April 17-April 19

I cannot believe it but this week has been the final week. I felt like I just arrived for the internship for the first time in January. Overall, I am very pleased with my progress. This week I caught up on all my work, finishing all the scans and the cataloging of metadata concerning the 1957 sermon folder. I look forward to seeing my digitized work on RICHES even though I know that some time will pass before that happens. Overall, I am proud of the work I've done and feel very satisfied with the skills that I have learned. As an aspiring archivist, I have always heard of scanning documents and metadata but I have never gotten the opportunity to do those things for myself. Thanks to this internship and in particular the First Unitarian Church of Orlando for giving me the opportunity, I learned how to do those activities by myself and how to apply them. Now I am much more confident in reaching my goal to be an archivist now that I have a better understanding of the nature of what my work would be as one. Having completed an internship, I encourage other history students to complete at least one before graduating from UCF. An internship not only gives credit but it also imparts valuable skills that can be used in the future. Also, an internship is a very useful thing to have on a resume because it reflects experience and responsibility.

Another thing that I appreciated greatly was the historical knowledge that I handled and gained for myself. Reading about 1950's and 1960's Florida society through the eyes of a liberal minister in the south was very eye opening. The Florida commented and criticized by Reverend Fuller is eerily similar to the Florida that we live in today. Reverend Fuller worried about the Cold War, rampant consumerism, modern technology, violence in third world countries, racism and antisemitism. Nowadays we still worry about racism, international conflict, consumerism and the dangers posed by technology. Reverend Fuller's answers to the troubling questions posed by these things still ring true. Reverend Fuller discussed how, while most people wanted to do good, it is hard for people to step out and go beyond. To challenge themselves to reach out and help other people. During his own time, Reverend Fuller felt that a social revolution was occurring and that men could potentially grow in goodness. While disagreeing with most aspects of traditional religion, Reverend Fuller believed in the concept of men being cast in the image of the divine. That when God created man he saw that "His work was good." Indeed, Reverend Fuller believed that men and even the universe as a whole were intrinsically good. Evil only occurred when men became detached from reality. It was Reverend Fuller's explicit faith in the goodness of the universe that stood out the most to me. And I believe that, especially in this day and age, having faith in your fellow man is not only important but vital to living a healthy life.    

April 10-April 12

This week I finished compiling metadata for Reverend Fuller's sermons given in 1961 and began scanning documents containing the sermons he gave in 1957. The reason for this is because there are no sermons given by Reverend Fuller after 1961 because that was the year he left. He must have left towards the end of the year because the final sermon of the year given in December was authored by Reverend Smith. In his final sermons, Reverend Fuller made it clearly known that he was leaving but he did not go into much detail why. What he did make clear was that he had enjoyed his time in Orlando and that he had the fondest of memories concerning the First Unitarian Church. This led him to make many poignant observations concerning Unitarian beliefs. It is certainly not surprising that he had felt so sentimental. He was around when the First Unitarian left their old location which was in Central and Rosalind. He was also there when the church school finished construction and was dedicated in 1960 after having construction begun in 1954. Indeed, it is no wonder that Reverend Fuller's final sermon was so touching.

Reverend Fuller's final sermon asked a deceptively simple question, what endures? Most protestants would say that it is the soul that endures but Reverend Fuller is not so sure. He has not seen enough evidence to be convinced that a personal soul endures after death and what even is the true nature of a soul. Reverend Fuller instead believes in a concept known as 'salvation by character', which was first coined and developed by Ralph Waldo Emerson. A famous influence on Unitarianism whose name was mentioned in many prior sermons. According to Emerson, it isn't so much saving your soul that is important but rather it is loving your brother that is the top priority. Man should focus on helping his fellow man more than about him or herself. This ties into Reverend Fuller's belief that it is the good a man does that endures.What also endures is man's never ending search for truth, beauty and justice. Over time nations disintegrate and generations fall and rise but the values that they saw as important will always last. Mankind, being intrinsically good, will search for these values as long as they exist as a species. The beneficial contributions they make to society will also last beyond them. Reverend Fuller may be leaving the First Unitarian Church, but he hopes that the good he did will last even when he is gone. Still, he confesses to being sad at the prospect of leaving, but change is a fact of life. This neatly ties into the other theological concepts he discussed in his sermons. According to Reverend Fuller, the universe is an ever changing process of different forces interacting with one another. Mankind is not alone, but rather part of the ever changing universe. Part of the creative process that runs it all that will, of course, always endure. After this sermon, Reverend Fuller would serve as a reverend in Syracuse and would pass away due to a heart condition in his native New England.    

