Category: US History & Culture

Special Collections Goes to Hollywood

Fritz von Erich, The Iron Claw, and the Jack Pfefer Wrestling Collection

by Greg Bond, Sports Archivist and Curator, Joyce Sports Research Collection

“I make a much better heel than babyface.”

Thus wrote former Southern Methodist University football player turned professional wrestler Jack Adkisson to Dallas-area wrestling promoter Ed McLemore in a September 1953 letter. Using the inside language of professional wrestling, Adkisson was explaining that he had found success wrestling as a villain—or “heel”—instead of as a fan favorite—or “babyface.”

Adkisson, a Texas native, got his start as a professional wrestler under McLemore and then traveled to New England to get more seasoning under the tutelage of promoter Tony Santos, Sr. Adkisson elaborated on his new “heel” persona to McLemore: “I have been working as Fritz Von Eric, the German Giant from Munich, Germany.”

Less than a decade after the end of World War II, Adkisson gained prominence in the ring by riling up and angering wrestling crowds with his Nazi-infuenced German villain. He explained to McLemore:

“I have gone over exceptionally well with the crowds as a heel, and once or twice I have had to literally fight my way to the dressing room. In Revere [Massachusetts], Santos was trying to hold the crowd back from me, and he was practically trampled. That was one night that my heart was in my throat. I couldn’t have felt more helpless in a cage of wildcats.”

The star-crossed von Erich family, a mainstay of professional wrestling in the second half of the twentieth century, is the subject of a soon-to-be-released motion picture The Iron Claw starring Zac Efron. The origin story of Fritz von Erich, the family’s patriarch, is partially documented in the Jack Pfefer Wrestling Collection—one of the most popular and heavily used manuscript collections in the Joyce Sports Research Collection.

Jack Pfefer was a wrestling manager and promoter whose influential career lasted from the 1920s through the 1960s. Pfefer unapologetically embraced the showmanship and theatrical spectacle of professional wrestling, and he routinely advertised and emphasized the entertainment aspects of his bouts.

Envelope advertising Ed McLemore’s Dallas-based wrestling shows at the famous Sportatorium. Adkisson used this envelope to mail a letter to Jack Pfefer in 1953. (PFE850-12-77)

Pfefer also meticulously saved his records. His papers, which Hesburgh Library acquired in the 1970s, fill more than 200 boxes and include voluminous correspondence, financial records, thousands of programs, and tens of thousands of photographs. The Pfefer Collection is one of the largest publicly accessible wrestling archival or manuscript collections in the country, and it documents nearly all aspects of professional wrestling during the middle years of the twentieth century.

The full five-page letter Jack Adkisson sent to Ed McLemore in 1953 describing his success wrestling as “Fritz von Eric” in New England. (PFE850-12-77)

The 1953 letter from Adkisson to McLemore eventually wound up in Pfefer’s possession, and, along with other material in the Pfefer collection, helps to to chart the rise of Fritz von Erich to legendary wrestling status.

But in 1953, Addkisson was still toiling near the bottom of the industry, and he complained to McLemore:

“I am making a living from this, but that is all. I am not saving anything to speak of. And if a guy can’t save some money in this business, what’s the use in staying? I have got to put away some money…”

Nevertheless, Adkisson remained hopeful: “I am more optimistic about my potential as a bad boy,”

The November 1963 issue of Big Time Wrestling magazine featured an article on Fritz von Erich. The headline claimed that von Erich had insured his right hand, which he used for the Iron Claw, for one million dollars. (PFE780-1-2)

Adkisson was right about his potential. Using his signature maneuver, the “Iron Claw,” von Erich and his German “bad boy” routine, rose up the ranks of the sport to make him one of professional wrestling’s more famous and bankable stars in the 1960s.

Publicity photo of “Fritz von Erich the Worlds Greatest Athlete,” c. 1960. (PFE700-36-6)

von Erich did eventually succeed in saving money, and he became a wrestling promoter in his own right, particularly in his home state of Texas. Fritz von Erich also had six sons, five of whom followed him into the ring. Tragically, five of the von Erich sons died young, leading to talk of a family curse. Fritz von Erich died at the age of 68 in 1997.

The movie Iron Claw, which tells the story of the ill-fated von Erich family, opens widely in theaters on December 22, 2023. The Jack Pfefer Wrestling Collection is open and available to the public for research.

