by Jennifer Skarbek
The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library houses over 400 collections surrounding the Kennedy administration from 1961-1963. While there are a large number of collections of governmental records, there are several lesser known collections of correspondence from the general public that were sent to the White House. These letters ranged anywhere from criticisms of President Kennedy’s policy to wishing the Kennedy family members happy birthday, but one particularly large and prominent collection of correspondence is the John F. Kennedy Condolence Mail collection.
The Papers of John F. Kennedy, Condolence Mail collection, typically shortened to simply Condolence Mail, consists of the letters and gifts that were sent to Mrs. Kennedy after the assassination of her husband in November 1963. As noted in the vast majority of the letters in this collection, President Kennedy left a great impact on the United States, moving thousands of people to write in with their condolences. With so many people compelled to write to the White House regarding an event that only took place 50 years ago, the Kennedy Library naturally gravitated to this collection as a way to engage the current public in the archives, especially in a way that allows the public to see themselves in the archives.
Unfortunately, there were a few roadblocks to present this collection as it was. First, the collection itself was not in any condition to be easily searched by the general public. Not only were there massive amounts of materials in no real order, there also wasn’t a finding aid to help sort through the massive amounts of letters. This leaves archivists at a loss when a researcher is interested in seeing their letter, or the letter from a loved one, that theoretically should be found in this collection. Frustrated with the lack of organization which made any particular letter nearly impossible to find, the archives and reference team at the Kennedy Library recognized that the collection would need to be properly processed and organized if they’re going to utilize the collection as a way to make connections with the general public.
In addition to the constraints on the arrangement and description of the collection, the collection itself was “sampled” in the 1970s, meaning that the archivists chose to only keep approximately 10% of the originally over 1,500 linear foot collection. Since the collection was so large, and presumably a bit overwhelming, the proposed solution was to save only a few letters that were found to be representative of the many. Unfortunately, the Kennedy Library is now dealing with the ramifications of the decisions of the previous archivists, and aren’t necessarily able to help everyone find their condolence letters they mailed to the Kennedy’s in 1963.
While the Kennedy Library can’t rectify the decisions of the past, they are able to address the organizational concerns from an archival perspective. Every semester, the Kennedy Library hosts an archives wide “Preservation Week” to alphabetize the letters in the collection with the help of both internal and external volunteers. Next, these volunteers proceeded with processing the collection by foldering and boxing the letters, ensuring the letters will be preserved and are more accessible. This project has been ongoing for several years, but Spring 2018 Preservation Week finally concluded the long awaited alphabetizing and processing project!
The processing archivists are now hard at work updating the finding aid with the newly processing information, with the hopes of making it available for researchers to utilize in finding their own letters. While there are a large number of letters that were unfortunately not preserved, there are still almost 200 cubic feet of condolence mail that is now usable by any interested researchers, and are much easier to locate than they have been in close to 50 years.
The next steps for the Kennedy Library are accessibility and publicity of this collection. The finding aid is key to being able to present the collection to the public. Once a finding aid is available, the Library will be able to make connections between the public and a collection that may contain their original correspondence with the White House from an event that stood out to many in their personal history. This creates a unique outreach opportunity to show that the a government archives does include the people, even if those collections aren’t traditionally in the spotlight, all while breaking down any lingering “gatekeeping” attitudes surrounding archival repositories.