Christina Greene Practicum: Curriculum Development; JCP Curriculum Development Project discussion, JCP Summer Institute, 1991 July 15
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| Speaker 1 | Um, we would have to have flexibility. Uh, we would've to provide, offer flexibility for people [indistinct]. And usually the program has visibility. It can then be incorporated into a regular budget, budget and other things. So it has to be recognized that there may, may be some needs to have non-traditional ways of including some, some said something about maybe an earlier discussion about what schools had to do. And I was wondering, for those who perhaps thought the school would having any major problem, what should we, what, what would be the thing? Is it for the schools to make up a proposal or design a program locally in consultation with the center? | 0:02 |
| Speaker 2 | Well, we thought more we were thinking more of a collaborative effort. I think one of the things that will have to be demonstrated to NEH is that there is a framework for collaboration and that the purpose and rationale are, are clear. Uh, I don't think we have too much trouble with the intrinsic work and significance of, of the experience and, and, and the sources. Um, do we have collaborators uh, intact in place? Um, once the collaborators are collaborating I think that they can can structure the the details that will, that will answer most of the concerns that we've raised uh, this afternoon. | 1:01 |
| Speaker 3 | Okay. I think this one has to be institutionalized. I think we have to go beyond what we call individual dealing with, you know, whoever a specific case. But it has to become a part of the institutional focus, and it should be based more on, you know, on that than the personality of the president of the key people involved. I mean, you have the issue of if that president leaves what's happening, or that key person is not there, what happens with this collaboration? So I think that's a major concern, is that this has to be so strong that it must be viewed as an integral part of, of a total process, of a total humanities focus, rather than, you know, narrowly focusing the on individual on occasion saying, you're gonna do this together. | 2:02 |
| Speaker 4 | Question, same issue, your Honor. Um, when I approach, I'm on leave from, and when I talked with the dean about this project, the dean said to have those folks that do are doing so, he, that I'm spokesperson, they, that there should be some contact directly with the persons that they wanna give and not, or whatever other aspect of this project. | 2:59 |
| Speaker 5 | I really think that | 3:38 |
| Speaker 2 | That should be a problem. Let us have his phone number or | 3:39 |
| Speaker 5 | Her involved in us, because each of us going to, well, at Hampton, you don't go to the president, you go to the dean first, and he goes to vice president, then it goes to the president. So I think that probably to facilitate the collaboration between HBCUs in order to ensure continuity of this project for X number of years it needs to go to the chief administrator, the president from say the center here in Duke, or something like that. That would make it much simpler. | 3:42 |
| Speaker 2 | I, I think our working assumption was that this institute at least would serve as a building block to collaboration, (laughter), however that is developed. Uh, if I, and, and I'm optimistic that that there is enough interest without being able to answer all the questions about how you work out those intramural concerns within your institutions are, like, for example, you will be returning to Xavier. | 4:31 |
| Speaker 5 | That's my plan. | 5:01 |
| Speaker 2 | Okay. That's your plan, I suppose. I don't, and and you and your dean are talking now. You are still talking. You're not, | 5:02 |
| Speaker 5 | That's | 5:10 |
| Speaker 4 | Not the issue. Okay. Supposedly don't go back. Uh, and I'm the only person | 5:10 |
| Speaker 2 | Representing it does. Right. In all seriousness, it does facilitate moving matters along. Uh, as issues arise, if there is somebody you can, you can sort of look to as a contact person I think, I think that's very important. Whether that person is uh, viewing his or her role as short term or long term. And you, you might well serve as a contact person and then fade out of the project. You might have other interests. But I think that in the infant in the infant stage that Freddy referred to, I think it's very important to, to have to have somebody that can serve as a point of entry. | 5:16 |
