By Jody Brumage
Beginning in the mid-1970s, Senator Byrd was actively involved with aiding the West Virginia State Rail Authority in saving a short-line railroad located in the eastern part of the state. The South Branch Valley Railroad begins in the City of Petersburg in Grant County, West Virginia, and runs fifty-two miles north through Hardy and Hampshire Counties to Green Spring, where it crosses the Potomac River and connects to the old Baltimore and Ohio (B&O) main line (now owned and operated by CSX). Originally built by the South Branch Railroad Company in 1884, the line was purchased in the early 20th century by the B&O. In 1976, after decades of deterioration due to neglect, the B&O sought Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) approval to abandon the line. Within two years, owing to the work of Senator Robert C. Byrd and Congressman Harley O. Staggers, Sr. in arranging a transfer of the line, the State of West Virginia took ownership of the South Branch Valley Line. West Virginia became the first state in the country to own and operate a commercial railroad. ![]() By Jody Brumage “This is a matter of the greatest importance to the American people as it involves the use of the public property – the Nation’s airwaves, to deliberately deceive the public.” – Congressman Harley O. Staggers, Sr., 1971. In the spring of 1971, Congressman Harley O. Staggers, Sr., burst into headlines and newscasts across the country when he initiated an investigation and levied subpoenas against CBS for footage used in the production of their 1971 documentary The Selling of the Pentagon. Controversial from its first airing in February 1971, The Selling of the Pentagon sought to illuminate the massive spending of tax dollars to support pro-military propaganda during the Vietnam era, an issue that had been debated in Congress and in the press for over two years by the time CBS aired the documentary. The production of the program, especially the alleged manipulation of taped interviews featured in the documentary, raised serious questions about media bias from Congress. ![]() By Jody Brumage One of the largest parts of Senator Robert C. Byrd’s Congressional Papers Collection yet to be explored is the AV (Audio-Visual) Collection. When the CLS acquired Senator Byrd’s records in 2010, over 70 boxes of AV materials were included, ranging in date from the 1950s through 2010 and representing many different types of media. Now, the CLS is embarking on a project to process this collection and open it for researchers. The first step of this process is to take an inventory of the collection. While most of the boxes shipped to the CLS from Senator Byrd’s offices in 2010 contain inventory sheets, they provide very basic information, such as “DVDs-2002-2004.” While some may list the individual records contained in the box, most do not. We developed an inventory sheet which will provide all of the necessary details about each one of the thousands of AV records in this collection. These details will be essential when the collection is entered into our database and we generate a finding aid. By Malorie Matos This week, we’re launching a new virtual exhibit on the Byrd CLS website entitled Senator Byrd and the Carter Administration, spanning the presidency of Jimmy Carter. I created this exhibit over the course of my last semester at Shepherd University in conjunction with my final capstone paper on the topic of archives and online public outreach.
The staff at the Byrd CLS have recently started examining Senator Byrd’s large photograph collection in preparation of processing and digitizing these important records. As we delve into each box, new and exciting discoveries are made. Within the past few days, several photographs of Senator Byrd’s hometown, Stotesbury, WV have been uncovered. Located deep in the Appalachian coalfields about ten miles south of Beckley, Stotesbury was founded in the late 19th century by the E.E. White Coal Company. The town was a booming mine camp when Senator Byrd was adopted by his Uncle Titus and Aunt Vlurma Byrd in 1917. As with many coal mining towns in West Virginia, Stotesbury had company housing, a company store, and community buildings such as a recreation hall, school, and churches.
By Sarah Brennan As public figures representing West Virginia on the national stage, Senator Robert C. Byrd and his wife Erma frequently performed symbolic acts. One such act was the christening of United States ships. Mrs. Byrd was familiar with the duties that came along with christening a United States Navy submarine by the time she was asked to sponsor the USS West Virginia in 1989. Twenty-three years prior to that launch, Erma was invited to christen her first nuclear submarine, the USS Sunfish. The ceremony took place in Quincy, Massachusetts on October 14, 1966 as part of a twin christening along with the USS Whale, sponsored by Senator Russell Long’s wife, Katherine.
By Sarah Brennan and Malorie Matos
As interns at the Robert C. Byrd Center for Legislative Studies, we’ve had the opportunity to work on many fascinating projects. One of our latest undertakings was the processing of the Press Files Collection from Senator Robert C. Byrd’s Congressional Papers. Byrd’s Press File Series was massive, containing over 50 years’ worth of material. We began processing in February of this year and we are just now coming to the end of the project. Processing is an archival term referring to the act of arranging, rehousing, and describing the papers within a collection. Archival collections must go through processing before becoming accessible for research. Note: This post was previously listed under our "News from the Grey Box" blog series By Jody Brumage
In 2010, Congress passed the Affordable Care Act (ACA). This landmark legislation brought over a century of health care reform debate in the United States to a new incarnation. In 1973, an attempt to pass legislation similar in nature to the ACA was introduced in the House of Representatives, sponsored by Congressman Harley O. Staggers, Sr., of West Virginia. The first efforts to create national health care programs were rooted in the Progressive Era beginning in the early 20th century with attempts to pass legislation beginning in the 1910s and achieving some success with the passage of the Social Security Act of 1935.[1] Eight years before Staggers’ health care bill, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Social Security Act of 1965, creating Medicare and Medicaid. These programs represented the most significant effort up to that time to implement a national health care system in the United States, building upon the foundation of the 1935 act. However, proponents of a more robust program felt that Medicare and Medicaid did not go far enough to provide health care for American citizens. Note: This post was previously listed under our "News from the Grey Box" blog series Let’s decode that title of acronyms:
I’ll be presenting on the Byrd CLS’s work with the constituent services system (CSS) data at this years Society of American Archivist’s (SAA) meeting which is taking place this week in Washington, DC. I’m a member of the Congressional Papers Roundtable (CPR), and will be talking during one of the sessions on Wednesday. My presentation will include what these CSS packages look like in the office, what data is exported from these systems into repositories (like the Byrd CLS), and what process we had to go through to make this data available and usable by researchers. There will be time for discussion after our presentations (one other institution will also be presenting about their work), and I hope to raise important questions regarding legal protection over Congressional “personal papers,” why this data is important, and how we can better archive this data for future generations. Note: This post was previously listed under our "News from the Grey Box" blog series
Senator Byrd was an avid student of history, particularly of the U.S. Senate (and even the Roman Senate). He believed so much in keeping that history alive that he spoke on the Senate floor 47 times about the chamber’s “chronological development” in six years. These speeches would later be edited and compiled into the first and second of four volumes entitled “The Senate: 1789-1989,” printed by the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO). |
Welcome to the Byrd Center Blog! We share content here including research from our archival collections, articles from our director, and information on upcoming events.
Categories
All
Archives
July 2023
|
Our Mission: |
The Byrd Center advances representative democracy by promoting a better understanding of the United States Congress and the Constitution through programs and research that engage citizens.
|
Copyright © Robert C. Byrd Center for Congressional History and Education
|