March 3-March 5

This week I focused on compiling the metadata for the 1961 sermons. So far, I am very pleased with how it is turning out but, once I am done, I feel that I need to go over everything again in order to add some more outside sources to the entries. This is easy to do with the documents that reference real world events but more difficult with the ones that focus on theology. Speaking of real world events, I feel that it is very important to discuss what exactly Reverend Fuller's views of the world around him were. This is very important, because many of his sermons actually deal with the problems man faces in the modern world and the nature of American society that he lived in.

First of all, what is this 'modern world' that Reverend Fuller discusses in many of his sermons? This world is the one contemporary to him which is the 50's and early 60's, the years in which he preached at the First Unitarian Church of Orlando. It is a world that is different but in many ways similar to our own. Reverend Fuller talks about the dangers of technology, race conflict, civil unrest and religious conflict, all things that still plague our current time. According to Reverend Fuller, the world of his time is one devoid of spirituality. Rampant consumerism and conformity dominate American society. People are afraid to be individuals for fear that they will be labeled a communist or as someone who divides a united society. The Cold War is a constant backdrop in Reverend Fuller's discussions of modern society. People live in constant fear of nuclear weapons so they give up their freedom and individuality in order to rely on the safety of the group. Reverend Fuller points out that this is a natural reaction but a wrong one. Reverend Fuller maintains that man is intrinsically good, and that they can make the world a better place by working together with their inner soul that has been gifted with the creative spirit. Concepts I have discussed in an earlier post. The problem is that modern society divides people, not only from each other but from their inner, spiritual souls. Another problem that runs rampant in American society is hypocrisy. Reverend Fuller observes how communism is detested for being atheistic and yet the materialist consumerism that is so lauded by American society is equally godless. Fundamentalist protestants praise themselves for their love of God and yet insult all those who dare go to integrated schools. America praises itself for being the best at war and yet, Reverend Fuller points out, wasn't it Russia that actually took Berlin? Again, this stems from the spiritual disconnect of the times. All is not doom and gloom, however. The modern world has benefited all of humanity greatly by bringing the world together, uniting East and West. Through greater international interactions, in the form of trade fairs and cultural exchange. Reverend Fuller is confident that a solution to conflict can be worked out but this must be a continual process. Stagnation not only prevents change but allows more and more conflict to happen. Freedom is not a state but something an individual must continually strive for by practicing that freedom. This is done by the person using his/her own mind to judge right from wrong. All these teachings I believe, even though they are decades old, can definitely apply to our present day.        

March 28-March 30

This week proved to be very productive. On March 28 I finished compiling metadata for the 1960 sermons and on March 30 I began scanning the sermons given in 1961. After 1961, Reverend John C. Fuller would leave to become a reverend for a different Unitarian church in New England. The reasons for his departure are not clear to me at this moment. He may have left to be closer to home, he was originally from New England, or he may have left because the higher authorities in the Unitarian Church ordered him too. Either way, once I am done with the 1961 folder I will most likely move on to the folders that contained sermons he gave before the year 1958. This would no doubt be interesting because not only would I learn about Unitarian teachings but I would be able to see how Reverend Fuller was reacting to all the historical events happening in the 1950's. Scanning the 1960 sermons I was able to see his reactions to the presidential election, the United Nations and a race riot that occurred in Jacksonville.

