At the DC History Center, we aim to provide emerging champions and scholars of DC history not only access to collections, but also opportunities to make connections and build community. The Totman Fellowship, which launched in 2022 thanks to a generous donor, supports scholars undertaking new research in the (intentionally broad) fields of Black Washington and LGBTQ+ DC.
We are thrilled to announce that Manuel Mendez and Daniel Ballon-Garst are the 2023-2024 Totman Fellows, selected through a competitive process managed by the DC History Center’s University Advisory Group.
Manuel’s proposal for the Black Washington fellowship research explores the DC-specific experience and impact of Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Afro-Puerto Rican scholar, and the person responsible for the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
While Schomburg’s legacy is perhaps most closely associated with New York, Manuel aims to contextualize his presidency of the American Negro Academy (ANA) during his time in DC in the 1920s. Founded here in 1897, the scholarly and artistic organization was dedicated to the education and empowerment of African Americans. Alexander Crummell served as ANA’s first president, and W.E.B. DuBois and Francis J. Grimké are counted among its founders. Part of Manuel’s research will be a comparative study, delving into the records and publications of other local scholarly organizations of the same time period. This includes the Columbia Historical Society (CHS). The CHS, founded as an all-white membership organization just three years before the ANA, is the predecessor to today’s DC History Center.
A graduate of Antioch College, Manuel is currently a PhD student at the University of Maryland’s Information studies program as well as a member of the DC History Center’s Latino/a/x Advisory Group.
Daniel’s proposal for the LGBTQ+ DC fellowship builds on his exploration of the study of Black and Latinx queer religious activism—from Stonewall to the early twenty-first century. His research in the Rainbow History Project collection, the holdings of the DC Public Library, and the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, will explore programs of the Metropolitan Community Churches (MCC), Faith Temple, and the LGBTQ Jewish synagogue Bet Mishpachah, among others. Daniel aims to continue to map out DC’s LGBTQ religious terrain, shedding light on the local experience in the context of his research on 1980s Los Angeles in the 1980s and 1990s Oakland, California.
A graduate of the University of Southern California, Harvard Divinity School, and the USC Gould School of Law, Daniel is a PhD student in Emory University’s Religious Studies program.
About the Totman Fellowships
Thanks to generous donor support, the DC History Center provides stipends, resources, and mentorship to foster new research to share with a public audience on Black Washington and LGBTQ+ DC. After initial summer research in the Kiplinger Research Library, at other local repositories, and in individually owned collections throughout the District, fellows each submit a project proposal for approval in the fall. They continue to engage with the DC History Center throughout the following academic year, culminating in a deliverable that might comprise of an article submitted to Washington History magazine, a presentation at a future DC History Conference, or perhaps a Context for Today public program.