| Speaker 6 | But I think Anne's position is a very good one. While I think it's a good idea and proposal, I can't speak for Dylan. I take this back, go to the curriculum committee, I said, no, we're not implementing another course. Uh, so I think the contact needs to be made from somebody at Duke with some administrative official at Dilla who has the power to do so, not just me. I think I can talk on behalf of the institute and what I think it would bring and why it's a good course. Uh, but I don't think I'm the person to give the, the decision that this is the direction that we are going in, | 6:06 |
| Speaker 1 | In my situation. We all have to remember, we, we, we never new courses, we rarely institute new courses from without offering them that special topics anyway. You know? And if it doesn't really require a great deal from our responsible original committees to get special topics, courses taught, in fact, usually it doesn't cost anything. | 6:45 |
| Speaker 1 | The point would be moving from the special topics to trying to get it as a real course. I don't think that that the problem is gonna be initially complicated course taught. But I do agree that having a contact person, what we did in [indistinct] with this program, that's why I see the parallels. | 7:05 |
| Speaker 1 | We had a contact person on each campus, and people on the campus submitted their proposal for first reading to this contact person. That contact person offered new courses that they wanted to, to teach, that they wanted to offer, and the contact person couldn't approve The courses of courses were sent on to the coordinating committee, but with the endorsement or with at least some reading from that contact person, and if the courses were funded even as experimental special topics courses, they got released time. I think that the major concern when you teach a special topics course isn't so much can you teach it, is whether there's gonna be money to teach the course. | 7:21 |
| Speaker 6 | But we're, we're not teaching special topics courses. We are talking core requirement courses, and we are short in that manner. So we have got to the special course in yet. | 7:59 |
| Speaker 1 | Well, yeah. Well, well, that's what I'm saying, that a person who would be trying to get release time from if there's two problems, one is trying to get release time, but the other time, the other problem is if you're trying to, if you're trying to get release time from a, from a, from a course that that is a course course and only you can teach it, then having monies for release time isn't going, isn't gonna deal with that problem. | 8:08 |
| Speaker 1 | But if we view ourselves more than as the person who, not simply as the person who would necessarily teach this somehow, but we might bring it to the attention. I see a number of people on my campus, for example, probably be better at doing this kind of seminar, then I would be, but I, but if I present this as the representative of the, you know, the contact person of the construction, I could not say to this person, this is of course that that we would, I would want to interest you in teaching. | 8:31 |
| Speaker 1 | I would have to present it as a, with something that had some resources attached to it. You know, I can see some people, I know one person in particular who's a, who's a history court, who teaches African American history at University of Miami. He only offers it once every two or three years because he just simply doesn't have have the time. But I can see him being very enthusiastic about something like this, because these are things that he and I talk about all the time. | 8:57 |
| Speaker 1 | But, but if there are no resources attached, I mean, he wouldn't have any problems in getting it taught as a special topics course initially, but the problem would be whether there were monies that would be available for police time. I think that initiative, that the next step though, is the one that you mentioned, making it a permanent court. That's where all the fires gonna come | 9:23 |
| Speaker 2 | From. I do see a need to uh, frame a letter or, or or rather lengthy letter not only uh, thanking your uh, various presidents for your participation in the in the Summary Institute, but tacking onto that a lot of information about the very next steps. Uh, well, if that's possible. But yeah. Of, of the direction in which we are, we are headed | 9:43 |
| Speaker 7 | In the long run. In the long run. | 10:18 |
| Speaker 2 | Right. And in the case of and in the case of Dillard, for example I, I really do think that that given our sort of historic relationship with, with Dr. Cook and he's, he sits on the various boards and what have you around here. I do think that we can, oh, I think it can be | 10:19 |
| Speaker 7 | Sold doubt that, but I don't think I'm the one to sell it. I think you are the one to sell. So basically you're talking about a matter of protocol. Yeah. It, it's an institutional protocol strategy protocol and back scratch. (laughter). | 10:39 |