While on the subject of these sermons, I feel the need to discuss some more important Unitarian teachings I have learned about. The first that needs a lengthy explanation is the Unitarian concept of 'Reverence for Life.' According to Unitarianism, the Universe possesses something known as the 'Creative Spirit.' This Creative Spirit is responsible for the creation of life and every life form, whether it is a human or animal, shows traces of this creative spirit. What makes humanity unique is that the creative spirit acts through every member of mankind. The soul of man is inherently good instead of sinful like most other Protestant religions attest to. Men and women can use the Creative Spirit to reach out to the cosmos and learn more about spiritual matters. The Creative Spirit also allows mankind to show a Reverence for Life. This is the recognition that all beings are part of the cosmos and that they are to be respected as reflections of that greater entity. The soul, Reverend Fuller states, is made to do good but outside events can lead it to go astray and cause man to do evil. Man becomes irrational when he allows outside events to make him lose touch with his/her soul and he loses that important connection to the inner self that is inherently good. This disconnect causes negative actions to occur. This is why another teaching, that one's personal beliefs are a private matter, is so important. Ones relationship with his inner self or soul is a sensitive one. When outsiders pry this relationship can be upset and communication with the inner soul can be lost. Respecting ones private beliefs is not just about not invading ones privacy but rather more about not disrupting another person's spiritual tranquility. Each Unitarian is on his/her own path when it comes to the search for the truth and their individual journey cannot be disrupted by others. This is what Reverend Fuller means when he refers to Unitarianism as a liberal religion. It is the religion of freedom and of the individual.

March 20-March 22

This week I dedicated my time to compiling metadata. It appears that in 1960 Reverend Fuller began to deliver more sermons than usual. For example, in October of that year three sermons were delivered in October. This is remarkable because last year only one or two sermons were delivered per month. Of course, this could be a misunderstanding of mine based on present material. Maybe Reverend Fuller was constantly delivering plenty of sermons but maybe some of the sermons in the past years were not recorded. Which meant that in the present day I got the impression that less sermons were delivered those years. Reading the 1960 sermons was a very educational experience because in these sermons Reverend Fuller referenced the teachings of other protestant thinkers. That is why I would like to dedicate some of this entry to the descriptions of these various protestant thinkers.

The first thinker that is mentioned in numerous sermons is Dr. Albert Schweitzer. He was born in the Alsace region of France and was brought up in a family that prized education. He received his theological education at Strasbourg University in 1893 where he graduated in 1899. He not only received a religious education at Strasbourg but also a philosophical one as well. Having done his dissertation on Kant. He immediately began preaching an served in several high profile posts at the Theological College of St. Thomas. It was there, in 1906, that he wrote his famous book, The Quest for the Historical Jesus. It was this book that earned him his fame as a religious scholar and the book that no doubt gained Reverend Fuller's attention. As I have stated in a previous blog post, Reverend Fuller believed that Jesus was not divine and that he was a mortal Jewish man with remarkable insight who lived in the Levant. In his book, Albert Schweitzer argued the same thing, saying that Jesus was a religious teacher of the late Jewish tradition that preached of an incoming apocalyptic event. These similarities make it clear that Reverend Fuller was highly influenced by the European thinker's views on Jesus. Another important thing to note about Dr. Albert Schweitzer is that towards the end of his life he joined the International Unitarian Association, making him a Unitarian, showing that the influence went both ways. With Unitarians being interested in Dr. Schweitzer and and doctor being interested in Unitarianism. Another important thinker mentioned in many of Fuller's sermons was William Ellery Channing, the famous Unitarian ancestor of his. While Unitarianism first developed in Europe, it was Reverend Channing who was responsible for its spread in America. During the early 1800's when Calvinist teaching spread across the United States, Reverend Channing most daringly preached against them. Calvinism states that mankind is destined to be punished by God and only the ones destined to be saved will go to heaven. In contrast, Reverend Channing taught that God was all loving and that surely a loving God would be unable to send anyone to hell. In 1820, Reverend Fuller formed a group of liberal ministers and in 1825 they would be recognized as the American Unitarian Association. It is no wonder why Reverend Fuller mentions Reverend Channing on so many occasions. In many ways, his ancestor was the founding father of American Unitarianism.

