Ruth Anna Fisher

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Ruth Anna Fisher
1920
BornMarch 15, 1886 (1886-03-15)
Lorain, Ohio
Died(1975-01-28)January 28, 1975
EducationOberlin College
(A.B. 1906)
Occupation(s)Archivist and historian

Ruth Anna Fisher (March 15, 1886 – January 28, 1975) was an American historian, archivist, and teacher who played a major role in collecting sources from British archives for the Carnegie Institution and Library of Congress.

Early life[edit]

Fisher was born in Lorain, Ohio, the daughter of David C. Fisher, a real estate investor and ice merchant, and Elizabeth Dorsey.[1] She graduated from Oberlin College in 1906 and was offered a position at the Tuskegee Institute. Within a few months, however, she had a falling out with Booker T. Washington over matters of pedagogy and the school's requirement that she be involved in the Sunday School.[2]: 126–127 

After leaving Tuskegee, Fisher taught in the Lorain and Indianapolis, Indiana, schools and at the Manassas Industrial School for Colored Youth in Manassas, Virginia, studied at the Canadian Academy of Music in Toronto, and was in charge of the recreational center of a YWCA in New York City.[3]: 316  Her work at the YWCA put her in contact with organizer Eva Del Vakia Bowles,[4] and in the YWCA canteen, contact with soldiers returning from the French World War I battlefields underscored her awareness of the differences between the Black experience in the U.S. and that in Europe.[5] When a benefactor offered to pay for a year of study abroad, Fisher chose the London School of Economics and made her way there in 1920.[3]: 316 

Archivist and historian[edit]

While in London, Fisher met with historian J. Franklin Jameson, who was researching documents connected with American history for the Carnegie Institution. Jameson described her to fellow historian Waldo Gifford Leland in positive terms, saying that she had "the proper delicacy about the color line ... but highly intelligent and educated negroes have so hard a pathway in America. I want [her] to have what pleasure she can in Europe."[6]: 383  Jameson was to support her throughout her career, even raising $2,500 so that she could pursue training as an opera singer.[6]: 283  (Although she received a scholarship to study music in London in 1931–32,[7] her musical ambitions were cut short by a goiter operation.[3]: 318 ) After Jameson's death in 1965, Fisher edited a volume of tributes from his fellow historians and wrote one of the selections.

At first, Fisher worked on Carnegie projects for Jameson and people he referred to her. In 1927, she joined the Library of Congress to supervise the copying of American history materials in British repositories, a project that generated as many as 100,000 pages a year after photographic reproduction became the norm. She believed she was the only foreign woman to have her own key at the British Museum.[8] She returned to the United States in 1940 after her apartment was bombed during a raid on London. She resumed her research in England in 1949.[3]: 317 

The concluding years of her Library of Congress career, from 1952 until her retirement in 1956, were spent in Washington, DC.[3]: 318  By then, she felt that the efforts in London had "about broken the back of the manuscripts material relating to our history to be found in England" although she expected new revelations still to pop up occasionally from public figures' own holdings.[9]

Fisher's name appears in the acknowledgements of the publications of contemporary historians, who found invaluable her ability to locate obscure documents. Of particular note was her finding of the original copy of the secret convention that Toussaint Louverture signed with British general Thomas Maitland (British Army officer) on August 31, 1798, lifting the British blockade on Saint-Domingue in exchange for a promise that Louverture would not export the Haitian Revolution to the British colony of Jamaica.[10]

World War II years[edit]

Fisher had been in London for some two decades when World War II broke out. The London bombing that left her homeless also destroyed almost all of her possessions. The only personal item that remained to her was a small book of maxims.[11]

Back in the U.S., she found Washington very different from London, writing to her friend W.E.B. Du Bois:[12]

I hate Washington with an intense hatred.... I see no difference between the Japanese and Prussian military caste and the Southern oligarchy here. They are all convinced of their race superiority, and they control the army and navy. The Ku Klux Klan is like the Storm Troopers. And all of these groups want to make their opinions the predominant and powerful ones in their respective countries and the world with all else subservient to them. It further seems as likely for a Hitler to arise here in these circumstances as in Germany.

She retained strong connections to her friends in the U.K. and contributed some of the impressions from their letters to Du Bois' new journal Phylon.[13]

Social awareness[edit]

Although her chief impact was as a researcher rather than an organizer or activist, Fisher had a keen awareness of racial issues from an early age and was connected with many of those working for civil rights and for opportunities for Black Americans. In 1915, in her hometown of Lorain, she spoke out against plans to show "The Mystery of Morrow's Rest" (previously titled "The Nigger"), a film about miscegenation based on a play by Edward Sheldon.[14] She carried on a cordial and sometimes even playful correspondence with Du Bois for five decades.[15]

She attended the 2nd Pan-African Congress in London in 1921.[16] Fisher also was active in the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History and spoke at its 1941 meeting in Columbus, Ohio.[17]

Reflecting in 1941 on the causes of World War II, she observed that the level of popular dissatisfaction that could give rise to Hitler was not confined to Germany:[13]: 161 

And this discontent and dissatisfaction growing over the whole world has arisen because the ordinary man and woman is no longer willing to starve, nor to work to build up riches for her country and nation unless he is given his rightful share of those riches. His demand is really simple, that the principles of democracy be put into practise for him.

