K. (Kenneth) Brad Ott is an activist and sociological researcher. Ott wrote, edited, and published publications covering community activism and activities in New Orleans, Louisiana. The collection consists of materials chronicling the production and distribution of Ott’s self-published social justice and activism publications as well as correspondence and ephemera.
For the exhibit, we are highlighting a selection of publications centered on anti-nuclear and anti-war consciousness-raising in the 1980s and early 1990s.
This collection consists primarily of materials related to social justice issues in and around New Orleans and Latin America from the mid 1980's to early 1991, including pamphlets and newsletters, news clippings, and publications pertaining to opposition to David Duke’s 1990 gubernatorial campaign as well as opposition to The Gulf War. Other materials include journals relative to labor parties, unions, and social justice such as Central American News, Bayou Worker, Second Line, Crescent City Green Quarterly, Brad Ott’s Avant!, Dialogue, and Café Progresso. The collection also includes the papers of the Gary Modenback Social Aid and Pleasure Club.
Compiled by Rosemary Drown, former employee of the New Orleans Catholic Bookshop, the Drown Collection includes photostat copies of correspondences, addresses, and pastoral letters by Archbishop Rummel and other clergy primarily relating to the New Orleans Archdiocese's intent to end segregation in parochial schools and fierce response by local opposition groups. Materials also include correspondence and newsletters from supporting local Catholic organizations and articles from local and national newspapers on the debate.
This collection documents the post-World War II social reform work of the founding director of Loyola's Institute of Human Relations, Louis J. Twomey, through correspondence, administrative files, photographic materials and audio recordings.
The Spotlight on Social Justice exhibit highlights a selection of materials held within the Special Collections & Archives at Loyola University dedicated to social justice activism in action.
The items presented here illustrate protest, advocacy, and grassroots activism exemplifying our commitment to preserving collections that document the history of social justice and supporting Loyola’s mission to "work for a more just world."
Collections utilized in this exhibit:
The Rosemary Drown Archdiocese of New Orleans and School Integration Collection details the New Orleans Archdiocese's intent to end segregation in parochial schools, and the fierce response from local opposition groups.
Louis J. Twomey, S.J. Papers documents the post-World War II social reform work of the founding director of Loyola's Institute of Human Relations, Louis J. Twomey, through correspondence, administrative files, photographic materials and audio recordings.
The New Orleans Social Justice and Activism collectionconsist of materials related to social justice issues in and around New Orleans and Latin America from the mid-1980s to early 1991.
The K Brad Ott Papers consists of materials chronicling the production and distribution of Ott’s self-published social justice and activism publications. The bulk of the collection’s materials chronicle Ott’s publishing history. The remaining contents of the collection consist of other publications, ephemera, and correspondence congregated by Ott during his publishing years.
Scheduled to coincide with the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Chin-Deep in Debris: A Katrina Retrospect One Decade Later is a multi-media exhibit highlighting Loyola University’s resilient response to the Category 3 storm and the destruction left in its wake.
Featured within the exhibit are photographs by Harold Baquet and select publications of The Maroon and The Wolf.
In addition, a number of interviews of the Hurricane Katrina Oral Histories Collection have been made accessible (available only in the Booth-Bricker Special Collections & Archives Reading Room).
Why do we wish to be remembered, even when none remain who looked upon our face? Surely, though it must retain an element of self-consideration, it is a last acknowledgment that we need to be loved; and having gone from all touch, we trust that memory may, as it were, keep unseen presence within the borders of day.
--William Soutar,
Diaries of a Dying Man, August 13, 1943
Introduction:
When one decides to create a memory book, going about the effort to bring together a scrapbook’s assemblage, a journal’s record, a commonplace book’s chosen information, a photo album’s visual documentation, or a diary’s narrative, one is constructing and presenting identity to some imagined current or future audience.
The social network sites of today offer much the same outlet that memory archiving and scrapbooking once did. Users create personal media assemblages sharing information, photographs, experiences, artworks, quotes, and beliefs presenting their identity to an audience online.
As you view this exhibit, we ask you to contemplate the connections between the memory archives of the past and the contemporary modes of self-presentation we use today. Drawing correlations between picture-heavy travel abroad scrapbook from 1963 and a present-day Instagram account, or between a collection of friends’ autographs from 1879 and a string of birthday wishes on a Facebook wall. In this mode, the viewer can explore both how and why we collectively “wish to be remembered” through our ever-evolving media traditions.
New Orleans Review entered its 50th year of publication in 2018. Today, the magazine publishes online, and continues to include both established and emerging writers. Student interns remain at the forefront of the magazine, learning the ins-and-outs of literary editing by doing it firsthand--reading and commenting on submissions, publicizing the magazine at book fairs and online, conducting literary interviews, and writing book reviews.
In celebration of its golden anniversary, New Orleans Review published its first book, Interviews from the Edge: 50 Years of Conversationsabout Writing and Resistance (Bloomsbury, 2019). Edited and introduced by former editors Mark Yakich and John Biguenet, Interviews from the Edge presents a selection of interviews drawn from the magazine's archive that dive head-first into the most enduring aesthetic and social concerns of the last half century.