March 6-March 8

This week I finished scanning the documents of the 1960 folder and compiled some metadata. After examining so many documents I feel that I am qualified to talk about the specific beliefs and world views of the Unitarian Church. The Unitarian Church has a long history that stretches back hundreds of years ago to New England. In 1819, Reverend William Ellery Channing, an ancestor of Reverend John Channing Fuller, gave a sermon titled "Unitarian Christianity" where he rejected the trinity, rejected the belief that all men are borne sinners, stated the importance of reasoning and maintained the dignity of human nature. This was most likely done in response to the religious movement of known as the Great Awakening that was enforcing Calvinistic ideals on the American population. Indeed, Reverend Channing's resistance to such Calvinistic concepts as original sin and predestination mirrors Reverend Fuller's future resistance to the Evangelical ideals of his fellow protestants in the 1960's. Another American religious movement that would effect Unitarianism in the 1800's was Transcendentalism. Walt Whitman and Ralph Emerson would have a strong influence on Unitarian beliefs. Transcendentalism stressed the importance of the soul of an individual and his\her own ability to experience something vaguely known as the "divine." Also, Ralph Emerson's father was a Unitarian minister who is referenced in some of Reverend Fuller's sermons. Another parallel between past and present can be seen in how Walt Whitman is quoted in many of Reverend Fuller's sermons. One sermon Reverend Fuller gave at a Unitarian conference outside of Orlando opened with a poem by Walt Whitman.

But how do these beliefs work? Unitarianism had its roots in the Protestant Reformation in Europe and yet Unitarianism's beliefs are so different from other Protestant denominations. How did this happen? The answer can be found by examining Unitarian beliefs in more detail. The first thing that must be recognized is that Unitarianism is more of a movement than a religion, as stated by Reverend Fuller in a 20th century sermon. Members of the Unitarian Church are "seekers" who each try to use their human reasoning to discover the truth. Their human reasoning is divine because that is what gives them a measure of control in the universe. Reverend Fuller points out that yes, we are insignificant parts of the greater cosmos but our ability to understand and learn about the universe around us makes mankind special. But even if we are special, how do we use our reasoning? Unitarians say we use it by looking at the figures of the past as examples. Reverend Fuller repeatedly denied the divinity of Christ in his sermons but he still saw Jesus as an exemplary human teacher that taught important humanist values. He also listed mystics such as Meister Eckhart and even secular teachers like Freud as men whose teachings are worth learning about. Even teachers belonging to other religions are looked to. This is not viewed as unusual by Unitarians. A key belief of Unitarianism that Reverend Fuller was fond of pointing to was the "Brotherhood of Man." Unitarianism fully upholds the equality of mankind and states that we are all equal. Men are not drenched in sin but are rather made to do good by others. Reverend Fuller criticizes his fellow ministers who use threats of hell fire to keep their congregations in line. Reverend Fuller's defining belief, and perhaps the key belief of Unitarianism, is the inherent goodness of man and his/her ability to find his own salvation.        

February, 27-March, 1

I am very pleased to announce that on Monday I finished all the metadata concerning the 1959 sermons. It was very time consuming due to their length and the higher amounts of complexity they possessed than the meeting minutes but I managed to get my metadata all up to date. The descriptions were the most time consuming, everything else I managed to simply copy and paste. Upon completion of the metadata I began copying the records of the sermons given in the year 1960. Interestingly, these were in a different format than the previous folders of sermons. The 1957-1958 and 1959 sermons were recorded on individual pieces of paper that were cut into tinier portions. These sermons on the other hand were recorded in pamphlets and usually there were two copies of pamphlets for each individual sermon. It is my belief that pamphlets like these were distributed to the congregation and perhaps kept by them for future services. I say future services because each pamphlet contained enough material to last multiple church services. For example, one pamphlet identified on its cover as being for the months of "January and February" and its material encompassed a sermon that touched on love and all the different types of love. Such as love for god, brothers, neighbors and family. Another pamphlet which contained a sermon about what Unitarians believed in was part of a Lent series. Which I thought was odd since lent is usually associated with more conservative churches and it was my understanding that the Unitarian church is very liberal. I dedicated the rest of the day to scanning pamphlets and I was sure to crop them after each scan so I could easily read the digital copies when compiling my metadata. It occurred to me that I forgot to crop the scans of the OMA folder so I made a mental note to myself that I would go back and crop those images when I had the time. This week however, I dedicated my efforts solely to scanning.

