With more than 5,000 historic items dating back to the 18th century, 麻豆原创鈥檚 Carol Mundy Collection tells the story of the African-American experience through books, pamphlets, newspapers, posters, photographs and other rare ephemera. The collection, which is kept in the 聽and displayed on the fifth floor of the , has been the life鈥檚 work of one woman who pieced together her future with artifacts from the past.
It began with a centuries-old slip of paper. Browsing through a shabby book section in a Florida thrift store, Carol Mundy picked up a 1901 edition of The Complete Life of William McKinley and Story of His Assassination. As she carefully flipped through the tattered pages, she found a yellow letter wrapped in wax paper slipped into its spine. Its date: 1870.
The letter was addressed to the 10th Calvary Regiment or 鈥淏uffalo Soldiers,鈥� one of the few segregated units in the U.S. Army at the time. Mundy, whose mother was an antique collector, immediately saw the value in the historic piece. The find would start a 25-year occupation.
Thanks to her job with Delta airlines that required frequent travel around the U.S., Mundy, with her daughter in tow, would rent聽a car in between her 10-hour shifts and search for Salvation Army stores and yard sales. Eventually, the hunt would extend to her personal time and vacations, too, much to her friends鈥� dismay. 鈥淔or years my friends didn鈥檛 want to travel with me,鈥� she says.
For every piece found, Mundy would research the history behind it and record it carefully. And she has gone to great lengths to document her collection. 鈥淚 have called Portugal about the Middle Passage, I have called Temple University, I have called Canada to learn how to archive,鈥� she says. 鈥溾�� Pay is not necessary, I just want the history to be told correctly.鈥�
But no matter how much time or space it took up in her home, Mundy never saw her collection as a burden, but instead as her purpose in life. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a legacy for my children and grandchildren that I was given to do on this earth,鈥� she says.
Today, Mundy has entire storage units filled African-American artifacts, but many of her best pieces can be found at the 麻豆原创 Library. Now part of the university鈥檚 special collections and archives, Mundy鈥檚 featured relics include film reels of Billie Holiday performing with Quincy Jones and Miles Davis, poll tax receipts, plantation inventories with slaves listed below the livestock and newspapers headlining speeches from Abraham Lincoln.
麻豆原创 Library archivist Barack (Suphi) Ogreten said the collection came to 麻豆原创 in 2009 and the university special collections department is still working on processing all of Mundy’s finds. He anticipates that the finding aid 鈥� an electronic guide that will chronicle all of the items and their history, in addition to a short biography of Mundy 鈥� will be available in late 2014 or sometime in 2015.
Once the collection is processed, Ogreten said all documents will be available for the 麻豆原创 community to 聽be used for academic research in the special collection’s reading room in the library.
“Her collection means a lot to the university, because it has a lot of local Central Florida and statewide historical artifacts and information,”聽said Africana Studies Program Director Anthony Major.
With both local and national ties, Mundy’s civil rights collection is the one she admires most. Many pieces highlight Florida鈥檚 struggle to integrate. 鈥淥ne of the [pieces] in the civil rights collection is about St. Augustine and how they were trying to integrate the beaches,鈥� Mundy said. 鈥淭hat was one of the hardest battles.鈥�
While some of her collection is now part of the university, she continues to show her pieces of history to schools, Boys and Girls Clubs and is in contact with the Smithsonian Museum to have her collection shown there.
鈥淢y ultimate goal was to share it,鈥� Mundy said. 鈥淵ou get addicted to history.鈥