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In Special Collections & Archives (SCA), we are continually focused on the discovery process and providing better and streamlined access to our many collections and materials. In 2016, we decided to create a historical timeline for Wake Forest, capturing the events and individuals from our past.
In the process of creating our Historical Timeline, we became aware of culturally and racially insensitive images and language used in the Howler. We chose to compile a list and it is now available as a subject guide for researchers, scholars, and students. Similar articles and images, which also appear in the Old Gold and Black, the University Photograph Collection, and other collections, are findable in Digital Collections. We are also working on a bibliography of resources which will focus on how archives, archivists, and universities are responding to these kinds of issues, and will make it available shortly.

It is important to not hide from the past while remaining sensitive to the hurtful nature of images such as these. We thought it was important to make this list available as we attempt to clearly understand the history of Wake Forest. Over the past several years, SCA has made great efforts to more fully document the Wake Forest experience from a variety of viewpoints. We began collecting oral histories, from administrators and faculty, including those from the past and present, including Barbee Oakes, Bill Leonard, and Beth Hopkins, among others. We have also focused on students, and have collected interviews from those studying abroad, international students, and Muslim students here on campus which should be available online this year. The issue for us is always resources—time and labor—collecting the interviews and other records and materials is the easy part, ensuring they are described and accessible can sometimes take longer than we would hope. But it comes back to this, the Archives can only reflect what we as archivists can collect or in some cases, create, and in many ways we are dependent on the donors and offices who partner with us or transfer items for permanent retention. Do you have something you think is important to know about the Wake Forest of 2019? Then send it our way—the issue is not if it reflects the good, the bad, or the ugly, the important thing is that it reflects something about today, for those in the future to see and understand.