Upcoming Events: December 2023

Please join us for the following public events and exhibits being hosted in Rare Books and Special Collections:

Thursday, December 7 at 5:00pm | Italian Research Seminar: “Desire, Anxiety, Shame: Transatlantic (Re)Mediations and ‘Italian Culture'” by Loredana Polezzi (Stony Brook University).

The exhibition Making and Unmaking Emancipation in Cuba and the United States is now open and will run through the fall semester.

Tours of the exhibit may also be arranged for classes and other groups by contacting Rachel Bohlmann at (574) 631-1575 or Rachel.Bohlmann.2@nd.edu.

The December spotlight exhibits are Football and Community at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (August – December 2023) and TBD (December 2023 – November 2024).

Rare Books and Special Collections will be closed for Notre Dame’s Christmas and New Year’s Break
(December 22, 2023, through January 1, 2024).

We otherwise remain open for our regular hours during Reading Days and Exams, and welcome those looking for a quiet place to study.

Beat Generation Cookbook: Illustrated

by Rachel Bohlmann, American History Librarian and Curator

As a holiday centered around a meal, Thanksgiving includes some introspection, as we pause to reflect on the past year and give thanks before tucking in. 

This Beat Generation Cookbook, although not a particularly Thanksgiving-themed one, takes an irreverent and somewhat alternative approach to meals and cooking, and by implication, to national holidays like Thanksgiving. The Beats—a loosely comprised, countercultural community of writers, poets, musicians, artists, and free-thinkers—coalesced as a cultural phenomenon during the late 1940s.

Published in 1961, this booklet appeared at a time when some Beat counterculturalism had crossed over into mainstream American culture. The recipes—of intentionally dubious origins and quality—are named for (and in some culinary way) connect to Beats who had achieved widespread notice, if not mainstream celebrity. The first recipe, naturally, is named for Jack Kerouac, author of On the Road (1957) and a core Beat figure. He was also one of the best known Beats by the early 1960s; and he loved milk. The “Kerouac Kocktail” a vile-sounding concoction of milk, yeast, sugar, and water, was fermented then refrigerated. The recipe promises that “[i]t beats instant coffee, and it’s effervescent!” 

A dessert recipe, “Billy’s Graham Cracker Pie in the Sky,” spoofed Protestant Evangelist Billy Graham’s successful New York City crusade at Madison Square Garden during the summer of 1957. A chocolate pie, the dish’s “appeal has spread to the barbarians and cannibals, partly for its austere simplicity and partly for its religious flavor” the Beat cooks claim. The recipe called for “¼ cup melted margarine (Protestant)” as well as “2 tablespoons water (Holy)” and “2 disengaged eggs.” It further directed the cook to “chill for Seven Days. Go directly to Hell. Do not pass Purgatory. Do not collect Novenas.” This silliness is paired with an illustration of a Pilgrim eating a slice. 

Hesburgh Library’s copy is missing its outer cover, which was bright yellow with the title in large, red lettering. Our copy also looks well-used–with food (and perhaps paint) stains on the cover as well as more food stains inside, particularly on the pages with recipes for Streetcar Pie and Dharma Buns (a play on Kerouac’s novel, The Dharma Bums). 

The Beat Generation Cookbook: Illustrated also includes recipes for a number of artists and writers the Beats considered important influences. Pablo Piccaso is included as is Kenneth Rexroth, a San Francisco-based poet who supported and helped launch the literary careers of a number of young Beats, including Allen Ginsberg. The Beat Generation Cookbook recognized Rexroth with Rex Broth: a very large, one-pot meal of meat (“beef, mutton, goat, or goose”), beans, barley, root vegetables, spices, and “1 cup Mr. Clean,” with which “to scrub the whole pot (& everything that’s in it).” 