On Wednesday I continued scanning the pamphlets. It appeared that the first few pamphlets might have been exceptions because one of the pamphlets I scanned, titled "What Unitarians Teach their Children" was dated to a specific day in March. It appears that in 1960 Reverend Fuller began to grow more adventurous with the amount of material he was putting into his sermons. Once again I was surprised by how liberal the content of these sermons were. One thing that stood out to me in a sermon about love was how "sexual love was the highest form of brotherly love." While this would not raise any eyebrows in 2017, I found this to be a very controversial statement for 1960. Even more surprising is that this was said by a clergyman in the deep South. This goes to show that there are always exceptions to a historical trend. The South was known for being very conservative and not especially progressive during the 1960's but the presence of the liberal Reverend Fuller in this time period subverts this view. Also, more surprising examples of liberalism was found in a pamphlet that contained a sermon about how Unitarians raised their children. Unlike most peoples' Sunday school experiences, the children that attended the Unitarian school were taught a wide variety of values from different religions. They also read a book when they got older that portrayed Jesus as a mortal man. This was all very surprising to me. I have in the past attended a Lutheran church that I considered liberal but they would of never taught children that Jesus was not divine. I decided that I would finish scanning the contents of the folder next week and left feeling pleased with the amount of progress I made.

February 20-February 22

This entire week was dedicated to the compiling and editing of metadata. On Monday I received the good news that Mr. Cravero had finished taking notes on my metadata and had emailed those to me. I thanked him and immediately reviewed his notes and applied the necessary changed to my metadata. This proved to be a very time consuming process. The first thing that needed changing was rearranging my name so that the last name was first and the first name was last. This was easy to change but because I had done this for all my metadata entries it took a good amount of time to go through every entry and make the change. Also, I learned that when it comes to coverage it is required that locations mentioned by the documents also need to mentioned. This meant that I had to review all the documents again and check them for mentions of locations that were not the First Unitarian Church of Orlando. Even now I am still not finished with this task. Another thing that needed to be edited was the medium of the documents. Also, I forgot to put that in for several entries so along with editing already existing mediums I had to input new ones and this required, of course, the reviewing of prior documents. By the end of the day I edited out the most glaring problems and compiled some metadata about the first few 1959 sermons. Still, there are still some fixes I need to make and more sermons to be scanned.

On Wednesday I took a break from editing the metadata to focus on compiling the metadata on the remaining 1959 sermons. Being more used to metadata I worked faster than usual but was still unable to finish examining all the sermons. I found Reverend Fuller's sermons to be rather intellectual and complicated, much more so than an average Christian sermon. Reading his words I found Reverend Fuller to be a very knowledgeable and educated man. In his sermons he mentioned numerous other sources of information and even mentioned the beliefs of other religions, especially Judaism. His educations is best made apparent in is sermon about how Unitarians should read the Bible. In his sermon he discussed how it is a collection of different books written over a period of hundreds of years. He also discussed how each book was written with by a different author with his own agenda, so every book must not be taken literally and that the context of each book had to be understood before reading. He recommended that his congregation read an edition of the Bible known as the "Dartmouth Bible" because it provided useful notes that could help any reader understand the historical context of each book. He recommended that the Bible be read not as a religious document, but as piece of literature equal to the Dialogues of Plato or the plays of Shakespeare. I found this all very interesting, not because these ideas were new to me but because this was the first time I had heard of a member of the clergy expressing this sentiment. Even though I left without finishing all the metadata for the 1959 documents I was satisfied with the progress I made.    

February 13-February 15

This week I focused on finishing the metadata for the 1957-1958 sermons and scanning the sermons of 1959. Working on the descriptions of the metadata was very time consuming, not only because the sermons had more text than the meeting minutes but also because the documents the text were on were in bad shape. For some reason most of the documents were cut into smaller pieces which meant I had to reassemble the papers in order to make the text legible. When reassembled, the paper appeared to be larger than the folder so it appears that they were cut into pieces on purpose so that they would fit, even though some were not cut up at all. Once scanned, the digital images of the documents had to be rotated so that they could be read by me. Despite these hindrances I managed to finish the metadata and begin scanning the 1959 documents that recorded the sermons given in that year. Once again I was amazed by how liberal Reverend Fuller was. Unlike most sermons that talk about Biblical events or the parables of Jesus, Reverend Fuller's sermons discussed current events and practical advice from him was distributed. Since I had spent the greater part of Monday working on metadata I had to finish scanning the folder on Wednesday.