| Speaker 2 | No, I, I think that were you thinking of something shorter or one semester format? | 11:04 |
| Speaker 7 | Well, | 11:17 |
| Speaker 2 | Um, I think we could continue to discuss this. I think we can, we can we can develop a variety of of models. Um, I can see the one semester course being very intensive but I, I can see an intensive course being something that would be uh, preferable to to advanced juniors, seniors who, who are, who are moving very fast. | 11:18 |
| Speaker 7 | Well, we have an opportunity to discuss this at some other time. | 11:48 |
| Speaker 2 | All the time. I would hope. I, I would also like to get your, I think I know from over the months of dealing with your CDS and institutions, I think I know most, most of your presidents, but I'd like to, you know, for you to jot their, their names down and so forth. For me, I'd like to, your presidents or your deans or your academic vice presidents, or the various, or your provosts or the people you think should know about, about the project itself. It would be good for us to have a working list. | 11:52 |
| Speaker 8 | You something around now, | 12:34 |
| Speaker 7 | (laughter). | 12:35 |
| Speaker 2 | Well, can we get a piece of yes. We have something here from Christina Legal Sheet. | 12:37 |
| Speaker 8 | Do you have a projected time for us to, you know, for the implementation of this program? | 12:44 |
| Speaker 2 | Um, well, we, well, the, the most immediate concern now is to craft a proposal to submit to NEH for the pilot project. This proposal would be going in, in in October. Uh, the, the larger project itself moves into another stage stage three, and that's over a five year, that's over a five year period. So there, there would be at least an intensive evaluation of, of the course itself. And its effectiveness after the third year, | 12:50 |
| Speaker 8 | You mean the course at the | 13:31 |
| Speaker 2 | Yeah. that will be instituted. The, the course itself. And it's, it's movement from a pilot stage to the institutions within the consortium. | 13:35 |
| Speaker 8 | And this will involve all of the institutions in the consortium. | 13:45 |
| Speaker 2 | In the consortium as, as it develops. Uh but I mean ideally we, | 13:48 |
| Speaker 8 | When we be any money you know, (laughter) in terms of, in other words, when you write Dr. Cole at Clark Atlanta University, and the letter will then be some idea of possible, you know, | 13:54 |
| Speaker 2 | Money that we are applying for funds, | 14:11 |
| Speaker 8 | Applying for money, and that an allocation will be applied to Clark Atlanta University. In other words, we over something. I know you can , I don't know | 14:13 |
| Speaker 2 | How specific | 14:24 |
| Speaker 8 | Can specific, but an indication that something is something is | 14:25 |
| Speaker 7 | When you do your budgeting, it be, | 14:33 |
| Speaker 8 | That's very crucial for my president. | 14:35 |
| Speaker 2 | There is no faith anymore. | 14:39 |
| Speaker 9 | The faith is in God we trust. No, we better talk to, | 14:55 |
| Speaker 2 | Well, the sheet is going around. I think we can continue to talk about this, and I would welcome any comments that you want to write onto your draft itself. Um, be glad to have those. | 15:04 |
| James N. Eaton Sr. | Uh, are you going to involved any predominantly White universities? Almost every city that we are from, they got a major White university. They got all kinds of money. For example, now if I had this program in A&M, I could get support from Florida State and students. Could we? Is that could be that kind of a— | 15:25 |
| Speaker 2 | Well, I think, I think we, we will not try to limit, right? We might, we wouldn't want to limit your own outreach. Uh, I think it would be very important for you to um, cultivate your neighbors in, in what you're doing. Um, I don't know whether unless we had another NEH institute, you know, so many institute, I, I don't know whether we can think in terms of, of bringing making Florida State, for example, in— | 15:42 |
| James N. Eaton Sr. | No, no. I wouldn't want to be a part of it, but I that's some unique situations where if I need 20 students, and they got the program that you're talking about, you know, they have a special topic program, they got the money to pay for it. Uh, they said, okay, I got, I can send you 10 students over there. You come over here and teach this program jointly, and we'll give students at Florida State who an African American studies credit for it, and you give 'em credit at the A&M, and they probably provide the, the release time and pay me to do them. Let's take my time at A&M . And because they get the kind of money that kind of programs already in place, but that school's a little different. | 16:13 |