Rare Books and Special Collections holds the Kenneth Rexroth Collection: a grouping of works by and about the artist, of which this tongue-in-cheek, cultural, and culinary masterpiece is a light-hearted example. The Rexroth Collection is part of a substantial RBSC collection of post-World War II small press and avant-garde literature published in the United States. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Special Collections will be closed during Notre Dame’s Thanksgiving Break (November 23-24, 2023). We wish you and yours a Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving 2022: Turkey for the People
Thanksgiving 2021: The Thanksgiving that Gave Us a Song, a Movie … and a Cookbook!
Thanksgiving 2020: Happy Thanksgiving to All Our Readers
Thanksgiving 2019: “Thanksgiving Greetings” from the Strunsky-Walling Collection
Thanksgiving 2018: Thanksgiving from the Margins
Thanksgiving 2017: Playing Indian, Playing White
Thanksgiving 2016: Thanksgiving Humor by Mark Twain
Thanksgiving 2015: Thanksgiving and football

Upcoming Events: November 2023

Please join us for the following public events and exhibits being hosted in Rare Books and Special Collections:

Thursday, November 2 at 5:00pm | Italian Research Seminar: “The Dilemmas of Friendship in Dante’s Italy” by Elizabeth Coggeshall (Florida State).

Thursday, November 9 at 5:00pm | Book Presentation: La vita dell’altro. Svevo, Joyce: Un’amicizia geniale by Enrico Terrinoni (Affiliate of the Center for Italian Studies). Terrinoni will be joined by Sara Boezio, Charles Leavitt, and Clíona Ní Ríordáin for a roundtable discussion of his book. This event is co-sponsored by the Center for Italian Studies and the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies.

Thursday, November 30 at 4:30pm | Making and Unmaking Emancipation in Cuba and the United States: A Panel Discussion.

A tour of Hesburgh Libraries’ Fall 2023 exhibition, Making and Unmaking Emancipation in Cuba and the United States, precedes the panel discussion (4:30 – 5:00pm). A reception will follow the panel discussion, in the Hesburgh Libraries Scholar’s Lounge.

Free and open to the public; no tickets required.

The exhibition Making and Unmaking Emancipation in Cuba and the United States is now open and will run through the fall semester.

A curator-led tour, open to the public, will be held noon–1:00pm on the following upcoming Friday: November 17. Tours of the exhibit may also be arranged for classes and other groups by contacting Rachel Bohlmann at (574) 631-1575 or Rachel.Bohlmann.2@nd.edu.

The November spotlight exhibits are Football and Community at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (August – December 2023) and Path to Sainthood: Brother Columba O’Neill (October – November 2023).

RBSC will be closed during the University of Notre Dame’s Thanksgiving Break, November 23 – 24.

National Women’s Football League Collection

by Greg Bond, Sports Archivist and Curator, Joyce Sports Research Collection

The 1972 Official Program for the Toledo Troopers football team introduced the squad to readers by reprinting a local newspaper story about two reporters watching a typical practice:

What seemed so incomprehensible about it all was what they were hearing and seeing was no ordinary football team. There were some telltale signs, such as a pigtail here and there, a high-pitched shout or two, maybe a trace of lipstick on a jersey sleeve; and once the helmets came off, there was no mistaking… these were girls, women who at first glance seemed so removed from the kitchen, so totally removed from all the things that the so-called “weaker sex” usually does.

The 1972 Troopers program is part of a small recently acquired National Women’s Football League (NWFL) Collection that documents the history of the NWFL and the history of women’s professional football. The Troopers, one of the earliest—and the most successful—professional women’s tackle football teams in the country, first took the field in 1971 and were a founding member of the National Women’s Football League in 1974.

Women’s football was part of the larger women’s sports revolution of the 1960s and 1970s that both came before and was fueled by Title IX legislation in 1972. Despite the changing social mores, women football players still frequently encountered discrimination, stereotypes, and skepticism—even from sympathetic observers like the reporters in Toledo. Nevertheless, women’s football carved out a following. During the heyday of the National Women’s Football League in the mid-1970s, games attracted thousands of fans.

The new collection documents both the NWFL and an earlier barnstorming period when the best women’s football teams played irregular schedules with few formal league structures. A 1972 New York Fillies vs. Midwest Cowgirls scorecard is representative of the pre-NWFL material.

In 1974, the National Women’s Football League regularized competition between the top women’s football teams and stretched from Ohio to Texas to California. The new league attracted increased attention and provided stability to the sport for several seasons. The NWFL collection contains several game programs and yearbooks from teams like the Toledo Troopers and the Detroit Demons.

Some representations of women’s football players in these publications, like the cartoon below from the 1972 New York Fillies scorecard, relied on stereotypes and sex appeal. But most images in NWFL publications showcased the athletes’ football skills as seen in these pictures of Troopers and Demons players in game action and in practice .

