MIT Office Legacy

The authorship of many documents designed by the staff of the MIT Office of Publication have never been verified or corrected. So one will find resumes by Muriel, Jackie and Ralph that are erroneous.  The reason for this is that they were copied over and over again by many publications who never checked in with the original source and all kinds of mistakes crept in. Most outsiders could not keep the “MIT Office of Publication” apart from the “MIT Press”. They had tough times in distinguishing  the function of the “MIT Office of Design Services” or “MIT Graphic Arts” . Many authors confused Jacqueline Casey with Muriel Cooper or with their status and rank in the institution. I know, Muriel did not care. She never corrected any of the erroneous entries by the AIGA or AGI. How Jackie felt,  I don’t know. (Just as an example, at a conference, Phil Meggs, a well-known American design historian, introduced me as Swiss, during which a whole group of well-known Swiss designers jumped up to violently object: “No he isn’t. He is German”. True scholarship in Design comes late. Steve Heller is most likely the first one, who had the means to double check information. Phil Meggs, as an example, did not speak any foreign languages and therefore could not verify any information. He actually republished material that was already part of the professional literature in the English language. That was also true at the very beginning with Dough Scott. Luckily, he spread out further over time, than Meggs ever did.)

Well, I am very frustrated about the lack of scholarship by curators of the MIT Museum. When the MIT Office of Design Services was phased out, whatever the office files held in design examples at that time was marked as Jacqueline Casey’s or Ralph Coburn’s when turned over to the MIT Museum, which was not as well staffed then as it is today. So it is not at all surprising that many examples, of which I am/was the author were erroneously labeled. I have offered to help the museum to identify the originators, but they haven’t taken up my offer.

Be that as it may, I claim to have designed all material for the “Black Student Union” published before 1970. The MIT BSU poster, was designed in 1968 by me. The same is true for the companion booklet “Black Students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology”.

MIT Black Student Union

In 1968, a small group of MIT students formed the Black Students’ Union (BSU) and presented a list of proposals to the administration. Designed to increase the presence of African American students at MIT, the proposals outlined changes to recruitment, financial aid, and admission. In this video, the first co-chair of the BSU, Shirley A. Jackson PhD ’73, and former MIT President Paul E. Gray ’54 remember the sacrifices and heated meetings that led MIT to change its long-standing recruitment and admission policies.

Founding members of the Black Students’ Union (BSU): Charles Kidwell, Shirley Jackson, Ronald Mickens, Sekazi Mtingwa, Jennifer Rudd, Nathan Seely, Linda Sharpe, James Turner.

My letter to President Jackson, without any response from her.

Dear President Jackson:

You may vaguely remember me as the kid-designer at MIT who designed the first booklet and poster for the budding BSU at MIT. I worked closely with Charles Kidwell and met with all the members of the small group fighting for attention in overwhelming sea of white students, faculty and administrators. Now retired and putting a webpage together about my experience in the USA and at MIT, I wonder if you are still in contact with any of the founders, because I am convinced that all of them must have left a hefty imprint wherever they went: Charles Kidwell, Ronald Mickens, Sekazi Mtingwa, Jennifer Rudd, Nathan Seely, Linda Sharpe or James Turner.

I know you are a very busy person, and this is just another request that has little to do with the state of today. But then again, I look back at that period as one of the most vital times in which the black voice was raised by you and your colleagues and the MIT administration was forced to listen and finally had to respond. If you have just a moment to respond, I every much would appreciate it.

Thank you,

Dietmar R. Winkler, professor emeritus

University of Massachusetts Dartmouth

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