UN Day, Duke Ellington, John Glenn, Lenni Lenape cultural repatriation
Tehran Community School's program for United Nations Day, October 24, 1956. Pearl ID: 340220.
The Charter of the United Nations, the foundational treaty of the intergovernmental organization, went into effect on October 24, 1945. United Nations Day, or UN Day, is celebrated annually on that date as a reminder of shared values and an opportunity to come together. The above pamphlet commemorates the American Community School in Iran’s celebratory events on October 24, 1956 and includes a program consisting of a variety of different performances and presentations.
The Community School was a Presbyterian boarding school from 1935 through 1980. Originally a school for the children of Presbyterian missionaries, it expanded to educate Americans of all backgrounds and English-speaking students of different nationalities and faiths. By the 1960s, Iranians constituted the larger part of the student body. The Community School had 1,500 enrolled students in the 1970s.
Program from the 225th Anniversary of the Presbyterian Church of Madison, Pearl ID: 124544.
On October 1, 1972, the Presbyterian Church of Madison, New Jersey welcomed famed musician Duke Ellington to the stage at their 225th anniversary event. The congregation was formed in 1747, making the church the oldest in Madison.
Ellington’s orchestra performed one of the special sacred concerts the composer penned late in life, when he was grappling with mortality and faith. Through his lyric and melody, Ellington entered into a dialogue with the divine in an effort to share his vulnerability with his God and fellow human beings. Of his sacred concerts — he composed three in total, with premiers in 1965, 1968 and 1973 — Ellington said, “Every man prays in his own language.”
On the introductory page of the program from this event, Ellington writes, “I think of myself as a messenger boy, one who tries to bring messages to people, not people who have never heard of God, but those who were more or less raised with the guidance of the Church.”
Left: Screengrab from NASA-TV clip of John Glenn's 1998 launch, PC(USA) Communications and Funds Development, Media Services, Pearl ID: 145328. Right: autographed portrait of John Glenn, 1981, Pearl ID: 8623.
Crowds gathered across the nation on October 29, 1998 to watch the launch of the space shuttle Discovery. This moment earned John Glenn, an astronaut on board, the title of oldest person to have flown in space to add to first American to orbit the Earth. Glenn, along with being a NASA astronaut, was a lifelong Presbyterian.
The Glenn family attended Westminster Presbyterian Church in Cambridge, Ohio, where John’s mother was the first female ruling elder. After his retirement from NASA and the Marine Corps, and during his time as U.S. Senator from Ohio from 1974 to 1999, Glenn attended National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., where he served on the session. He returned to space, at the age of 77, toward the end of his senatorial service.
Stills from Lenni Lenape health guardian repatriation event, 1991. Pearl ID: 164972.
On October 13, 1991, an item previously held within the archives at the Presbyterian Historical Society was repatriated to the Lenni Lenape Historical Society, now the Museum of Indian Culture. A video recording of the event allows viewers to relive this moment in PHS’s history as the Lenni Lenape health guardian figure is given back to its people.
The repatriation event began with a spokesperson from the Lenni Lenape Historical Society sharing a brief introduction and history of the community, followed by a performance by numerous tribe members in traditional dress as they welcomed their historical item back home.
The Museum of Indian Culture was founded in 1980 as a nonprofit resource center for people of all ages to learn about Native American cultures. The mission of the institution, which is member-supported and volunteer-run, is to preserve and perpetuate the authentic histories and cultural heritage of Native American peoples of the past, present and future.
The spokesperson for the museum says of this repatriation, “Today is very important because now what we have is … a religious ‘give back.’ It is a doll that is now to be repatriated back to its own people. And, not only that, it is given of its free will by the people that reclaimed it. There was no legal action, no court battles, no nothing. This is a voluntary give back, which makes this extremely important to us … This is the ceremony of repatriation.”
Ripples from this repatriation event continue to spread into the society’s work today, as it makes an effort to encourage reconciliation, continued repatriation and the reworking of harmful or misrepresentative language within its collections.
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