Charlotte Shedd was born in Austria in 1913 as Charlotte Kraus, and became a student of the performing arts. In 1938, she was denied the right to appear on stage because of the Nazi occupation of Austria, the Nuremberg Laws, and her father's Jewish background. On Christmas Eve 1938, she escaped to America with a nearly expired Austrian passport and began her singing career. Shortly thereafter, she met Eleanor Roosevelt's bodyguard, who introduced her to the First Lady, beginning a close friendship that lasted until Mrs. Roosevelt's death in 1962.
Content types:
Performed music and Spoken word
Formats:
Text document and Open reel tape (unknown material)
Extent:
Approximately 120 recordings, microfilm, 4.6 feet, paper copies
Repository/Collector:
University of Delaware Library, Special Collections
Based in Newark, Delaware, Dreamstreets is a magazine featuring local poetry and writing with an irregular but persistent publishing history since 1977. After appearing once a year, and then in several issues per year, in 1984 the magazine began using radio station WXDR to broadcast performances of its poetry and fiction. Contributors to Dreamstreets also performed at various literary events and poetry readings. Steven Leech is the editor and publisher, with regular contributors such as e. jean lanyon, Douglas Morea, and Phillip Bannowsky.
Content types:
Performed music, Spoken word, Two-dimensional moving image, Text, and Still image
Formats:
Text document, Open reel tape (unknown material), Analog audiocassette, VHS (including SVHS and VHS-C), Photographic print, and Microfilm
Extent:
Approximately 23 recordings, microfilm, 7 feet
Repository/Collector:
University of Delaware Library, Special Collections
Ishmael Reed, African-American novelist, poet, and publisher, was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on February 22, 1938. Reed moved with his mother to Buffalo, New York in 1942. His mother worked in various wartime industries and Reed attended public schools, graduating in 1956. He also played violin and trombone and began writing a newspaper column on jazz for the Empire Star Weekly when he was thirteen. He enrolled as an evening student at Millard Fillmore College, the night school division of the University of Buffalo, and worked as a clerk at the Buffalo public library during the day. His writing ability was quickly recognized, and he moved into the bachelor of arts program at the University of Buffalo. He withdrew in 1960 because of a "dire shortage of funds" (Gates) and a "wide gap between social classes" (Gates). To escape "the artificial social and class distinctions that he associated with American university education," (Gates) he moved to Buffalo's Talbert Mall Project. Daily exposure to systematic poverty cycles in the projects led him to political activism in the civil rights and Black Power movements.
Content types:
Performed music, Spoken word, Two-dimensional moving image, Text, and Still image
Formats:
Pressed LP disc, LaserDisc, Open reel tape (unknown material), Analog audiocassette, VHS (including SVHS and VHS-C), Betamax, Text document, Photographic print, and Microfilm
Extent:
Approximately 20 recordings, microfilm, 65 feet
Repository/Collector:
University of Delaware Library, Special Collections