Week One: "Starman"

Photograph of Marie Stapler Gladden, Michael Gladden Jr., and Bertha Brown Gladden, c. 1970.

Hello, reader! Just as soon as I closed out the Spring 2026 semester, I'm already back to work for Summer 2026! For my fourth official internship, I am participating in an independent study with my faculty advisor, Dr. Scot French, in hopes of achieving some of my longstanding goals for the Michael Gladden Jr. Collection/Archive project.

On Wednesday, Dr. French and I met over Zoom to discuss our plans for the Summer semester. One main goal I am thrilled to fulfill is the creation of a digital exhibit on UCF's STARS (Showcase of Text, Archives, Research & Scholarship) database. My vision for the exhibit is to explore Michael Gladden Jr.'s motivations to become Black Apopka's safekeeper and archivist, which was undeniably his community. I plan for the digital exhibit to contain the following sections: Michael Gladden Jr., Marie Stapler Gladden, Joseph Cauley, George Oden, Ella Walls, William Gladden Jr., and Ms. Francina Boykin. I envision that each individual's collection will have a curated array of artifacts that best represent, reflect, and narratively nourish the community figure's historical importance in Apopka and beyond. After learning that STARS possesses the ability to publish audiovisual files, I came up with the idea to record Ms. Boykin recounting the story of the Gladden Collection and what its preservation means to her and the Apopka community. As this project expands, I will consider adding more artifacts to the exhibit since STARS does not have a disclosed file limit for submissions. I look forward to discussing my ideas for the STARS exhibit with Ms. Boykin later this week while simultaneously drafting an exhibit abstract and proposal.

After doing some research on STARS exhibits, I was unable to find any (at least, recent projects) that matched my vision for the Gladden exhibit. It seems that most entities associated with UCF use it to display digital collections rather than to curate a contextual narrative. For example, "African American Legacy: The Carol Mundy Collection" contains both text and image files from the Carol Mundy Collection, but does not have a particular focus on the prolific Mundy herself. I'm hoping that my exhibit will be able to not only preserve a part of the Gladden digital collection, but also showcase the story of the man behind the receipts.

Photograph of Michael Gladden Jr. Inside M. Gladden Staple and Fancy Groceries, c. 1960.

On the Gladden Archive side, I have been working hard to upload artifact pages ever since my last internship ended. I currently have over 165 artifact pages! Recently, Ms. Boykin received a donation from Mr. Tarence Brown of Apopka, who was William Gladden Jr.'s longtime caregiver after his paralysis later in life. Ms. Boykin was also a close friend of William Gladden Jr., helping him to publish his book, "The Pennings of Perrine Slim: Stories of Northwest Orange County Florida," shortly before he died in 2015. After establishing a separate safekeeper page to display William's collection, I created artifact pages from the first phase of Mr. Tarence's donation. My favorite objects I've digitized so far are a rare glimpse into Michael Gladden Jr.'s grocery store in the 1960s (in color!) and an even rarer 1928 photograph of M. Gladden Staple and Fancy Groceries, taken just four years after Michael Gladden Jr. assumed proprietorship of it. 12 objects from the collection are available to view on the Gladden Archive- and more to come as Mr. Tarence continues to clean! The future is looking bright for the Gladden Archive and me this semester. I can't wait to continue reaching for the "STARS!" See you next week, reader!