| James N. Eaton Sr. | And I keep emphasizing that big money's at Duke, but there's not money, any money at all at NCC. Now, I know that's, that's the case. I, I can tell you that, and it's so much different than person. I get upset when they have to compare these two things. | 16:48 |
| Speaker 2 | Yeah. I, I didn't know that. I thought it was at n h to big money | 17:04 |
| James N. Eaton Sr. | (laughter). No, I, | 17:08 |
| Speaker 1 | So the consortium, if the proposal is going in, in October of 91, which uh, means that in about two or three, two months the consortium must take shape. | 17:13 |
| Speaker 2 | Yeah. And, and it really is a proposal going in on the faith that develops out of, out of this this summer institute if it, if it develops, I mean, or if we have enough show of works to develop the faith. | 17:26 |
| Speaker 1 | So, so my earlier question was that how does one know when one is in the consortium? | 17:41 |
| Speaker 2 | Well, let's continue to talk about who, who wants to collaborate. Uh, let's continue understanding. | 17:49 |
| Speaker 1 | But I think Johnson C Smith would, but and I'm saying, | 17:57 |
| Speaker 2 | Well, I'm glad to, I'm glad that Smith is | 18:01 |
| Speaker 1 | Leading. Now. How do we know that we are in facting? Do we write you and tell you that? Or what? | 18:04 |
| Speaker 2 | Well, maybe we, maybe we might get some sort of letter by the, by the time we leave on August 2nd. But I think right now, informally, we can just continue to talk about it and then maybe declare ourselves a consortium in August. | 18:09 |
| Speaker 3 | (laughter), my understanding, and I don't know if this is correct or not, I'm asking Leslie, I thought that there might be more, more specific. The proposal would be specific for the pilot school. Yeah. But less, but more they, for the full consortium, which really doesn't, would sort come into place within like two years. Right. We'd be working on sort of defining what the larger consortium is over the next 12. Sure. | 18:26 |
| Speaker 2 | Mm-hmm. Because | 18:56 |
| Speaker 3 | My understanding, | 18:58 |
| Speaker 2 | Right, because we would almost have to get a's from NEH on the pilot program in, in order to get funding for for the consortium. So whatever, whatever proposed figures we send to the Clark Atlanta president will have to be sort of, sort of suggestive figures. Yeah. | 18:59 |
| Speaker 1 | I, | 19:18 |
| Speaker 11 | That allows us to do, is to start up a program that gives us information about the specifics that we would need for the larger project. One of our issues is we're in a large consortium like this. We don't have all the answers today. That's why it's in proposal form. And in order to find that, we have to run a pilot to figure out what the bugs are, what the amounts are, et cetera. So we're trying to write something that has specifics, but also has the flexibility to adapt to individual situations, | 19:19 |
| Speaker 2 | I think. Does that make | 19:52 |
| Speaker 11 | Sense? | 19:52 |
| Speaker 2 | Yeah. I think we have the very makings of a very strong consortium here and and contact persons. I as | 19:54 |
| Speaker 3 | Well, I just have one thing to say about this. Uh, any age (laughter) through [indistinct] sponsored a workshop for minorities institutions to come to DC | 20:03 |
| Speaker 12 | Offerings. And I think one of the reasons that this happened was because faculty really did get institutional support and commitment to their efforts. Again, it wasn't a hundred percent, and not everybody thought that what they were doing was wonderful, but they were able to usually get enough support so that the courses would be regularly offered. | 20:15 |
| Speaker 12 | Um, it often led to, or reinforced other similar curricular efforts within the institution in this case in several cases that led to the establishment of particular course, women's studies courses or courses on women creation of women's studies programs, minors or certificates. Um, in one state in South Carolina. Um, some of the participants became involved in a statewide effort to promote gender related courses throughout the state system. Um, two colleges in Charlotte began a faculty exchange program that sort of grew out of the, our project in which some of the courses, the two courses were developed here were taught at the two different colleges. | 20:35 |
| Speaker 12 | Um, there were also other kinds of of unintended ripple effects. For example, there was a male teacher out in a in a small rural college in, in the western part of Virginia, who was teaching a course on feminist theory. He's kind of uncomfortable about doing it, but he said there was nobody else really there to do it, and people weren't really interested in it. | 21:19 |
