashioned as a replica of the Palais de la Légion d’Honneur in Paris at 3/4ths scale, and conceived of the plan to bring a building in that form to San Francisco permanently as an art museum. 

The French Pavilion at the Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, 1915

 

After a delay caused by the Great War, the museum went on to come to fruition and was dedicated on November 11, 1924, Armistice Day. Spreckels populated the museum with art from her own collection, and visited France many times over the years to further collect art, drawing on her friendship with Loie Fuller to meet new artists. It was Fuller who introduced Spreckels to the sculptor Rodin and encouraged her to purchase the famous piece the Thinker, which presides over the courtyard of the Legion of Honor to this day (although it did moonlight in Golden Gate Park for a spell, before the Museum opened). 

"Whatever cenotaph was unveiled or tribute paid yesterday to the heroic dead..."

"...no Armistice Day observance the world over was more impressive than that which attended the dedication of the California Palace of the Legion of Honor," according to the San Francisco Examiner, reporting on November 12, 1924 of the previous day's ceremony (page 17). The paper devoted most of the front page of a special section to covering the grand opening and other Armistice Day ceremonies throughout the City. It included a photograph of the courtyard of the Legion of Honor filled with attendees as well as a portrait of M. Alfred Tirman, Counsellor of the State of France [sic], Mrs. Alma de Bretteville Spreckels, donor, and San Francisco Mayor James Rolph. 

View the November 12, 1924 issue of the San Francisco Examiner (SFPL card required) 

"The Monument... is dedicated to honor and country in memory of the heroes of the World war"

On November 12, the San Francisco Chronicle devoted about a half-page to covering the dedication of the new museum, reporting on the attendance of prominent people, the genesis of the idea for the museum from the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition, the features of the building (like the Theater), and the attributes of the art collection. The article includes a composite portrait of William F. Humphrey, John D. Spreckels, Senator Samuel M. Shortridge, and Mrs. Alma De Bretteville Spreckels.   

View the November 12, 1924 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle (SFPL card required)

Find out more about the history of our "palace that will endure for centuries" by visiting the FAMSF's webpage, "Legion of Honor history," and check out the calendar of special events and free openings the museum will be running for the coming year. 

Additionally, SFPL will be hosting several upcoming programs related to the Legion of Honor at 100, talks delivered by the museum's wonderful docents.

Remember, here in the Magazines and Newspapers Center, we are able to offer the entire backfile of both the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Francisco Examiner, so the historic research doesn't end with the centennial of the Legion of Honor!
 

What We're Reading October 2024

Of note this October is what we're not reading rather than what we are reading. What we've been deprived of is a presidential endorsement from the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, which has kicked up a lot of criticism in the form of resignations and a major backlash of subscription cancellations. Thankfully our hometown paper, the San Francisco Chronicle, is planning on running an endorsement, although it makes us wonder if Nov 3 is too late for such things. Regardless, we're continuously grazing on pieces of periodically produced media, so here's our October Four. 

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New York Magazine, October 21, 2024 issue 

The front cover dares to state Media Elites Tell All! But inside the covers, awash in catchy, bold graphic design, New York magazine's new issue is devoted to the inquiry of "Can the Media Survive?" and they interviewed "57 of the Most Powerful People in Media" for it, including the editors of some big legacy print magazines. They further tackle questions that preoccupy us around these parts, like "What's the Point of Print?" and "Why Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong Hasn't Turned Around the L.A. Times." 

You can read New York magazine on the digital magazine platform PressReader.

 

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Joy Boy: Mychal the Librarian reminds us there is so much good in the world

Curl Magazine, Fall 2024

Celebrity librarian Mychal Threets is out here reppin' us librarians on our bad days (see the NYT piece "Librarians Face a Crisis of Violence and Abuse"), on our good days (see his celebration The Library Afro Revolution), and every day in between. So we were tickled to see his hair spa treatment in the new issue of Curl magazine, where he also chatted with the mag about inclusivity and hair pride at the library. He's on the cover and in a feature article where stylist Gina Marie Rodriguez helps him reach his "big Afro goals."

You can read Curl Magazine on the digital magazine platform Flipster.

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Of Note: Cats in Clara’s Correspondence 

Unfolding History: Manuscripts at the Library of Congress, October 24, 2024

While this one isn't from any type of periodical you would need SFPL for, who doesn't love connecting with cat lovers both past and present? This Library of Congress blog explores evidence of cat affection in the Clara Barton Papers, especially in context with Barton's relief efforts in Europe with Antoinette Margot following the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War and the resulting relationship between the two women. 

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Walk-off Slam Was Product of Work with Dad

Los Angeles Times, October 27, 2024

As we know now, the Dodgers won the 2024 World Series by locking up game 4 last night, but spectators were left breathless at the end of the first game of the series when Freddie Freeman scored a walk-off grand slam with the bases loaded. The Athletic's Andy McCullough did poetic justice to the night in his write-up, but the LA Times' Jack Harris went straight to the heart-strings with his retelling of Freeman's long afternoons spent practicing with his dad in SoCal sandlots. Whether or not you're celebrating for the Dodgers, ruing their win, or are completely indifferent, take a peak at this article for some good sports writing.

Share Your Thoughts on “False Star” by Sterling HolyWhiteMountain

Read the short story “False Star” by Sterling HolyWhiteMountain about a young Blackfeet man who turns eighteen and comes into money due to him from a claim check. Leave a comment on this blog post in response to the suggested discussion questions below.

In the beginning of HolyWhiteMountain’s story from the March 20, 2023 issue of the New Yorker, the narrator explains: “As far back as I could remember, I had heard discussion of claim checks. There was something elemental about it: the talk circled round in a seasonal way. People joked about being claim-check rich and then later laughed about being claim-check broke. They bought claim-check cars, got claim-check drunk, and some got claim-check married. That’s how it was for us for a long time, until the money ran out. The Feds are never more careful with limits and end dates on their moral awakenings than they are with us, such is the concern that we might steal the whole country right out from under them. Then we were back to where we were before, a bunch of broke skins way out on the Northern Plains, teasing one another. So this is a story about how I got my part of the money, how I spent it, and the people in my life at that time, such as Big Man, who raised me, and of course June, who I loved before any other, and who has been gone now longer than any of us had the chance to know her when she was alive.” 

Read the story in Flipster, a platform that offers access to hundreds of digital magazines, and click "Post a comment" or "comment," below, to share your thoughts on these discussion questions. 

• Have you ever come into a windfall of a large sum of money like the narrator in the story? What did you spend it on?  
• In “False Star,” the narrator ultimately buys a black Bronco which transforms him into "look[ing] rich or at least like a real fancy guy” (53). Later he describes having a car as the equivalent of an Indian having a good warhorse. What was your first car and how did getting it transform the way you saw yourself?  
• In many ways, this is a story about the Blackfeet and their land—the claim check that is the catalyst for the story stems from the tribe selling the Sweet Grass Hills to the U.S. Federal Government during a period of duress. How does the environment play a role in this story? Feel free to quote sections of text that describe the land. What effect do these descriptions have on the overall narrative?

Resources  

• “False Star” by Sterling HolyWhiteMountain, The New Yorker, March 20, 2023 (text)
• Sterling HolyWhiteMountain Reads “False Star” on the New Yorker's Writer's Voice podcast (audio)
  
• Sterling HolyWhiteMountain, New Yorker Interview with Willing Davidson, March 13, 2023 (text)