SANTA FE (NM)
Searchlight New Mexico [Santa Fe NM]
February 18, 2025
By Alex Heard
[Photo above: The main reading room of the Thomas Jefferson Building, Library of Congress. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress]
Last week Searchlight New Mexico published two stories about the legacy of sexual abuse of children by priests in the Archdiocese of Santa Fe. The main piece, by Joshua Bowling, examines the overall arc of what happened in the central and northern parts of this state; why a mysterious facility in Jemez Springs served as a way station for much of the abuse that occurred; and why the archdiocese, to this day, actively keeps priests linked to sexual abuse from appearing on its “credibly accused” list.
In a companion story, I wrote about a new archive at the University of New Mexico’s special collections library that will be a permanent home for thousands of pages of records — including accounts from abuse survivors about the horrors they endured — generated as part of the archdiocese’s 2018 bankruptcy and subsequent settlement agreement. The assignment was meaningful to me for two reasons: the gravity of the subject matter, and the high regard I have for archives like this one.
Years ago, after I graduated from college, I moved to Washington, D.C., and began the long process of trying to become a journalist. People approach this challenge in different ways, but one strategy that helped me was learning how to use the Library of Congress, a vast facility on Capitol Hill that can feel imposing to newcomers.
It’s housed in three buildings connected by tunnels — Jefferson (which was built and opened in the late 1800s), Adams (1939) and Madison (1980). I spent weeks of my spare time in these structures, and I recall that, inside of each, I could feel the architectural style of its era the moment I walked in. When I went to the Adams building, which features design elements of Art Deco and Beaux-Arts, I used to say: “It’s great to be back home in the New Deal.”
The library was difficult to navigate because it exists as a collection of fiefdoms, and new users have to figure out where to go for different things. Old, bound periodicals were in one building; newspapers in print and microfilm were in another (a long tunnel-march away); and books were in yet another. My favorite place was the Manuscript Reading Room, home to document treasures from all eras of American history. In 1991, the 50th anniversary year of the completion of Mount Rushmore, I went there, out of curiosity, to look at the papers of the monument’s sculptor, Gutzon Borglum. I ran into a surprise: Borglum had been a member of the Ku Klux Klan. I wrote about this side of his character for The New Republic.
Between 2005 and 2010, I researched and wrote a book called “The Eyes of Willie McGee,” a history of a death penalty case that played out in Mississippi between 1945 and 1951. McGee, a Black man from the small town of Laurel, had been arrested and charged with raping a white housewife, a capital offense back then. He was tried three different times; the first two trials were so obviously unfair that the Mississippi Supreme Court reversed them. But he was ultimately condemned to die in the state’s “traveling” electric chair, which was moved around from place to place in a truck. His sentence was carried out in a county courthouse, with a cheering crowd outside and a packed room full of observers inside.
As I learned during my years of research, records relevant to the case were hard to find and were scattered all over the country. By the project’s end, I had done research in person (or with help from a proxy) in eight states, going through thousands of pages of archival material in dozens of collections.
At the Library of Congress, I was able to view the papers of a little-remembered group called the Civil Rights Congress — a Communist-linked counterpart to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People — which arranged and paid for McGee’s defense during the case’s long appeals phase. As I read through this archive’s contents, one thing seemed obvious: If someone hadn’t taken the time to preserve this material — which included many letters McGee wrote from jail — I wouldn’t have been able to write the book. This was true of several other collections, particularly those housed at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History and the Tuskegee Institute News Clipping File holdings on race-based lynchings.
We live in a time when it has become official government policy to ignore some aspects of our shared past. Recently, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth sent out a guidance memo called “Identity Months Dead at DOD” that takes aim at military participation in events designed to commemorate many parts of U.S. history.
“Going forward,” it says, “DoD Components and Military Departments will not use official resources, to include man-hours, to host celebrations or events related to cultural awareness months, including National African American/Black History Month, Women’s History Month, Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Pride Month, National Hispanic Heritage Month, National Disability Employment Awareness Month, and National American Indian Heritage Month.”
This edict has had an immediate effect. For example, the Maryland National Guard, obeying the guideline, recently declined to take part in a parade honoring Frederick Douglass, one of the intellectual and spiritual giants of the Civil War era.
Elsewhere, a recent report in The Guardian showed that politically motivated book banning is on the rise, “fueled by conservative backlash against discussions of race, LGBTQ+ issues, and diversity teaching in public schools. Last week, the Donald Trump administration instructed the Department of Education to end their investigations into these bans, calling them a ‘hoax.’”
Nobody tried to ban Searchlight’s reporting on the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, but along with many positive comments, we’ve heard from a reader who expressed what I think will be a common reaction: Enough has been said about clergy abuse, and nothing good will come of collecting survivor stories in a public archive.
“The culpability of a percentage of priests is on full display now, and has been for many years, and that is great, but when do the stories of healing and blame stop?” this reader said. “I think filing the names in the UNM library is overkill, and does not do any good for anyone.”
We at Searchlight disagree about the value of preserving victims’ stories. In a society where the basic idea of confronting inconvenient truths is under assault, it’s reassuring to know that this information will be preserved and protected. In the future, a large and wide-ranging group of people — everyone from victims and their relatives, faithful Catholics who want to understand what happened and why, journalists, historians, and more — will benefit from the very fact that it’s there.