| Speaker 12 | Um, apparently the course had a pretty big impact on the students who were involved in it, and it led them to push for and to achieve a college-wide inclusive language policy. There was a campus-wide discussion on whether or not the infirmary should dispense birth control devices. I don't see to see this things like that coming out of this project. But and then also what there was a, it, it, the student's participation in this course led to a critique of the College's Great Books program, which had a paucity of female and black authors. | 21:43 |
| Speaker 12 | So there are often wider uh, effects of, of these projectBlackobably most importantly was the impact on the uh, the professional and intellectual development of the participants. Um, one of them became a co-director of a women's studies program. Several refocused or re-shifted their research interests. | 22:16 |
| Speaker 12 | Um, and many of the, of the participants reported that participating in curriculum development efforts did have the kind of transformative impact or effect that we thought that we thought and hoped that it would. Um, they said that it, it affected not only the way they taught the particular course that they had targeted for revision, or again, sometimes it was a creation of a new course, but it also led to changes in the way they thought about their disciplines. Um, most of them had been fairly traditionally trained so that again, the impacts were sometimes unexpected and often wider than we had anticipated. | 22:37 |
| Speaker 12 | So I wanna stop talking now and let you all talk about either raise questions that you might have around your own effort or share experiences that you've had. One of the things that that I found is that groups like this are often have lots of sometimes hidden resources that they don't often get a chance to talk about. That's what we were sort of hoping that this session would provide an opportunity for you all to talk a little bit about either some of the experiences that you've had doing this kind of work or some of the questions or maybe ideas or suggestions that you have for the kind of things you want to do. So, I'm gonna stop, I know it's after lunch and (laughter), everybody really wants to take a nap | 23:17 |
| Speaker 3 | Trying refrain. | 24:23 |
| Speaker 12 | Oh, don't refrain. (laughter). | 24:25 |
| Speaker 3 | Now I have some concerns. And they more related to the plans for developing group as a result of what doing here, what, what the proposal that you mentioned earlier . And my primary concern in that instance is that as a part of that, there's little mention little push to achieve primary archives of sources which reflect on this period. | 24:32 |
| Speaker 3 | And my concern is that if we don't have the primary sources, then we'll be utilizing the, you know, essentially the same base of information that has been used. Um, so how is that to be approached or is that an issue that, you know, will be the approached? So that that gives way into, you know, developing a curriculum relate to a specific topic . But you have to also develop the base materials. You know, you have to go out and do, or history. | 25:03 |
| Speaker 3 | You have to get the primary source materials because it's reflection in a lot of things that I, I've seen when we said that in, for example, the presenter this morning was talking about the fact that we could not document that Blacks served in the Confederacy, had received pensions. And but in contrast to that, we have found letters and other papers which suggest that Blacks actually receive pensions, but there's nothing documented. So, you know, when you do scholarly research, you don't have anything to to support this unless you are innovative and go out and, and get the information. | 25:37 |
| Speaker 2 | I certainly see no reason why the archival component cannot be considered one as the, as part of the next stage. Um, or it could be considered together with developing a course while you are generating interest training students who then will be involved in collecting and in archiving materials. I do think that the course itself need not depend upon the archival work in its initial stage. I think that the course can begin and that archival development can receive a pace. | 26:23 |
| Speaker 3 | Okay. See, I keep getting back to these discipline discrepancies. I, because I often feel that if we are going to accurately portray it, we have to get at the truth (laughter). So, you know, historian speaking terms of of this, we can document this from this period, and this happened during this era. And, and what I'm saying is I don't see now out there in a broad range the materials that we need. We, we, we desperately need more materials. | 27:15 |
