Spartanburg Co. Public Libraries, Emancipation Parade Flag conservation and purchase of environmental monitoring equipment.

FAIN: PG-271656-20

Spartanburg County Public Library (Spartanburg, SC 29306-3241)
N. Harrison Gage (Project Director: January 2020 to January 2023)

The purchase of environmental monitoring equipment, as recommended in a previous Preservation Assistance Grant and the conservation treatment of a flag created in 1865 for an Emancipation parade . The Spartanburg County Public Library special collections hold 40,000 drawings and prints from several Southern textile firms from the 1880s to the 1950s, as well as African American photograph collections from civil rights era protests. The fourteen data loggers requested would enable the monitoring of temperature and relative humidity for the entire archival collection.

Grant funds will be used for the purchase of environmental monitoring equipment for the entire archival collection and to hire a textile specialist to apply conservation treatments to an Emancipation parade flag created in 1865. This hand-sewn flag was created by a newly freed African American woman in Spartanburg, South Carolina during the enforcement of emancipation by Union Soldiers at the end of the civil war, shortly after the Confederacy dissolved. Spartanburg County Public Libraries is dedicated to preserving the full history of Spartanburg County, with an emphasis on prioritizing preservation efforts for our collections that focus on our under-represented communities which directly addresses the call for “A More Perfect Union” initiative.