Author Archives: Hannah Abelbeck

Groundbreaking New Mexico history collection of Edgar L. Hewett digitized for easy public viewing at New Mexico History Museum

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A person stands next to a table sorting black and white photos from a file box.
Hewett project photo archivist Hall Frost looks for a photo in the collection.

A significant collection of manuscripts and photographs from Museum of New Mexico founder Edgar L. Hewett (1865-1946) are now browsable online thanks to a major grant from the National Historical Publications & Records Commission (NHPRC). The newly digitized collection expands New Mexico History Museum’s (NMHM) mission to offer statewide educational resources to anyone interested in learning about the diverse history of the state and its connections to the rest of the world.

Previously viewable only by appointment, the Hewett Collection is NMHM’s most consulted document collection. Members of the public are now able to see more than 63,000 pages and more than 2000 additional photographs online 24 hours a day, seven days a week through a new digital interface.

Hewett was at the forefront of modern Southwestern archaeology during his time. He trained a new generation of archaeologists, including women, and advocated for the United States Antiquities Act (1906). He led the Museum of New Mexico and the School of American Archaeology (today known as the School for Advanced Research) and was integral to the cultural preservation of many New Mexican historical and archaeological sites.

Hewett Project Archivist Sarah Rounsville saw firsthand the sheer number of people, organizations, projects, and events that appear in the Hewett collection as she digitized each document. Rounsville observes that many topics in culture, the arts, politics, history, rights, and cultural conflict still fascinate researchers.

A person’s arms and hands are placing a document under a digital scanner with a computer screen showing the scan.
Hewett project archivist Sarah Rounsville digitizes a letter from the collection on the library’s new book scanner.

While digitizing the collection, archivists were able to collaborate and make connections across papers and photographs. Rounsville and Hewett Project Photo Archivist Hall Frost were able to identify Native American laborers in photographs by consulting payroll documents about archaeological excavations. Rounsville says that the efforts they put into the digital project creates new opportunities for more people to find, interact with, and interpret the material.

“By making Hewett’s papers widely available, researchers can grapple with the history of Southwestern archaeology and the methods and systems Hewett built as he elevated the Southwest’s culture on the world stage,” said Hewett digitization project manager Heather McClure, Librarian and Archivist at the Museum’s Fray Angelico Chavez History Library.

The Hewett collection is the first digitization project for NMHM’s new Digital Asset Management System, and the next project is already underway. NMHM anticipates publishing significant portions of New Mexico artist Gustave Baumann’s archival collection in 2025.

More information about the Hewett Collection can be found at:

Edgar L. Hewett Digitized Collections
https://archives.newmexicoculture.org/edgar-l-hewett-collection

Edgar L. Hewett Collection finding aid
https://nmarchives.unm.edu/repositories/10/resources/413

Edgar L. Hewett Photographs and Ephemera Collection finding aid
https://nmarchives.unm.edu/repositories/20/resources/5055

New Mexico History Museum Digital Collections landing page
https://archives.newmexicoculture.org

Local favorites

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US Post Office and Emilio Cordova General Store, Cordova, NM, circa 1928. Palace of the Governors Photo Archives # HP.1975.51.42

What’s your favorite New Mexico small business?

Were you the owner? Did your family run one for decades and decades? Did you work for one? Or did you just frequent a favorite shop around the corner?

The New Mexico History Museum is researching historic and modern small businesses to explore for a possible exhibition in the future.

New Mexico has many memorable and iconic establishments that would help to tell this story. In particular, we’d like to focus on sole-proprietor operations and family-owned businesses that sold goods or provided services to local communities in every part of the state.

(We’d like to avoid national chains and franchises.)

We’re looking for corner stores, tienditas, general stores, barber shops, moms & pops, cobblers, meat markets, bookstores, record stores, radio stores, repair shops, feed stores, trading posts, very small restaurants and cafes, tailors and seamstresses, laundries, bicycle shops, and so on, that were unique, characteristic, or served as anchors in their neighborhood or town.

Here’s a very simple form where you can add ideas from anywhere in the state.

https://forms.gle/wmuUvhfkVBjoyaBSA

Thanks for your help! Please spread the word to anyone who might be interested.