| Speaker 2 | Okay. I, I do think that we we initiated courses in the sixties and seventies in Afro-American and African studies, while we were still in the business of building archives, expanding the historiography, and doing the necessary research to get us where we are now. | 27:49 |
| Speaker 3 | Well, we, we are now, I'm a part of that era and part of where the program that was talking about [indistinct] development, you know, Black studies, the emphasis, in fact, I, and part of my graduate work was to do that. Um, so, but, but I still have concerns. I I have concerns that for some aspects, especially when we are talking about Jim Crow, that we don't have the, the documentations printed and published that we need, and we're gonna have to be, you know, innovative and creative. You talk about the different projects that you did with women studies, and I see some of that as the, you know, you know, when we talk about putting the pot before the car (laughter), | 28:10 |
| Speaker 2 | I certainly do think that. Just one last response. Uh, I really do think that you can begin a course framework in which you say at Jackson State as an archivist, you might well want to make that a focus of what you are doing as an experimental step. Uh, I don't know whether that will necessarily be the focus at some other institution. | 28:57 |
| Speaker 3 | I, I doubt it because you don't, historian, you know, you take terms of archives, but you think in terms of archives, having the materials, you know, the ReSTOR providing the material, | 29:30 |
| James N. Eaton Sr. | [indistinct] two things. But she's saying that there's a lot of material that you're not aware of. Right. See that I know what she's in archives and, and you've been doing research and writing books. You haven't got the original sources yet. See, the other thing is that, and she knows that she's in archives, the things that would shock your mind is out there that you never looked at. We even knew it exists. | 29:44 |
| James N. Eaton Sr. | And see now women study, there's something new, but African American history is old as, as 1865. And almost every great or small Black school have taught it already. And you just simply realize it's out there. But you have, you got the horse before the cotton, the cotton for the horse or something that, what you're trying to say, because it's been there for a long time. And, and | 30:04 |
| Speaker 11 | I think we need to understand that the whole concept of documentary studies and this project is specifically to do that, to get students out of the archives into the community, collecting photographs, doing all history interviews, finding new sources, and then bringing those into whatever format and using those resources as their research. And if that's not clear enough, then here, then we can certainly explain to the language. But that is, in fact, one of the purposes of doing this is to not rely on what we already have, but go out and find new information. Oh, right. And using the students to do that. And another benefit is that it can then go to your archive center or another library or whatever. | 30:28 |
| Speaker 3 | Okay. Well good. Say I agree, but as you explained it exactly, that's what we, | 31:13 |
| James N. Eaton Sr. | Well see. One of the problems is we never did have decided yet whether the Jim Crow area, no one this whole institute satisfied yet that we get, don't have any dates. See, and people still asking that question over and over again, because | 31:22 |
| Speaker 11 | We're not trying not to be distorted. | 31:34 |
| Speaker 13 | You know, before we came to this institute some people and I were discussing the richest source that we have in the man who was the campus photographer. He has an excellent collection, and we have gotten him to agree to let us do an exhibit, a pictorial of photographic exhibit on the campus during much of this period that we are calling the, | 31:45 |
| Speaker 11 | That's exactly what we're talking about. | 32:13 |
| Speaker 12 | Yeah. And the kind of projects that I was talking about. I mean, the stuff is there, you know, sometimes it's, and sometimes you're right. It's in libraries, in manuscript divisions, and people haven't even | 32:16 |
| Speaker 13 | Looked. It's at his house. He promised to let us take anything. That's | 32:24 |
| Speaker 3 | Great. And the Black still have a lot that's at home. Right. Especially when you're talking about the Jim Crow period. They have it historically for the archives, the state archives, local historical society have not valued collecting this information's . And, you know, | 32:28 |
| Speaker 12 | So yeah, when I think about some of these projects, I wish there had been an archivist there saying, give me this, gimme these photos, gimme these letters, give me these oral histories even. 'cause I don't know what happened to that stuff. I mean, that's what I think is so neat about this project that, you know, you're preserving all this stuff | 32:47 |
