I was thisclose to being a hanger-on for an NPR story!

I (sorta!) made it into an NPR radio 2 minute story over the weekend! I'm between the lines in this story that ran over the weekend:

http://www.npr.org/2013/03/31/175808536/archival-find-could-shed-new-light-on-emmett-till-murder

"Houck and his students figured out the missing issues were in a state historical archive in Missouri."

 It's about 'missing' issues of the St. Louis Argus that the Society has and that I loaned out to Dr. Houck and his grad assistant, Jessica at Florida State. I wish NPR would have given us credit instead of just vaguely calling us a 'historical archive'. But, still, we know we're there between the lines. Another win for The State Historical Society of Missouri (and inter-library loan!). Plus, I've already gotten other people around the country writing me asking to see the film, before it's even back from FSU. We might make another positive copy of the film just so we can meet the demand now.

Several of my colleagues laugh at the 'missing' issues and 'new discovery', considering this film has been here for years and that anybody could have looked at it, bought a copy of it, or asked for it via loan at any time. It's just been here, chilling out since the 1950s. But, it's sort of like Bingham's discovery of Machu Picchu, right? It's not so much a discovery, as bringing to light something that wasn't well-known before this. Like all things that are 'found' in historical archives. The stuff has been there for a long time and the 'discoverer' was not the first person to see it, they are just the one who found an outlet to bring it to light.

We've been curious about how this happened and from what I can tell, I guess one of the main microfilming companies in the nation, microfilmed the paper, but someone removed all the issues related to the trial and story of Emmett Till's death. And then that company sold their film to all of these places around the country. But, that film is not helpful since it's missing this huge event. We're hoping libraries and people want to buy a copy of our film now, since it's actually complete. Woot!