Cooperative Living May 2021 - 17

The Library of Congress employed
high-tech imaging to help reveal the
contents of a century-old ledger.
It also is one example of the role
Multispectral imaging of
a superintendent's ledger.
newspaper clippings. When Roeder
and his team discovered the daybook,
which ran from 1914 until about
1920, they detected handwriting under
the yellowed clippings that matched
Emerick's other correspondence.
To uncover the hidden writing, they
turned to multispectral imaging, a
sophisticated technology that separates
content along different spectral bands
- kind of like recovering writing on
mummy wrappings. Museums and
universities with the necessary
equipment would have charged
$50,000, but the Preservation Research
and Testing Division at the Library of
Congress agreed to examine Emerick's
ledger for free because of its importance
to Black history.
The task was complicated by the
fact that Emerick wrote and pasted
on both sides of the page, which led
library analysts to make several passes
with different spectrum colors. The
job took six months, three scientists
and a $350,000 camera.
Roeder suspects the paste-over
job was innocent, but estimates
interpreting the images will take
the Edwin Washington Project into
2022, given the number of entries
on students, travel and hirings and
firings. " It's a real history of the life
of this guy at a certain point in time, "
he says.
co-opliving.com
high tech plays in the project. In
another, Neil Steinberg, owner of
Photoworks in Leesburg with his
wife, has been digitally copying and
reproducing photographs that were
ripped, timeworn or barely salvageable.
" I found really compelling the
various pictures of the teachers because
you see the real human faces and it's
kind of touching, " he says. " All too
often, people will bury history in order
to create a rosier picture of our past.
And it's a mistake to ignore the past,
however painful it might be. "
The Edwin Washington Project
received the Outstanding Volunteer
Award from Loudoun County in 2019
and has connected with universities
and libraries in the South for additional
documents and photographs. State
Sen. John Bell of Loudoun shepherded
a resolution through the General
Assembly that commended the project,
underscoring the need for state and
local officials to protect similar records.
The team remains committed to
bringing the entire story of Loudoun
schools, of all races, to succeeding
generations - and to building a
template for use by researchers in
other places.
" Edwin Washington's drive to
become an educated Black man in
a time that was not desirable is
a strong statement from him. And
that is a beacon for those of us who
know his story, " Simmons says. ■
For more information,
visit EdwinWashingtonProject.org.
The Training Center is a historic building.
A 'Bigger and Better'
High School
The Edwin Washington Project
uncovered many unsung heroes,
but Edythe Harris is among the
most notable. Harris was
instrumental in expanding the high school program at the Loudoun
Training Center (above) to the first accredited post-elementary
education for Blacks in the county. She started teaching in Loudoun
when she was 24, educating 39 students for the sum of $70, which
dropped to $60 after she had six years of experience. She expanded
the high school curriculum to two years, saying she wanted to make
it " bigger and better " by adding a third year, asked school officials
for an assistant and another classroom, and sought permission to
teach at night. In 1935, her first group of high school graduates
numbered 5 students.
May 2021 | Cooperative Living | 15
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PHOTO COURTESY EWP PHOTOS
http://www.EdwinWashingtonProject.org http://www.co-opliving.com
Cooperative Living May 2021

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