Hidden Figures: Marion Stokes #WomensHERstoryMonth 22/28 (Patreon)

Hidden Figures: Marion Stokes #WomensHERstoryMonth 22/28

Marion Stokes (born Marion Marguerite Butler, 25 Nov 1929 – 14 Dec 2012) was a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania television producer, activist, librarian, and prolific archivist, especially known for single-handedly amassing hundreds of thousands of hours of television news footage spanning 35 years, from 1977 until her death at age 83, at which time she operated nine properties and three storage units. Stokes' tape collection consisted of 24/7-coverage of FOX, MSNBC, CNN, C-SPAN, CNBC and other networks—recorded on as many as eight separate VCR machines stationed throughout her house. She had a husband and children, and family outings were planned around the length of a VHS tape. Every six hours when the tapes would be ending, Stokes and her husband would run around the house to switch them out—even cutting short meals at restaurants to make it home to switch out tapes in time. The archives ultimately grew to over 40,000 VHS tapes. A librarian who briefly acted as producer of a local news show with her husband, John Stokes Jr., Stokes believed there was a lot of detail in the news at risk of disappearing forever, and began taping casually in 1977. With the advent of 24 hour news coverage, Stokes began around the clock coverage. Stokes took great care to preserve her collection, operating apartments and several climate-controlled storage units filled to the brim with tapes, televisions, recorders, and computers. Over the decades she recorded monumental events in American and world history, from the police bombing of MOVE in her hometown of Philadelphia to Hurricane Katrina and 9/11. Stokes left the collection to her son Michael, who gave it to The Internet Archive one year after her death. It was the largest collection they had ever received. The group agreed to digitize the volumes of round the clock news coverage and make them available online for free, a process which was expected to cost $2 million and take 20 digitizing machines several years to complete. The project is still active. #MarionStokes #HiddenFigures ****************** Merchandise! MAKE SURE U GETTA SHIRT!! https://www.teepublic.com/user/sssseren Follow me on social media! Instagram: @sensei_aishitemasu Personal Tumblr: http://sensei-aishitemasu.tumblr.com Tumblr for my work: https://sssseren.tumblr.com Snapchat: sssseren GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/tc5wh7q Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/seren_sensei ****************** Did you know I wrote a book? ☺️ 'So, About That... A Year of Contemporary Essays on Race and Pop Culture' Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/About-That-Contemporary-Essays-Culture-ebook/dp/B013V0CHK6 Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B013V0CHK6 Digital download (e-book): https://gumroad.com/l/IkUa ****************** Links: RECORDER - The Marion Stokes Project: https://recorderfilm.com http://milkandheavysugar.tumblr.com/post/183254171345/recorder-the-marion-stokes-project-2019 'The Incredible Story Of Marion Stokes, Who Single-Handedly Taped 35 Years Of TV News:' https://www.fastcompany.com/3022022/the-incredible-story-of-marion-stokes-who-single-handedly-taped-35-years-of-tv-news 'Philadelphia woman archived 35 years of local and cable TV news:' https://www.theverge.com/2013/11/22/5135154/philadelphia-woman-archived-35-years-of-tv-news 'Input - Marion Stokes & John S. Stokes, Jr.:' https://archive.org/details/marionstokesinput 'Librarian Recorded 800,000 Hours of News Footage Over 35 Years:' https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Digitizing-35-Years-of-Historical-News-Footage-234615351.html 'A Dream to Preserve TV News, on the Road to Realization… with Your Help:' http://blog.archive.org/2013/11/22/a-dream-to-preserve-tv-news-on-the-road-to-realization-with-your-help/ 'Germantown's Marion Stokes archived 35 years of TV news:' https://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/entertainment/television/Germantown-woman-videotapes-35-years-of-broadcast-news.html 'One woman’s incredible VHS collection will live forever on the Internet:' https://www.dailydot.com/upstream/marion-stokes-vhs-internet-archive-input/ 'The Internet Archive Has Started Uploading 40,000 Videotapes Worth of TV News:' https://www.wnyc.org/story/internet-archive-has-started-uploading-40000-videotapes-worth-tv-news/ 'The Second Life of Marion Stokes:' https://www.wnyc.org/story/9-second-life-marion-stokes/ 'TV producer's collection of 840,000 hours of news tapes finds a home:' https://www.cnn.com/2013/12/09/us/pennsylvania-tv-news-archive/ 'Macs in the Box: The Incredible Mac Collection of Marion Stokes. Now For Sale:' https://www.cultofmac.com/270610/macs-in-box-incredible-collection-marion-stokes/ 'A Dream to Preserve TV News, on the Road to Realization… with Your Help:' https://ianews.wordpress.com/2013/11/22/a-dream-to-preserve-tv-news-on-the-road-to-realization-with-your-help/ Marion Stokes (Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Stokes