At age 77, Fisher participated in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963.[3]: 319 

Selected writings[edit]

  • Extracts from the Records of the African Companies (Washington, DC: Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, 1930)
  • 'Legend of the Blue Jay' in Musser, Judith, ed., "Girl, colored" and Other Stories : A Complete Short Fiction Anthology of African American Women Writers in The Crisis Magazine, 1910-2010 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2011)

Edited works[edit]

  • J. Franklin Jameson: A Tribute (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1965)

Fisher's personal papers are held by the Manuscripts Division of the Library of Congress.[18]

Sources[edit]

  • "Ruth Anna Fisher, 88, Authority on History". The Washington Post: C4. 31 January 1975.

References[edit]

  1. ^ Commemorative Biographical Record of the Counties of Huron and Lorain, Ohio: Containing Biographical Sketches of Prominent and Representative Citizens, and of Many of the Early Settled Families. J. H. Beers. 1894. p. 1158. Retrieved 21 January 2020.
  2. ^ Booker T Washington; Louis R. Harlan (1980). Booker T. Washington Papers Volume 9: 1906-8. Assistant Editor, Nan E. Woodruff. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-00771-2. Retrieved 21 January 2020.
  3. ^ a b c d e f Render, Sylvia Lyons (October 1975). "Afro-American Women: The Outstanding and the Obscure". The Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress. 32 (4): 306–321. JSTOR 29781646.
  4. ^ Lean'tin L. Bracks; Jessie Carney Smith (2014). Black Women of the Harlem Renaissance Era. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p. 26. ISBN 978-0-8108-8543-1. Retrieved 21 January 2020.
  5. ^ Fisher, Ruth Anna (2 January 1919). "Negro Soldiers' Thoughts". The Congregationalist and Advance. 104: 30. Retrieved 21 January 2020.
  6. ^ a b Morey Rothberg, ed. (30 November 2000). John Franklin Jameson and the Development of Humanistic Scholarship in America. The Carnegie Institution of Washington and the Library of Congress, 1905-1937. Vol. 3. University of Georgia Press. ISBN 978-0-8203-2039-7. Retrieved 21 January 2020.
  7. ^ "Rosenwald Fund Scholarships". Opportunity: Journal of Negro Life. 9 (9): 287. September 1931. Retrieved 22 January 2020.
  8. ^ Fisher, Ruth Anna. "Letter from Ruth Anna Fisher to W. E. B. Du Bois, April 11, 1933". W. E. B. Du Bois Papers (MS 312). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries. Retrieved 26 January 2020.
  9. ^ Eads, Jane (6 November 1953). "Ohio Woman Is Manuscript Expert". Dayton Daily News: 41. Retrieved 23 January 2020.
  10. ^ Logan, Rayford W (1941). The Diplomatic Relations of the United States with Haiti, 1776-1891. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. p. ix. Retrieved 22 January 2020.
  11. ^ Fox, William L. (May 19, 2013). "Comfort and Courage". St. Lawrence University. Retrieved 22 January 2020.
  12. ^ Fisher, Ruth Anna (17 March 1943). "Letter from Ruth Anna Fisher to W. E. B. Du Bois". W. E. B. Du Bois Papers (MS 312). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries. Retrieved 22 January 2020.
  13. ^ a b Fisher, Ruth Anna (1941). "England Today". Phylon. 2 (2): 155–161. doi:10.2307/271785. JSTOR 271785.
  14. ^ Griffin, William Wayne (2005). African Americans and the Color Line in Ohio, 1915-1930. Ohio: The Ohio State University Press. p. 73. ISBN 0814210031.
  15. ^ "Search results for name:"Fisher, Ruth Anna"". W. E. B. Du Bois Papers (MS 312). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries. Retrieved 22 January 2020.
  16. ^ Lewis, David Levering (2007). "The Invention of Place in the Du Boisian Canon" (PDF). The Mind's Eye: 12. Retrieved 22 January 2020.
  17. ^ "Students of Negro Life to Meet Here". The Columbus Dispatch: C3. 5 October 1941.
  18. ^ Pritchard, Sarah (1986). "Library of Congress Resources for the Study of Women". In Hildenbrand, Suzanne (ed.). Women's Collections: Libraries, Archives, and Consciousness. London: Routledge. ISBN 9781000760057. Retrieved 26 January 2020.
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