Bessie Bullock and one thing that plagues the working historian...

I am currently writing a short biography of the life of Brooklyn librarian Bessie Bullock (1920-2008). Bessie is not well known, but she helped transform the Brooklyn public library in the 1960s and 70s. Her story is important and could inspire future librarians and community leaders.

Bessie came from a family committed to public service. Her grandmother was a midwife, a Black woman who was a community leader for both Black and white families in North Carolina. Her mother was a much-loved schoolteacher for forty years. She was famous for visiting the homes of her students after school to help them with their homework. Bessie's father fought cattle thieves in the American West, serving on horseback in US Army cavalry in the 1890s as a member of the famous Buffalo Soldiers. He rejoined his old unit during the Spanish-American War because he wanted to help liberate Black Cubans from oppressive Spanish rule. It amazes me that Bessie worked in Brooklyn during the era of space travel, television, and computers and also had a father who once rode across the American plains on horseback in the days of the cowboy and the cattle rustler.

Bessie was loved and supported by her family. She absorbed their life experiences, received a lot of positive encouragement from her parents, got an excellent education, and used it all to transform libraries and communities in Brooklyn. My task is to tell Bessie's story, to explain what she did, how she did it, and perhaps why her story should matter to my readers.

First comes the most thrilling and exciting part of being a historian: being a detective. We are living in a golden age of digitized primary source materials. So much of Bessie's hidden life was revealed to me just from exploring around on the internet. While sitting at my desk, I was able to travel across time, visiting urban Brooklyn during the 1960s, the segregated South of the 1930s, war-torn Cuba, and the Nebraska plains in the 1890s. I found dozens of historic newspaper articles about Bessie and her family. Next, I found journal and magazine articles, some written by Bessie herself, and also a book containing Bullock family photographs from North Carolina. I found Bessie in census records and discovered a lot there about her parents and her brothers and sister. Making discoveries, and uncovering Bessie's forgotten life, is perhaps the most thrilling part of being a history detective. I also begin to feel a bit of kinship with the person I am researching, there is something strangely transformative about putting yourself in the shoes of a person who made a positive impact on their community. With that knowledge comes a sense of responsibility to tell Bessie's forgotten story.

Meanwhile, there is an essay to write: the work of collecting, organizing, outlining, essay writing, and then finding ways to share Bessie's story with a wider audience. But with this task comes trouble!!

Back in the day, before computers, historians like me would make photocopies of primary sources and handwritten notes about discoveries we made. Once I began to write, a horrible problem would typically occur. I could remember most of a crucial fact, or an important quote, but then be unable to find it in my paper files. Hours would be spent searching for the misplaced scrap of paper. Just when I would start wondering if I simply imagined the bit of data, it would turn up! The lost child found! What a relief! And then the work would continue.

Today, as I am making thrilling discoveries I simply "cut and paste" dumping all of my finds randomly into a Word document. Sometimes I still have to go back and find something I neglected to copy, but I usually leave enough clues in my Word doc that I can go back to my sources and find online what I failed to collect initially. The "find" window (control F) on the computer is an incredibly useful tool for the modern historian.

Next, it is time to organize. I create a Bessie Bullock timeline. There I put in chronological order all of my "Bessie discoveries." I begin to craft in my mind the story I am going to tell. Creating the timeline is long and complicated. Often I have to transcribe documents, which takes hours, but as I organize Bessie's life, I make a few more connections, see some common themes, and have new insights into who Ms. Bullock was.

Normally, creating an essay outline would be my task for today. But sadly, this morning, when I was ready to write, I was in for a rude shock.

Over the weekend I kept all of my Bessie documents open on my computer. I was making good progress and had most of Bessie's primary sources organized year by year. Jesus saves, but apparently, I don't. I figured I did not have to, the computer is supposed to save documents automatically. When I returned to the computer today, ready to thrill and inspire my readers about the life of Bessie Bullock, I found my timeline document mostly empty. All of the work I did over the weekend was gone. An automatic computer update and reboot seemed to be the culprit. This morning I also may have pushed a "recovered document" button that I should not have.

The usually helpful internet instructed me to simply open the past document versions from previous days, but sadly those seem gone too. I have served as a historian in both the paper notes/photocopy era and in today's golden age of digital sources. The paper era was plagued by the curse of the lost scrap of data, and the digital era by the erased document. Lost data and the sorrow-filled historian seem to be the common thread in both eras.

But I will press on! Practicing resiliency is the key to so much in life. Bessie, I will not forget you, your story deserves to be told.