I never had much of an interest in history throughout the school. Learning about wars and ancient men who conquered many just never held my attention. Once I started working with the tracing race project and reading more in-depth about the history of African Americans at Iowa State my view changed a bit. The tracing race project was started by Professor Gloria Betcher and is a story map tracking the residences of African American students at Iowa State from 1923- to 1940. In Spring 2022 we will be expanding from 1940 to 1950 also now including the international students in our research as well. We find as much information about each student as we can and curate a biography, attach an image of them, and put it into our story map. As I dove into the project, I pored through yearbooks, that had recently been digitized through the digital initiatives department, learning different things about Iowa State and its rich past. I saw old and new traditions come and go and all the students of each class grow as the years went on. The yearbooks included lots of information including bios about important faculty, pictures of different buildings around campus, an extensive list of all the active clubs, etc.

I looked through student directories scanning all the various addresses and passed through many articles gaining info on people I originally knew nothing about. The directories are in the main room of the archives on the fourth floor of the library here in Iowa State. We have paper copies of all the directories from 1900 to 1945. I learned a load of new skills and improved my time management. What I learned most though is that while I do not like learning about war or old white men who conquered those around them, I do enjoy history when I find the right thing. I read articles to learn more about the individuals I was researching but would find myself being led from one article to the next unable to break from reading the passages on my screen. Learning about people and their lives is quite interesting. Several of the people we were presenting came to Iowa State to beat the odds. They came in small numbers outnumbered by their peers and accomplished remarkable things. They would become some of the first to graduate with such high degrees. They would move on to teaching others and leading others. Some became heads of departments, leaders of social movements, or one who even stayed here to help others just like him. My time with the digital initiative has been some of the most interesting learning I have done so far at Iowa State. I study Architecture so I spend my days drawing away learning about the values of lines, and then I come here and am working the complete opposite and I love it. I may not be a history buff just yet but give me a couple of months and I might just become one.

After explaining that I now like history I wanted to share two of the stories that I found most interesting. I want to tell you about Ada DeBlanc Yerwood and Willie Lee Glass Campbell. Both were women who went to Iowa State to get their master’s degrees, but that is not what makes them interesting. After they both received their degrees, they would go on to teach for a bit, but both eventually moved on to careers fighting social injustice. Ada would go on to help people achieve public health equality while she could not change it for everyone, she helped those around her and did what she could. Willie Lee would help fight the movement of segregation to integration for students’ teachers and administration for those in Home Economics. They both took a place and system they knew well and sought out to change it for the better. These women faced many challenges through their lives yet kept pushing to help others and create better opportunities for those that would come after them.