On Wednesday I once again focused on scanning the documents. Once again some of the pages were cut up and time had to be dedicated to reassembling them. The content of the sermons was very interesting. One interesting sermon concerned a group of people that wanted to find a school to teach diplomats how to fight communism. Reverend Fuller sympathized with this proposal because of his belief that communism was against Unitarian values. However, he proposed that a peace school be founded instead in order to bring nonviolence to the whole world. Another sermon that was interesting and quite unlike anything I've heard before concerned the topic of differences in generations. In this sermon Reverend Fuller compared the Victorian generation with the generation that grew up during WWII and came to a surprising conclusion. This was that the Victorian generation had many good values that the current one was missing. According to Reverend Fuller, the Victorian era was peaceful and filled with an optimistic human society that looked forwards to the future, unlike the pessimistic wartime one. Personally, I think Reverend Fuller looked much too fondly on the past but I found his view to be interesting since I have never heard one like it before. Still, it appears to me that no one ever told Reverend Fuller that the "good old days" are sometimes not as good as older people make them out to be. Another secular thing discussed in a sermon by Reverend Fuller was that of school desegregation. Apparently, in 1959, Orlando had not desegregated its schools. However, Reverend Fuller was confident in his sermon that the city would eventually follow the example of other southern schools that were becoming integrated. He insisted that Orlando desegregate soon or else the schools will be forcefully integrated and that would cause a lot of  unneeded chaos. By the end of the day I finished scanning all the documents and left feeling very satisfied.

February 6-February 8

On Monday I decided to start scanning the documents that recorded John C. Fuller's sermons. I had finished scanning the Orlando Ministerial Association documents and cataloging their metadata so it was clear to me that I needed to start on something else. Reverend Fuller was the secretary of the Orlando Ministerial Association during its most active years and was author of many of the meeting minutes. This led me to believe that by scanning Reverend Fuller's sermons delivered by him during his time spent as secretary I could possibly learn more about the Orlando Ministerial Association. Also, by scanning his sermons I would be able to learn more about the reverend himself. I spent Monday scanning a folder that contained records of the sermons he delivered in 1957 to 1958. What immediately surprised me about his sermons were how liberal they were. The first sermon I scanned was titled "Why do Good". I expected this to be a simple sermon about how God wanted people to be good but Reverend Fuller's explanation was a lot more complicated than that. According to him, their was the authoritarian way and the liberal way of doing good. The authoritarian way was the way used by most of the other churches. According to Reverend Fuller, this involved threatening people that if they did not do good God would withdraw their love from them. He also pointed out that the authoritarian way can be seen in how people constantly do good so that other people will still like them. Reverend Fuller then explained that the liberal way had a better understanding of good. The liberal way saw people as being made in the image of the divine and this meant that they were capable of doing good by themselves without being told that God would punish them if they didn't. Reverend Fuller's faith in the goodness of men and women really surprised me. In the past I attended a conservative Baptist high school and what they taught in the school sermons was very different from all that Reverend Fuller taught. Another thing that really surprised me was his December 1957 sermon where he talked about what kind of Christ he wanted in Christmas. Contrary to all that I have heard other reverends say, Reverend Fuller stated that he did not place importance in the virgin birth and that he did not believe in a magical Christ who died for our sins. He believed that Christ was a man and a wise teacher who had an amazing understanding of human problems, something I have never heard a member of the clergy say before.  

On Wednesday I finished scanning the sermons and started working on the metadata. Working on the metadata for the sermons was a lot more time consuming than the meeting minutes. This was because the sermons required longer descriptions since Reverend Fuller covered so much ground in his sermons. When it came to topics, Reverend Fuller talked about a large variety of different things. In a frank manner he discussed topics such as letting go of the past, alcoholism, mysticism and how Jesus was a Jewish reformer. I can safely say that I have never met a clergyman nowadays that was anyway like him. Reading the sermons and uploading their metadata made me realize just how different the Unitarian denomination was from other Christian denominations. Examining the sermons have also given me plenty of insight into Reverend Fuller's beliefs.