Pride Ignites in New Mexico

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The Stonewall riots began in Greenwich Village after 1 am on June 28, 1969, and they continued with varied levels of intensity through July 3rd. For those who witnessed or heard about the events, the rebellion sparked a sense of urgency for change. Stonewall’s aftermath inspired new organizations and new tactics, in New York City and across the country.

This pressing desire for action resonated in New Mexico too; organizers in Albuquerque attempted to form a chapter of the Gay Liberation Front at UNM in 1970. By 1975, activist energy in Albuquerque coalesced around two organizations, a local group called Juniper and the Metropolitan Community Church, both of which focused on community, support, and self-acceptance in the face of mainstream prejudice. In 1976, these organizations co-hosted the first Pride march in Albuquerque with about 25 participants, no permit, and no media attention.

100+ marchers from the MCC, the Gay Co-op, and Lambdas de Santa Fe again celebrated “Christopher Street Resistance” in Albuquerque in 1977, chanting “Out of the closets, into the streets.” The featured speaker that year was Mattachine Society founder (and New Mexico resident) Harry Hay, who called for a “coalition among all scapegoat minorities—Indians, Chicanos, Blacks, women in the women’s movement, and gays.” The marchers’ cars were egged, they were booed and heckled (but also cheered), and a local church passed out “Gay No More” pamphlets. Undaunted, one woman told a reporter for the alternative newspaper Seers Rio Grande Weekly that “The homophobes and hatemongers will just have to look out ‘cause we’re coming out and we’re not going back.”

By 1981, when this Lesbian & Gay Pride Week program was created, Pride was organized by the Gay Co-op. Around that time, 1980 or 1981, one woman marched with a paper bag over her head, a compromise since she wanted to be a part of the public demonstration but was worried that being out could cause her to lose her job or her son.

These early parades might have been the first time that Albuquerque locals could see how many gay people, often talked about in the abstract or singly, were members of the community: neighbors, friends, family, coworkers, and teachers. But, it is important to note, these celebrations and demonstrations weren’t for the straights, they were for the gay community and for liberation.

Albuquerque Pride gave us permission to post their copy of this 1981 program, signed by the artist, Ray Sandoval.

1981 Albuquerque Lesbian & Gay Pride week event schedule. Published by Common Bond

Happy Pride! May we roller disco again soon!

On Juneteenth

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Frederick Douglass, abolitionist, formerly enslaved, engraving by Barry Moser (Pennyroyal Press, 2020)

Slavery was formerly abolished (again) in New Mexico by a Congressional act on June 19, 1862, which prohibited slavery in current and future US territories. This was prior to the more famous Emancipation Proclamation (issued September 22, 1862, enacted January 1, 1863), which was supposed to free the enslaved in ten Confederate states. And it was three years to the day before the first Juneteenth, June 19, 1865, when news of the Proclamation reached enslaved people in Galveston, Texas.

While in theory the 13th Amendment of 1865 and the Anti-Peonage Act of 1867 (which names New Mexico specifically) effectively made slavery and servitude illegal in the US, social and legal systems of discrimination, such as the Jim Crow laws, continued to oppress African Americans (and many other historically marginalized people). These systems only began to shift in response to the successes of the Civil Rights movements and the Great Society legislation of the 1960s.

New Mexico’s antislavery history is complex and centuries long. As part of the Spanish colonial empire, slavery was abolished here in 1512 and again in 1543, although African and Indigenous people continued to be widely enslaved throughout the Americas. In 1829, Mexico abolished slavery in its states and territories, including New Mexico (but excluding Texas). American occupation reopened these debates.

Historic Emancipation Day and Juneteenth celebrations have taken place in Roswell, Clovis, Santa Fe, and Albuquerque since at least the 1890s and include music, food, games, sports, and pageantry with attendees dressed in their finest clothes. Juneteenth has been a New Mexico state holiday since 2006, and it helps make visible our African American communities while celebrating the end of one phase of a significant part of our national history.

For more on this holiday and African American history in New Mexico, check out this 2019 episode from KUNM’s “Let’s Talk New Mexico.”