The Joseph Henry French and Marilyn Doss French collection documents the personal and professional lives of both individuals. The Personal and family papers series consists primarily of biographical material, educational records, correspondence, and material that documents their cultural interests and their mutual civil rights and community activism. Marilyn Doss French’s Professional series documents her training and work in editing, publishing, the arts, and museum administration. The series includes jacket covers and promotional material for books she worked on at Greenwood Press, material related to her Ph.D. program in Museum Administration at New York University, and evidence of her contributions to other art organizations. Joseph Henry French’s Professional series spans his entire career and his appointments at several universities and hospitals from the 1960s to the 1990s. The series also documents his professional affiliations and service, publishing, and presentations.
It is worth noting that Joseph French (and his family) lived in Baltimore and trained at Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine for only a few years, as French completed his postgraduate work at Hopkins between 1958 and 1962. Thus the collection contains very little material related to Johns Hopkins or Baltimore. A few items in the Personal and family papers series suggest the family’s connection to the Baltimore community, including children’s school records and a birth announcement in the Afro-American newspaper, membership materials for the First Unitarian Church of Baltimore City, correspondence, and personal and household expenses from that time period.
The collection’s particular strengths are in tracing the personal and professional commitments of an African American family whose work and lives spanned the civil rights movement and its aftermath. Of particular note is the sub-series on Civil rights and community engagement, which documents Joseph French and Marilyn Doss French’s sustained work for social justice and civil rights. Partly organized according to two of the communities where the Frenches lived and worked – Denver, Colorado and Westport, Connecticut – these materials show the many ways the French family embedded themselves in the social and civic fabric of their chosen communities and contributed to the ongoing fight for social justice and change. As a whole, the collection speaks to the indivisibility of their efforts for professional and social advancement and racial uplift, a reality that was undoubtedly true for other African American medical professionals during this era.