Archival materials in Special Collections can be a bit mysterious. Collections are shelved in secure storage spaces, out of sight of researchers, and are delivered to the Reading Room by request. But have you ever wondered about those uniform grey boxes? And how items like letters from far flung locales from days long past, or business and membership records of organizations, or scrapbooks and diaries of people plain or famous, find their way into those boxes, on our shelves, and available for research?
There are many answers to these questions, but the most common scenarios involve quiet beginnings and end in gifts or transfers to the Archives, with the personal, narrative and historical arcs taking shape in the middle, as evidenced in the documents themselves. One such case in point is the newly processed collection of Companions Journeying Together, an organization that reaches out to incarcerated women and men in Illinois through a variety of programs designed to build healthy relationships and foster positive communication between prisoners and their families. The organization began in 1986 with three sisters (Jana Minor, Mary Rammien, and Margaret Rudnik) who used money inherited from their aunt, Mary E. Best, to develop programs to promote spiritual and emotional growth in incarcerated individuals. Their most successful program is called Aunt Mary’s Storybook (named in honor of their own Aunt Mary), which helps incarcerated mothers stay connected with their young children by providing children’s books for the women to read aloud, recording their reading, and sending the books and recordings to the children. This program has been a model for similar programs in over twenty states.
Members of the Companions Journeying Together Board of Directors joined Jamie Nelson, Head of Special Collections and Archives, one evening in May to see the records of their organization that have recently been arranged, processed and made available for research use. The collection was gifted to DePaul in 2012 and 2013, and after 300 hours of student employee and professional staff time, the records are housed in twenty boxes and span over 6 linear feet. Inside are meeting minutes, strategic planning documents, grant applications and proposals, publications, program-specific information, media materials, and topical files of executive directors. What began with three sisters and a vision to share Christian values to incarcerated women and men became a registered 501(c)3 organization with an Executive Director, Board of Directors, and committed volunteers.
Special Collections student employee Matthew Morley, who processed the collection, noted that the organization stayed true to its mission, and adapted programs over time to best meet the needs of incarcerated parents. Companions Journeying Together founder Jana Minor, at seeing the collection and the finding aid created for it, marveled that the files that had been used to plan, organize and grow the organization – every day documents – could be transformed into a coherent research collection to be used alongside such other social justice and community organization collections like Sr. Helen Prejean’s Papers and the La Leche League Records collections that influenced Companions Journeying Together to gift their records to DePaul.
These records are a rich resource for researchers students, faculty, community members interested in topics such as services for prisoners, family relationship with prisoners, the social aspects of imprisonment, the religious life of prisoners, restorative justice, and the growth and development of a non-profit organization. DePaul Special Collections and Archives thanks Companions Journeying Together for sharing their materials with us so that we may preserve and share them with a wider audience.
For more information, contact DePaul’s Special Collections and Archives: archives@depaul.edu or (773) 325-7864.