Page 4 - 2018 Fall Newsletter

GRANT FUNDS

DIGITIZATION PROJECT

The Emperor of West Texas - Digitizing the Amon G. Carter Papers

Mary Couts Burnett Library and the
University of Texas at Arlington special
collections departments received a grant
of $50,000 from the National Historical
Publications and Records Commission
(NHPRC) to begin work on the
project “The Emperor of West Texas –
Digitizing the Amon G. Carter Papers.”
The grant will be used to digitize
materials related to media mogul and
Fort Worth promoter Amon G. Carter.

TCU Senior Archivist Mary Saffell
is principle investigator. Brenda
McClurkin, department head of UTA
Libraries’ Special Collections, is
serving as a co-investigator on the
project.

“We look forward to working with
Texas Christian University in this
collaborative effort to digitize the
papers of Amon Carter, Fort Worth Amon G. Carter and Franklin D. Roosevelt, Carter is delivering deed to Big Bend National Park, June 6, 1944
Star-Telegram publisher, entrepreneur,
civic leader, philanthropist, art collector
of note and all-around Fort Worth booster,” McClurkin said. “This project is strongly enhanced by materials being
contributed by both of these archival repositories.”

The bulk of Carter’s papers are housed in TCU Library’s Special Collections. UTA Special Collections has the
photographic archives of Carter’s newspaper, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram—around four million negatives, about 15,000
of which document Carter’s own local and national activities.

Besides founding the Star-Telegram and running it for close to five decades, Carter started the first radio and television
stations in Fort Worth. He was also responsible for bringing aviation businesses (now Lockheed Martin, Bell Helicopter
and American Airlines) to the area. The collection also includes ten boxes of files on Amon Carter Jr.’s internment in a
WWII German prison camp.

The digitized materials will be useful to researchers across a spectrum of specialties, including biographers and urban
planners, as well as social, military, aviation and business historians. Carter maintained connections with U.S. presidents,
military leaders, entertainers, business leaders and European leaders and nobility. Social and military historians will be
interested in the World War II era letters written between Carter and his son, a prisoner of war from 1943-1945.

4 | TCU Library