January 30-February 1

On January 30 I continued cataloging the various metadata of the documents. The more progress I made the more difficult this task became. The beginning portion of the documents were organized copies of meeting minutes that gave a pretty clear picture of what was happening in the past. However, the later documents were handwritten notes and their dates were all over the place. I do know that John C. Fuller was the secretary of the Orlando Ministerial Association and was responsible for the authorship of many of the documents. That is why many of his documents were stored and organized so well in the First Unitarian archives. However, John C. Fuller left the First Unitarian Church of Orlando in the summer of 1961 for a new church in New England. It was around this time that the documents became more erratically organized and I don't believe this to be a coincidence. These handwritten notes indicated that not too many important events had happened in 1961 and beyond. Poor attendance and talks of possibly merging with the Orange County Ministerial Association were things that were commonly brought up. Many other documents were just copies of the older ones. One interesting document that fit into neither of these categories was a copy of Sunday Closing Law bill, which made it a law for businesses to close on Sundays and made it so that any business open on a Sunday would receive a misdemeanor. The Orlando Ministerial Association was against this bill because they saw it as a violation of the first amendment. This resistance was discussed at earlier meetings but these discussions would cease to be mentioned in later records. Overall, as time went on it seemed that the Orlando Ministerial Association conducted less activities.

 February 1st proved to be a very productive day. I finally finished the metadata and I scanned the rest of the documents. After I scanned the final documents I cataloged their metadata and finished examining all the documents. The final documents were a mix of handwritten notes and printed letters that dated to 1961-1966. The secretaries during this time were Reverend Brown of the Unitarian Church and a Reverend Proctor from another Christian church, since these two were the secretaries they were most likely the authors of the later documents. Reverend Brown would later become president and he is the member who is last mentioned being president since the final document mentioning him dates to 1966. This is the year where the written records of the Orlando Ministerial Association leave off. The Orlando Ministerial Association did not appear to be up to much during their final years. The mentions of wanting to merge with the Orange County Ministerial Association disappear and the Orlando Ministerial seems to be preoccupied with trying to get WFTV Channel 9 a federal license in 1966. This presents a sort of mystery since the documents do not indicate how the Association dissolved. Based on mentions of poor attendance in previous documents it seems likely that poor attendance and a lack of enthusiasm were the culprits. However, this is not explicitly stated and gives the Orlando Ministerial Association a rather anti-climactic end. No other documents pertaining to the Association appear to exist but there are documents having to do with John C. Fuller that might have some useful information. I plan on scanning those because while the OMA documents did not present a full story, they did leave me with an interest in a man that seemed to be the driving force of the group until his departure in 1961.

January 23- January 25

On January 23, I decided that I would focus upon metadata. Also, I received an external hard drive that would allow me to backup my files easily. This was very good news and I was grateful to receive this item. Spending the whole day cataloging the metadata I began to truly get a grasp on how time consuming it was. I was entering the metadata into an excel spreadsheet based off of a template made by Mr. Cravero and I was able to copy and past many entries. However, entering in the descriptions took up a lot of my attention because in order to craft one I needed to look at the document multiple times and had to compare the document with others. Also, finding other sources that were related to the document was sometimes a challenge because some of the things the documents brought up are not well known in the present. For example, one document mentioned the Orlando Ministerial Association taking a tour of a place only identified as the "Martin Plant." It took some time for me to discover that this was a reference to the Martin Company's Electronics and Guided Missile Plant which was built in 1956. The plant was run by the Glenn L. Martin Company which as since merged with another company to become the now current Martin Marietta company. Another example of something that was hard to find a source for was the mention in one document of bombings that occurred in Jacksonville. No one was harmed in these bombings so perhaps that was why they were not more famous. After some researching I was able to find two articles on a Jewish website that were excerpts from the Orlando Sentinel 1958 issue that mentioned the bombings. Researching these things I learned that it is much harder to find information about the past than I previously thought. I have always taken it for granted the convenience of finding historical information at the library or on the internet.