| Speaker 2 | To respond to Professor Eaton's question. I think we are working broadly between the first reconstruction and the second the debate on dates continues as you well know. But I think that it, if we move generally from the first emancipation to the the modern version of the direct action protest movement that was based in the South, we will find the area where most of the discourse is focusing. Uh, whether we want to talk about those statutes that were in place from antebellum terms or whether we want to talk about their proliferation during the uh, reconstruction era. Uh, I think we can come to terms with a modern version of what we call Jim Crow. It has a lot of ambiguous meanings for historians and even more for anthropologists. | 33:03 |
| Speaker 14 | Dr. Gar, are we also defining it exclusively as racial segregation rather than the larger view of racial discrimination exclusively as racial segregation? Well, if the question is also, | 34:18 |
| Speaker 2 | Isn't it? Right? Exclusion, discrimination. So all, all of those patterns are sort of collapsing. But our focus is the African-American experience within these broadly defined the, the patterns of of racial segregation and discrimination. How did African Americans experience, what, what did they do? And, and, and that as our subject matter will dictate our questions and our collecting and and and the outcomes in communities in Black colleges and African American studies programs here or there. | 34:31 |
| Speaker 8 | Another place where you find, I think a lot of information about African Americans is the family Bible. Um, I know I have had experience in arranging funerals and trying to find and relatives, and there's just a wealth of information on when people got married birth, and just a lot of information about families. And also I found a lot of family pictures in the family Bible. And I dunno what the archivist have done with that, but that seems to be an area, I dunno whether you all have done anything with family bibles, but , that's a place where you can find a lot of information about African Americans is the family Bible. | 35:21 |
| Speaker 3 | That's a big focus from a Black author viewpoint. But at ss a a, one of the things that they talked about what they were tired of getting family bibles, and they said, well, you don't have any Black family bibles. But there was a consensus that, you know, as archivists, we have enough Bibles. And in Mississippi specifically the archives, you know, they do not just search out or encourage you to, to to donate those at this point. Mm-hmm. But it's, it's really a valuable source. | 36:06 |
| Speaker 8 | Another source in terms of religious life is particularly for Episcopal or the more the, the Methodist denominations would be minutes, annual conference minutes general conference minutes, and many of these conferences over the years since the Emancipation Proclamation to the end of the, and even now to the end of the legal segregation at one of the highlights of the conferences was doing resolutions, a resolution on the state of the church resolution on the state of the nation resolution on the state of the race. | 36:41 |
| Speaker 8 | And this is kind of give you the 10 of what was going on at the time from these annual conference and general conference minutes. Uh, I mean, the people who would come as delegates from different places they looked forward to getting these reports and taking much of the activities and much of the information back to that particular area so that they could keep the people at the various localities abreast of what was going on. Uh, in a sense, it was a kind of a replica guess of what would go on at at NAACP convention with the social activist and the state of the nation and what Black people were doing at the time. That would be a, is another source of information these minutes of these various meetings. | 37:27 |
| Speaker 8 | See, | 38:22 |
| James N. Eaton Sr. | I think the problem is, is that there's a board, we talk about Black people and talk about reconstruction. Then we jumped to around 1910, and nobody can name it the Black people. There were all kinds of books on Black women between 19, 18 65 and 1910 that's out there. And she knows about these books. And, and if I asked you write that, name me, 20 people that were Black in this country between 1865, 1875, and 1910, you couldn't even name 'em. | 38:23 |
| James N. Eaton Sr. | But they were out there and, and the materials out there. So you can't really do serious research in the 1930s and forties, and don't know what happened. The background behind the Black leadership in 1900, I'm gonna bring a book when I come tomorrow off on Tuesday, Wednesday, there's something blow your mind, you know, the only copy in the world. | 38:48 |
