This past week has been really busy in terms of putting finishing touches onto the website. Drexel and I went to the third floor of the St. Mary’s library, the media center, and set up our little work space to edit the video and go over additional materials for the website. Our case of Song of Solomon is progressing well, I feel that everyday as we approach our deadline we discover more information about the book, author, and the controversy. The first thing I showed my partner was the photo of David Flood with Toni Morrison. He. Was. Shocked. In our research we discovered that Toni Morrison visited St. Mary’s College, but we were unsure of the specific time and needed to do more research. As it turns out, the controversy in St. Mary’s County affected everybody and the College decided to award Toni Morrison the Margaret Brent award.
With this new information under our belt, I took out the rest of the paperwork that David turned over to me after our interview. His bag was old, it was falling apart at the seams, and smelled of old newspapers. I took out all of the folders of old newspapers from the Enterprise, Washington Post, New York Times, and the school newspaper. Sprawled it all out over the table and started to show my partner how much David kept over these 25 years since the controversy. As I was sifting through the papers and explaining the papers, Drexel asked me about the white binder that was in the bag. He was onto my little surprise. I reached into the bag and pulled out David’s white binder, this binder contained a major piece to our puzzle. Earlier in the semester it was made clear by my Professors that we need to find the original complaint against the book. This task has proved more than difficult because St. Mary’s County Public Schools did not have the paperwork digitized, because it was over 25 years ago. Drexel and I went to the offices of St.Mary’s County Public Schools and sought to go through files and additional paperwork at their offices, we were denied entry because we did not have an appointment and the County Schools were off that week. Our attempts were blocked by forces out of our control, but we persisted and continued to reach out and seek for the letter and complaint against Song of Solomon.
I pulled the binder from David’s bag and set it on the table. Opening to the first few pages I handed it to Drexel and said its what we have been missing all along. The binder held a copy of the original letter that would start months of controversy and debate. This letter from one parent, started the entire debate. No formal complaint was filed.