On January 25 I spent more time on metadata. The reason for this being how time consuming entering metadata was and how I had scanned a lot of documents last week. I talked with Mrs. Wojtyto about my progress and I told her that I would most likely be done scanning and entering the metadata of the Orlando Ministerial Association documents by February. She assured me that there were plenty of other documents to scan and that there was an older member of the First Unitarian Church that I could interview. I welcomed this possibility because the documents provided me with an unsatisfactory view of the Orlando Ministerial Association. The documents never mention how the association ended, the last document being an invitation that was sent out in 1966. By interviewing someone that was alive during the time period the Orlando Ministerial Association existed in I could possibly learn more about it. Also, there is most likely plenty of information about the Orlando Ministerial Association that was never included on the documents I am scanning. Most of the items I have examined are minutes of meetings, many important things are only mentioned in passing. A living person could help shed light on these things.      

I arrived at the location of my internship on January 18th, a Wednesday. This was done because Monday was Martin Luther King day and the RICHES office was closed. This day I mainly focused on reading and scanning documents with the intention of compiling metadata on them at a later date. Since my fellow intern was using a computer I had previously been using I used a different one this time. Reading through the documents I saw that the Orlando Ministerial Association became a lot more active in the 1960's. They issued resolutions in support of lunch counter protests in Orlando and wrote letters demanding that the FBI investigate the bombings of a synagogue and African American school in Jacksonville. It was in response to this tragic event that John Fuller of the First Unitarian Church of Orlando wrote a document titled the Declaration of Conscience. In this document the Orlando Ministerial Association condemned the actions of the bombers and stated their view that all people regardless of race were equal under God. However, this group of progressive clergymen were facing a problem. Numerous meeting records indicated that a low turnout of members at the meetings was a common problem. Having spent a lot of time sitting I decided to go for a walk but when I returned the digital files containing the scans on the computer had disappeared before I could back them up. I was very frustrated but I had little time to attempt to solve the problem since my shift was ending. I left very unsatisfied.

On Friday, Geoffrey Cravero and I tried to find my files but to no avail. This forced me to re-scan the documents I examined on Wednesday. Since I already read the documents, I focused on scanning them which allowed me to make up my lost progress and make some more. The new documents I scanned were in most part copies of the ones I read previously so not much information was learned. Leaving at the end of my shift I decided that I would focus on metadata next week.   

      

On the Monday of this week I arrived at Colbourn Hall and entered the RICHES office where my internship was to take place. I met Mrs. Wojtyto and together we went over all the files that made up the archive of the First Unitarian Church of Orlando. These files dated from the early 1900's to our present time and consisted of newspaper adds, letters, photographs, printed records along with many other types of material. While the abundance of archival material interested me there were two collections that caught my attention at first glance. The first was a box of documents concerning Adele Fuchs, a woman who traveled to German during the 1930's in order to find a church. She wrote extensively about what life was like in that location through her letters and they detailed the rise of Nazism. The second collection that interested me was a folder of documents concerning the Orlando Ministerial Association, an interfaith and interracial group of clergymen who championed civil rights activities during the years 1958-1965. Viewing these collections I was drawn towards the one concerning the Orlando Ministerial Association. The text of the OMA papers was very eligible, being printed and its ties to the civil rights movement in Florida I found to be interesting. I have always been interested in Florida history and being able to look at these primary sources excited me. I decided that I would make this collection my primary focus. After making this decision I learned how to operate the scanners thanks to the direction of Mr. Geoffrey Cravero. Knowing how to use the scanners, I began scanning some of the documents while researching the First Unitarian Church of Orlando's history.

On the second day I learned how to enter metadata concerning the documents I was scanning. I was already familiar with the concept but it was not until I began entering the data that I realized how much work went into assembling it and how much information it encompassed. I entered the metadata in an excel spreadsheet that was provided by Mr. Cravero and found out that entering the metadata was a time consuming process. However, this process allowed me to glean a lot of useful information from the documents. The documents I scanned were mostly printed records of the meetings held by the OMA. I found these documents very revealing and was fascinating reading information about such an inclusive organization that existed in a very unlikely place. The documents I scanned mostly concerned the internal workings of the association but the member's enthusiasm was very apparent, especially the enthusiasm of the late reverend John Fuller. John Fuller was a reverend of the First Unitarian Church and the secretary of the association, being an author of all the documents I scanned. I found John Fuller to be a fascinating man and Mrs. Wojtyto promised that she would find some records of his sermons so I could have a look at them. My hope is that by looking at his sermons I can learn more about John Fuller and maybe more about the Orlando Ministerial Association.