Between Two History Jobs (That Happen to Involve World War II)

Howdy, folks!

This past week was our first full week of classes at Northeastern University, and I must say, it’s great to be back on a campus. For now, everything at Northeastern is mostly business as usual. Just about everyone who spends any significant amount of time on campus is required to be vaccinated, and students have to submit daily wellness checks when they go on campus and also be tested for the virus once a week. So, most of what I’ve done this week has involved the classes I’m taking. Graduate school is a lot of reading—more reading, certainly, than I am used to.

I am actually slated to receive academic credit for my work with this HistoryMakers. As an MA student focusing in public history, I’m required to garner a certain number of fieldwork credit hours. Normally, someone would get their hours in by working at a museum or something. But, with things being what they are now, the department has graciously allowed me to use my work as a Student Brand Ambassador—about half of which is done remotely—for part of my hours. I’m also doing another remote internship with a museum down in Texas, writing about mostly the experiences of U.S. service members in World War II.

This week, there was an interesting intersection between those two positions. I spent essentially all of Friday afternoon and evening completing a write-up of biographies about select Marines and Sailors who fought in the Pacific during World War II. Then, later in the weekend, I devoted time to learning about significant Bostonians in the HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Specifically, I looked at the interview of one James Guilford, Jr.

Guilford, who was born in 1911 and died in 2015 at the grand old age of 104, was reared in the historically Black neighborhood of Roxbury (where I now live). He was a renowned barber in Boston whose clippers touched up some of the 20th century’s most famous Black heads—including those of Jackie Robinson, Duke Ellington, Nat King Cole, and Jack Johnson.

A screenshot from James Guilford’s interview in the HistoryMakers Digital Archive.

In his HistoryMakers interview, Guilford also speaks at length about his service in World War II. He was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1942, mere months after America entered the conflict on the side of the Allied Powers following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Much like the people I have written about for my other job, he served in the Pacific theater of the war. In his interview, he describes his experiences in the Pacific on vessels that took him from Australia to the Panama canal to Papua New Guinea. It was really fascinating stuff.

Anyway, that research comprised a large portion of my HistoryMakers work this week, so I thought I’d write about it. Next week is shaping up to be busier, and involve more face-to-face work. I have two meetings slated with Northeastern faculty that I think would be interested in helping me fulfill my goals as a Brand Ambassador. I’ll let you know how that went in my next post.

‘Til then!