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    4. July - August 2022

    Taking the Time to Listen

    The University of Georgia preserves Black oral history
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    By Holly Leber Simmons
    July 1, 2022
    Ashley Carter and Janis Ware

    SHARING THEIR STORIES: Journalism student Ashley Carter (top left) interviewed graduates like Janis Ware (top right) for the University of Georgia’s Black Alumni Oral History Project. 

    Credit: University of Georgia

    In 2019, University of Georgia, U.S., Archivist Steven Armour launched the Black Alumni Oral History Project, a collection of personal recollections of African-American alumni.

    ADVANCE WORK:

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    His inspiration came from a series of 2017 interviews that journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault, one of the first Black students to attend UGA, completed with the first three Black students to enter UGA as freshmen and matriculate after four years.

    “Listening to that interview was really eye-opening for me,” Armour said. UGA desegregated in 1961, and “that milestone event changed our institution and the course of history, but the story stops there if we don’t delve deeper into what students’ experience has been going forward. What happened next?” he said.

    As an archivist at the university, Armour said, he works with a lot of paper records and published materials, many of which contain a leadership or institutional perspective. But unearthing past students’ voices can take a more concerted effort. 

    For the first round of the project, at least, Armour chose to focus on alumni from the 1960s and 1970s. “The stories of the older alumni are particularly vulnerable because the population is aging, and we want to be able to get those stories while we can,”  he said.

    He explored prospective interviewees by looking at old articles in the archives. The year 2019, for instance, was the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the university’s chapter of Delta Sigma Theta, a Black sorority.

    Funding for the project came from the Give Voice to the Voiceless grant, founded by Hunter-Gault and her husband, Ronald Gault, through UGA’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communications. The grant program typically supports student-initiated projects focused on historically marginalized groups. Despite not being a student, Armour applied for the grant, suggesting that he bring in a student from the college to conduct some of the interviews. The committee members suggested Ashley Carter, then a broadcast journalism student. 

    “From the get-go she was a wonderful person to be part of this project. She brought such energy and excitement to it,” said Armour.

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    Carter told UGA Today, “Being involved with this project has helped me grow personally. Hearing these stories has made me a lot more enlightened, more awakened. It’s something special to sit in a room with someone else who had it so much harder. It makes you realize you are exactly where you need to be and that others worked hard to make sure that I am here.”

    Armour said the interviewees have expressed gratitude for the opportunity to be part of the project. 

    “One interviewee in particular just started talking as if she had had these stories kind of bottled up, and it’s as if no one had ever taken the time to ask about her experience. And she felt really good about having that platform to be able to tell her story,” he said.

    Nawanna Miller

    Nawanna Lewis Miller, UGA Class of 1973

    That interviewee was Nawanna Lewis Miller, UGA Class of 1973, now a pastor and Founding Chairman and Leading Director of The Institute for Christian Discipleship, Inc. She spoke about traumatic experiences she had as one of the few Black students on campus. When she got her first C grade on a paper, she said, she requested a meeting with the professor. 

    “There was nothing he could point to that showed I deserved a C. And he had this terrible pain on his face. And he said he just could not give an A to a negro,” said Miller.

    She joined the Black Student Union, which gathered at Memorial Hall on campus.

    “I remember the university at one point in the spring telling us not to congregate there again because, if you think about it, any time Black people congregate anywhere, even now ... the fear is always that we are going to do something. We are [perceived as] a threat and [that] we are going to do something destructive.”

    When Carter asked what kept her there at UGA, pushing through all the opposition, Miller said, “For African American people, we were just getting to the point where we were integrating or desegregating schools like UGA. So you don’t quit. A whole race of people is hoping that you get through. And so I don’t care what you gotta do. Wipe your face, dry your eyes, square your shoulders, and walk on through the difficulty.” 

    About the author(s)

    Holly Leber Simmons

    Holly Leber Simmons is a writer and editor based in Silver Spring, Maryland, U.S. 

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    US/Canada Higher Education Alumni Relations Diversity & Inclusion Currents Magazine Advance Work

    Article appears in:

    Currents Cover
    • July 1, 2022

    July - August 2022

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