Financial difficulties, long travel distances, and declining attendance, however, forced several of the NWFL’s best teams, including the Toledo Troopers, to go out of business after the 1979 season. By the early 1980s, the National Women’s Football League only had franchises in the states of Michigan and Ohio. The league ceased operations in 1988. 

To read more about the history of women’s football, see: Hail Mary: The Rise and Fall of the National Women’s Football League by Britni De La Cretaz and Lyndsey D’Arcangelo; and We Are the Troopers: The Women of the Winningest Team in Pro Football History, by Stephen Guinan. Both of these titles are available at Hesburgh Libraries.

The National Women’s Football League Collection is open and available to researchers. We also welcome additional donations of material that document the history of women’s professional football.

National Hispanic Heritage Month 2023

We join the Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution, and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in celebrating National Hispanic Heritage Month.

An Hispanic Superhero in Southwest Texas

by Erika Hosselkus, Curator, Latin American Collections

This year we share two issues of the comic book, El Gato Negro (The Black Cat), created by American artist Richard Dominguez. The popular series debuted in 1993 and narrates the adventures the Hispanic superhero, El Gato Negro, a vigilante crime fighter in Southwest Texas. Special Collections holds single copies of issues 3 and 4. 

Packed with action and defined by dynamic imagery, this graphic title fits solidly within the comic book genre. It also takes on current events, issues in Mexican, Mexican American, and American history, and popular culture in a whole variety of ways. 

Francisco Guerrero, the man behind the El Gato Negro mask, is a social worker in Southwest Texas whose friend, Mario, a border patrol officer, was murdered by drug traffickers. Guerrero takes on the El Gato Negro identity at night to fight against drug-related violence, even while being targeted by local law enforcement. His name combines the first name of Francisco Madero, a hero of the Mexican Revolution, with “guerrero,” or “warrior.” Across its 4 issues, the comic book series references Hispanic soldiers who fought in the Korean War, the Zapatista movement in Mexico, and lucha libre (Mexican professional wrestling). As such, this title speaks to parts of the Mexican American experience in late twentieth-century America in fun and fascinating ways.

Enjoy this selection of images from the comic book and keep an eye out for a possible television adaptation of El Gato Negro in coming months!     

Inside of front cover
Inside of back cover
Issue No. 3 (Fall 1995)
Detail from Issue No. 3
Sample page
Inside of back cover
Issue No. 4 (Summer 1997)

Previous Hispanic Heritage Month Blog Posts:

Upcoming Events: October 2023

Please join us for the following public events and exhibits being hosted in Rare Books and Special Collections:

Thursday, October 5 at 5:00pm | Italian Research Seminar: “The Archival Turn and Network Approach: Examining Evolving Translation Practices and Discourses in the British Publishing Firm Complex, 1950s-1980s” by Daniela La Penna (University of Reading, UK).

Thursday, October 24 at 5:00pm | McBrien Special Collections Lecture Series: “Chief O’Neill in Ten Tunes” by Dr. Seán Doherty (Dublin City University).

Captain Francis O’Neill’s collection 1001 Gems: The Dance Music of Ireland (1907) is so important to the world of Irish traditional music that it’s sometimes called the Bible or simply, ‘The Book’. Starting as a pandemic project, the Irish composer and musicologist Seán Doherty analyzed all 1001 tunes in this influential collection. In this lecture and performance, Seán will discuss the music along with O’Neill’s biography and will play tunes linked to key moments in Chief O’Neill’s life.

Captain O’Neill donated his personal library to the University of Notre Dame, where it is held at the Hesburgh Library. Dr. Doherty’s research visit is supported by the Keough-Naughton Library Research Award in Irish Studies.

The exhibition Making and Unmaking Emancipation in Cuba and the United States is now open and will run through the fall semester.

Curator-led tours, open to the public, will be held noon–1:00pm on the following upcoming Fridays: October 13 and 27 [tour on 10/27 cancelled], and November 17.

Tours of the exhibit may also be arranged for classes and other groups by contacting Rachel Bohlmann at (574) 631-1575 or Rachel.Bohlmann.2@nd.edu.

The October spotlight exhibits are Football and Community at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (August – December 2023) and Path to Sainthood: Brother Columba O’Neill (October – November 2023).

