Archives, Archivists, and Activism
A sneak peak into Elmer L. Anderson Library
Britta Pietila
80 feet beneath the concrete jungle that is the West Bank of the University of Minnesota, there lies a cavern the size of four football fields, a cavern that holds the ominous mystery of the Elmer L. Anderson Library and Archives. You may know it as the massive, orange, brick building that resides to the right of Wiley Hall, but it is so much more than that. This cavern has reigned as a beacon of knowledge and history for 25 years, something that should be simultaneously utilized and celebrated more than it has in its long life-span. It is the caretaker of everything from books, magazines, newspapers, photographs, posters, audio recordings, tapes, film—I could go on and on. Harboring a special focus on the University’s history and events, the archivists are the ones who do the caretaking, mostly behind the scenes.
What got me in the doors of the archives was the special attention it pays to student activism, considering how present protesting was throughout every decade of the University of Minnesota, and every University in the nation. Student Life Archivist Katelynn Morken is a student activism spearhead. Morken’s role began when she processed a collection of files from Bill Tilton—a local lawyer who was heavily involved in student activism while he attended the University of Minnesota in the ‘70s—in 2020, leading to her curation of “1970 Student Strike–50 Years Later,” a blog post highlighting the anti-war student demonstrations during the Vietnam War. What drew Morken in were the posters, fliers, and literature student groups were creating and decorating campus with.
“Some of them were beautiful,” Morken said. “They’re more like artwork to be honest with you.”
So naturally, back in May, she began another project that placed student activism at the forefront titled “Campus Kiosks: The Voice of Student Groups at the U.” As a physical exhibit featured on the second floor of the Coffman Memorial Union as well as in Anderson Library, it consists of 5 panels of posters and broadsides, each portraying a different decade of activism. Collaborating with the Student Union Activities office and numerous other faculty members, like exhibit designer Darren Terpstra, this project tells a story of student activism through the role posters and broadsides, all in the name of communication, creativity, and change.
Now seen through an online exhibit, which I highly recommend checking out, “Campus Kiosks” features the demands, the plans, and the art from students, starting in the 30’s and weaving through the 70’s. One poster from 1935 created by and for the American League Against War and Fascism, protesting war and fascist movements. Written in bold words against a dampened orange paper, the poster exhibits when, where, and why students should join, with “Strike Against War” in all caps broadcasted at the top.
Morken mentioned how she was able to work with UMN’s Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) this past year, as they began to archive their materials, which are similar to those featured in “Campus Kiosks.” SDS is one of few student organizations that has reigned since the ‘60s, allowing for direct representation of its former compositions from the mid-to-late 1900s.
Annie Pribnow, a past member of SDS and now a current member of the Minnesota Abortion Action Committee (MNAAC), was a student Morken collaborated with. Considering SDS is such a long-lived student group, Pribnow emphasized that “making sure [their work] actually gets archived instead of never being documented,” was critical, allowing their existence to be commemorated for generations to come.
Now a part of MNAAC, Pribnow fights for reproductive and women’s rights, locally. A key part of their campaign right now is raising awareness of Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs), which are “clinics” that offer everything but abortions. From free pregnancy tests to ultrasounds, CPCs trick their visitors with fake support and understanding in order to urge them away from an abortion. They are a key actor in the national pro-life campaign, and MNAAC is hoping to warn community members of the threat these centers pose to pregnant people seeking a safe abortion.
Erik Moore echoed a lot of what Morken said, as the Head Archivist at Anderson Library and Director of the University Digital Conservatory. The Digital Conservatory is the online version of the Archives, consisting of about 150,000 files, all accessible to the public, upon request. This is where it gets spooky for some.
Moore focuses on the role of digital access, as he described how visitors of the archives feel a lot of anxiety from physically going there, making an appointment, and having to know what they want to see beforehand. Therefore, digitization has been a critical task of his: He wants to “make inroads on lessening" the pressures people face, because the reason the archives are here is so people use them, stating if the artifacts and information they preserve do not get used. “They lose a little bit of their value if no one can see it or use it,” Moore said.
Moore’s most recent project consists of processing 11,000 audio reels from recording programs and making them accessible and easy to utilize. Within these reels are tapes and records from KUOM, more commonly known as Radio K, spanning back to the early 1940s, as Radio K reigns as the nation's oldest non-commercial broadcast station. Because of Moore and his team's work, anyone can access these files and recordings.
For example, Moore highlighted the story of a student reporter who attended the 1972 Antiwar protests at the Northrop Mall and recorded everything. From conversing with students to documenting the state of the police and their maneuvers, Moore described how this reporter told the viewer everything he was seeing, until things turned sour.
The police, Minneapolis and University officers, began using tear-gas on the crowds in an attempt to disperse them. “...you can hear him running and still trying to report on what's happening,” he said, with students becoming overwhelmed with the fumes, the reporter himself choking up and unable to speak. Moore recounts this as “…a very raw experience…as if you were right next to him…living this with him.”
Stories like this deserve to be told. They reveal so much about past student activism, allowing anyone accessing the archives to get a feel of what it was like and how it is comparable to protests today. See the No Kings protests that took place across the nation Saturday, Oct. 28, MNAAC’s protest at UMN against Kristin Hawkins—the staunch anti-abortion activist and founder of Students for Life—on Monday, Oct. 13, and the numerous SDS protests that have taken place on the UMN campus regarding the genocide in Gaza, the presence of ICE on campus, and more.
Recently, the archives have shifted gears due to pressures from the Trump Administration as they gut federal offices and attack university, museum, and archive funding. Morken and Moore both communicated to me that the archives have begun focusing on operational matters due to the loss of grant funding. Grants are the main way archives are able to do special projects like Morken’s “Campus Kiosks.”
But fear not, there is still hope. Morken said that framing this as a “loss” is restrictive, considering some nonprofit organizations function solely on grants, so when they lose that funding, they have to halt everything. The archives, on the other hand, can still persist. The revocation of funding doesn’t limit them, it merely calls for reorganizing. “We will continue to do our work the best we can despite the rhetoric or decision making at the presidential level,” Morken said. “We will change the narrative.”