By Lynette Locke
A Gift of ‘Memories’ An exhibition at Morgan’s James E. Lewis Museum of Art this past winter honored Morgan alumnus and benefactor James H. Gilliam Jr., ’67. The event, which ran from Feb. 10–28, was titled, “Making Memories: The Scrapbooks of Financier James H. Gilliam Jr., Esq., Morgan Alumnus, Baltimore Native.”
THE EXHIBITION TOLD THE STORY of the prominent lawyer, financier and humanitarian through his scrapbooks, which dated from his high school days until his death in 2003. Gilliam, an English major at Morgan, had a 20-year career with Beneficial Finance Corporation, where he served as executive vice president and general counsel until 1998. After leaving Beneficial, he and his wife, Linda G.J. Gilliam, D.M.D., now a Morgan regent, formed the Gilliam Foundation, a philanthropic organization established as a means for their family to channel resources back into the community. The foundation created a $1.5-million fine arts endowment at Morgan in 2000, in honor of James Gilliam’s mother and his father, who is also a Morgan graduate, Class of 1948. The James H. Gilliam Sr. and Louise Hayley Gilliam Concert Hall, the largest auditorium of the University’s Carl J. Murphy Fine Arts Center, bears their names. The younger James H. Gilliam was born in 1945 and kept dozens of scrapbooks 28
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and notebooks about his life. “Making Memories” included highlights such as his correspondence and photographs with U.S. Presidents Clinton, Carter and Ford, and with Joe Biden, who was then a U.S. senator. The Gilliam family donated the scrapbooks to Morgan. Annette Palmer, Ph.D., chair of Morgan’s Department of History and Geography, and project director for the Gilliam Papers, says the University had no idea the family’s initial gift to Morgan three years ago would end with the retrospective on Gilliam’s accomplishments. “All I knew was that he had given (a large gift) to Morgan to honor his parents (and) that his peers in the English Department thought that as a student, he just about walked on water,” she says. The University needed someone to process the collection, and the Gilliam Foundation was willing to pay for the archiving. So a light bulb went off for Dr. Palmer. Morgan’s History and Geography Department had been talking for several years about introducing courses in public history. She thought the collection of
scrapbooks could become a hands-on laboratory where students could get experience in historical preservation. Dr. Palmer knew that her colleague in the department, professor Debra Newman Ham, Ph.D., had archival experience. Dr. Ham had worked at the Library of Congress and the National Archives, and she jumped at the chance to start the project. Their graduate and undergraduate students have gained valuable experience processing the collection, which includes more than 50 boxes of textual materials and about the same number of boxes of 3-D objects. “In addition to traditional history majors, we have students who are working on museum studies degrees. One of these students, Iris Barnes, was the curator for this exhibit,” says Dr. Ham. “Anyone who (visited) this exhibit (came) away with a greater understanding of this man in history and the important roles that African-American men and women have played in shaping it.”