RBSC will be open regular hours (9:30am – 4:30pm) during the University of Notre Dame’s Fall Break, October 16 – 20.

Making and Unmaking Emancipation in Cuba and the United States — RBSC’s Fall Exhibition is open!

Rare Books and Special Collections’ fall exhibition, Making and Unmaking Emancipation in Cuba and the United States, is open and will run through December 15th. 

This exhibition explores the fraught, circuitous and unfinished course of emancipation over the nineteenth century in Cuba and the United States. People — enslaved individuals and outside observers, survivors and resistors, and activists and conspirators — made and unmade emancipation, a process that remains unfinished and unrealized. 

Materials from Rare Books and Special Collections’ Latin American and U.S. collections are paired together to reflect on the history of enslavement and freedom beyond national borders. The show features books, manuscripts, maps, and prints, illustrating the array of formats held in RBSC and how they each shed light on historical experience. 

Making and Unmaking Emancipation in Cuba and the United States is curated by Rachel Bohlmann, Curator of North Americana and American History Librarian and Erika Hosselkus, Curator of Latin American Studies and Iberian Studies, and Associate University Librarian for Scholarly Resources and Services. 

Curator-led tours will be offered at noon on September 22, October 13 and 27 [tour on 10/27 cancelled], and November 17, 2023. They are free and no reservations are required. Exhibition tours may also be arranged for classes and other groups by contacting Rachel Bohlmann at (574) 631-1575 or rbohlman@nd.edu.

Please mark your calendars and join us on Thursday, November 30th at 4:30 pm in 102 Hesburgh Library for a panel program that delves more deeply into questions about enslavement and emancipation raised in the exhibition. The program also speaks to the challenges and opportunities in connecting broad audiences to new scholarly findings in the study of transatlantic slavery. A curators’ tour will precede the program; a reception will follow. 

This exhibition and related programming are generously supported by the Florence and Richard C. McBrien and Richard C. McBrien, Jr. Special Collections Librarian fund.

Souvenirs from the Union Printers National Baseball League Tournament

by Greg Bond, Sports Archivist and Curator, Joyce Sports Research Collection

A pair of finely crafted, meticulously detailed, and distinctively shaped books—a baseball-glove shaped book and a baseball-shaped book—are among the Joyce Sports Research Collections newest acquisitions. The two unusually-shaped publications are both early-twentieth-century souvenir programs of the Union Printers National Baseball League Tournament from 1908 and 1911, respectively. Sponsored each year by the International Typographical Union (ITU), the tournament brought together teams representing the ITU from different cities for several days of sports, camaraderie, and brotherhood. Labor Day seems a fitting time to explore the history of these unique books and to remember the Union Printers National Baseball League Tournament.

The first Union Printers National Baseball League Tournament took place in New York City in September of 1908. To mark the festive occasion, the Allied Printing Trades Council of New York lovingly designed and published the First Printers’ National Baseball Tournament Souvenir Program in the shape of a realistic looking catcher’s mitt. The New York printers seemed to relish the opportunity to show off their craft for their visiting colleagues with this elaborate and creatively shaped program.

The 1908 catcher’s mitt souvenir program describes the origins of the Union Printers National Baseball League Tournament. As early as 1883, union printers in New York City had organized the New York Morning Newspaper Baseball League with teams representing different New York and Brooklyn newspapers. In 1906 and 1907, the squad from the New York American and Journal won the championship, and, after the regular season, team manager Harry B. Wood arranged several games against ITU teams representing the Boston Globe and the Pittsburgh Dispatch. The 1908 souvenir program reported that during their road trip to Pittsburgh, “the light of geniality and the warmth of hospitality from the sun of fraternity and good fellowship was ever on the job.”

Photograph of the New York American and Boston Globe Baseball Teams, taken at American League Park, Boston, September 11, 1907.

Following the successful inter-city matches, Wood hatched his grand plan for an ITU national baseball tournament. He formed an organizing committee, helped draft a constitution, and invited union printers from Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Washington, DC, to come to New York for the event. Each invited city received an informational prospectus that included a framed six-color formal invitation designed by New York artist Harry Goodwin that recipients later described as “a work of art.” The 1908 catcher’s mitt souvenir program, which Goodwin also took the lead in designing, featured a black-and-white reproduction of the elaborate invitation.

