Let’s Keep Talking!
ACTOR (A Continuing Talk on Race) Facilitated by Pamela Pinnock
BLACK HISTORY
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ORAL HISTORY
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LIFE HISTORY
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We have known in the Black Community – forever – that oral history is the way we pass our stories unfiltered, from one generation to another. We have known through culture, family tradition, and instinct that certain stories must be told… and re-told.
There are events that elders share at dinner tables with children listening. Stories that are shared at the barbershop among men. Tales told over steaming pots while women continue to stir in details. But what of the stories we never hear?
The stories where the end is murky? The stories that so few knew, that their mortality is tied to that of the oldest living relative?
Join us for a very special Black History Month A.C.T.O.R. where we will learn the fundamentals of Oral history from the historians themselves!
Featured Guests include:
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Benji de la Piedra (M.A., Oral History, Columbia University) works on oral history projects and teaches oral history methodology in a variety of settings, including the University of the District of Columbia, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, the DC Oral History Collaborative, and the Smithsonian Institution's Anacostia Community Museum. He currently directs the Herbert Denton Biography Project at UDC and is a Visiting Fellow at the Library of Congress John W. Kluge Center for Scholars, carrying out independent scholarship on Herbert Denton, Albert Murray, Ralph Ellison, and topics related to the worlds and work of these African-American intellectuals. He is an active member of the Oral History Association, where he serves on the Diversity Committee, Equity Audit Task Force, Indigenous Caucus, and is co-chairing the organization's 2023 conference on "Oral History As/And Education"
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Anna F. Kaplan, PhD, is a scholar and oral historian in Washington, DC, with a specialization in memory and public narrative creation around race in the US South. She is a Professorial Lecturer and Resident Public Historian at American University and serves as the Vice President of the Board for Oral History in the Mid-Atlantic Region and a co-chair of the Oral History Association’s Diversity Committee and Equity Audit Task Force. Anna is also a recipient of a 2022-2023 OHA/NEH mini-grant in support of her research project highlighting how pivotal Black women’s labors were in establishing oral history programs and centers at institutions in the mid-20 th century US. She is currently working on her manuscript “Left by the Wayside: The Struggle over Control of the Memory of the University of Mississippi’s Desegregation,” which examines the use of memory to shape public narratives, challenging the notion that the University of Mississippi (UM) integrated in 1962 by reframing it as desegregation and the fight for integration as ongoing. She has worked on projects with the Department of State, National Park Service, the DC Oral History Collaborative, several Smithsonian Institution museums, and the US Golf Association Museum. Anna earned her PhD in History at American University and MAs in Oral History and Anthropology at Columbia University.
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Max Peterson is the Oral History Assistant for the Oral History Initiative at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. As assistant, he provides research and administrative support for oral history interviews and projects at the NMAAHC and produces transcriptions, summaries, and bios for the Initiative. Peterson is also an oral history educator and has also co-taught an after-school history class in Washington, DC, called Real World History since 2017. In this capacity, he manages a student oral history project held at the People’s Archive of the DC Public Library. Peterson holds a BA in history and African American studies from Boston University and an MA in Oral History from Columbia University.
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Corey Shaw Jr is a graduate of the University of the District of Columbia with a degree in Political Science with a concentration in Global Affairs. By day, Shaw assists with homelessness prevention in Washington, DC. By night, he is a determined community activist that is committed to reconciling US history with the present societal inequities. Shaw was first introduced to experiential research in a class entitled Black Land Loss in Washington. The class was centered around the seizure of land that belonged to an African American family in what is now the Chevy Chase, DC neighborhood. That class has since evolved into a cohort of scholars, descendants, and community members organized for racial redress. Shaw serves on the Black Broad Branch Project as the Chair of Policy Implementation.
(all practicing Oral Historians!)
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A.C.T.O.R. (A Continuing Talk on Race) is a public discussion series. It provides the opportunity for people to come together and speak openly and honestly about issues of race, class and culture. The intent is that each person walks away from the discussion feeling something: challenged, educated, uncomfortable, enlightened, refreshed, reassured and hopefully inspired and moved to action!
On the last Sunday of each month there is a new topic for discussion