A black-and-white reproduction of the formal invitation New York Union Printers sent to their colleagues around the country to organize the First Printers’ National Baseball Tournament.

All eight cities accepted the offer to compete in the tournament that was held in the stadium of the New York Yankees. Boston beat Pittsburgh 5-1 in the 1908 finals to win the inaugural title. For their victory, Boston received the traveling International Typographical Union Championship Trophy that had been donated to the ITU by Cincinnati Reds Owner August Hermann. The first tournament proved to be a rousing success, and it soon became a highly anticipated ITU annual event.

After Chicago (1909) and Washington, DC (1910), St. Louis was the host city for the fourth annual tournament in 1911. Like their counterparts in New York, the Allied Printing Trades Council of St. Louis and the local union printers league, known as the “St. Louis Typo Athletic Association,” spared little expense in designing and printing a lavish baseball-shaped Souvenir Program for the Union Printers National Baseball League Fourth Annual Tournament. The color cover featured pennants for all participating cities, which had expanded to include Denver and Indianapolis, and an image of the Hermann ITU Championship Trophy.

Teams in the Union Printers National Baseball League Tournament were composed of all-star squads representing ITU leagues in each participating city. The New York league, for instance, explained in the 1911 program that the association’s Board of Director’s chose the tournament roster from the pool of eligible athletes: “every player has an equal chance to become a member of the team representing New York in the National Tournament even [if] his team finishes last in the league. This rule causes a good player on a poor team to be satisfied and keeps up interest in the organization.”

Pages from the 1911 Union Printers National Baseball League Tournament featuring the Indianapolis team wearing warm-up sweaters with the ITU (International Typographical Union) logo. The outsides of the round pages are decorated with baseball scenes.

The 1911 souvenir program also emphasized that the participants were both serious athletes and serious union men: “this league differs materially from the great majority [by] the fact that all players must be printers and members of the International Typographical Union, or registered apprentices who have served two and one half years at the trade. From this it will be seen that it is not such an easy matter to get together a representative baseball team to compete in these tournaments.”

International Typographical Union President James M. Lynch also gave his endorsement in the 1911 program, praising the “healthy outdoor recreation” and the “advertising value” of the baseball tournament. He also reminded readers about the ITU’s organizing efforts, which “endeavored to impart dignity to the craft by assisting in the maintenance of just and equitable rights of the individual craftsman and cementing the bonds of friendship and brotherhood that should exist between all men, and especially those of a distinctive craft.”

Most importantly, though, as the 1908 catcher’s mitt souvenir program had proclaimed a few years earlier, the Union Printers Baseball League National Tournament had the “purpose of promoting good fellowship and pure amateur sport.” Happy Labor Day!

RBSC is closed Monday, September 4th, for Labor Day.

Upcoming Events: September 2023

Please join us for the following public events and exhibits being hosted in Rare Books and Special Collections:

Friday, September 1 at 2:00-4:00pm | Spotlight Exhibit Tour and Open House, Football and Community at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, with curator Greg Bond.

Brief remarks by the curator about the exhibit will begin at 2:15pm, but visitors will be able to see the exhibit and browse the additional historical material on display for the open house at any time between 2:00pm and 4:00pm.

Tuesday, September 19 at 4:00pm | Centering African American Writing in American Literature – American Studies Professor Korey Garibaldi will draw on his new book, Impermanent Blackness: The Making and Unmaking of Interracial Literary Culture in Modern America (Princeton, 2023), and on recent library acquisitions to discuss how, during the middle of the twentieth century, modern American literature and its production were interracial. He will explore multiple aspects of American literary creation, including how African American content has been embodied in dust jacket and cover designs, illustrations, the style of type and bindings, and the overall production quality.

The exhibition Making and Unmaking Emancipation in Cuba and the United States is now open and will run through the fall semester.

Curator-led tours, open to the public, will be held noon–1:00pm on the following Fridays: September 1, 15 and 22; October 13 and 27 [tour on 10/27 cancelled], and November 17.

Tours of the exhibit may also be arranged for classes and other groups by contacting Rachel Bohlmann at (574) 631-1575 or Rachel.Bohlmann.2@nd.edu.

The September spotlight exhibits are Football and Community at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (August – December 2023) and Centering African American Writing in American Literature (August – September 2023).

RBSC will be closed Monday, September 4th,
for Labor Day.