| James N. Eaton Sr. | Uh, and it was put together by, by the hospital who was established Union University, the missionary records, there were all kind of missionary groups, and these were White scholars, much more educated than Whites in the south. They came from the north who documented all of these things. And those records got to be looked at before you can really do a good job on somebody. In 1935, there was 1940, and I think she knows about these staff, us bothering here. are | 39:07 |
| Speaker 2 | These are these quicks volumes that were published in Richmond? | 39:32 |
| James N. Eaton Sr. | No, this is | 39:36 |
| Speaker 2 | Black stars of all ages. | 39:37 |
| James N. Eaton Sr. | Just one special book about Black schools and missionaries and the leaders of, and also Whites who gave down lives to support the Black cause. We never think with that group. But see, these people were in deep danger in the deep South who came down here and gave down lives to create Christian education for African Americans. Who were they? You know, and who started these schools? Who were the, who were they leading Black people in this country for 35 years? We don't know who the, but they are there and they are available, but we don't have those kind of things. So that make all your research suspect when you, for man, for example, Black man was not president in 1900. We think Jesse Jackson was the first Black person. See, that's not, that's not true. See, nearly true. See, and a Black man put Grover Cleveland name nomination to be president was behalf African American. | 39:39 |
| James N. Eaton Sr. | MCC hiring those, those are official records now. I think she's trying to say that we need to know somewhere those things and get those things into place that we can do something else. And they do exist. I also just been huge from what I say. See, what happened is when, when man history of Black Baptist Church in Dean, the dean at Morgan College came down and did his research. What was his name? Uh, Pickens. Not Pickens. No. He, from a famous family. | 40:29 |
| James N. Eaton Sr. | Came down and wrote this big fabulous book, came to visit me, and walked in there and saw those records, had to write his whole book over. He actually cursed. He said, damn you Eaton, got to do the book all over again. Because all of his research was suspected because records that he didn't exist right there. And he's so far, that's right. Which came from a little Black school and St. Augustine, Florida, Florida Army Industrial Institute, which can't contain all the records of all the Black churches. | 40:57 |
| James N. Eaton Sr. | So they changed the whole ballgame. So your research could be suspect. We don't have original research to go back that they, they are there and there are at the Black colleges, you know, and we don't even know they | 41:22 |
| Speaker 2 | Even exist. | 41:32 |
| Speaker 12 | Well, can I ask a question? Um you all are giving some really wonderful examples of the kinds of sources that are in existence. Are there are your intentions to get students to retrieve some of this stuff and then have this material become part of the courses that you all are, are teaching? Is that what, 'cause when you're, you're talking about this, I'm thinking of all kinds of ways that you can have students actually retrieve some of this stuff, work it into courses, and begin to, you know, disseminate this stuff as well as the more traditional ways of, you know, scholars writing articles that get published, you know, or books. Um, there are different ways of, of Leslie as an answer to this (laughter) | 41:34 |
| Speaker 11 | The idea is that the retrieval process would be a part of the course. | 42:13 |
| Speaker 12 | Part of the course. Uhhuh, | 42:17 |
| Speaker 11 | Students in doing research right, would identify and finding these things because we know that they're there. But we have a gap between bringing those into our research and actually getting them. And somewhere in there, that process has to happen. And it seems that the second half of the course, or throughout the course students doing that are indeed engaging in the research process. I, yeah. | 42:19 |
| Speaker 3 | Well, I'd like to know, I mean, as part of your, where if you did establish a course, if you had to sew us, what would be your repository? | 42:46 |
| Speaker 5 | Repository be in the individual space where there would be archives of holding and might be some, the copies would be made of relevant documents or probably the, her library. | 43:04 |
| Speaker 2 | I, and I, I think there is a related discussion that helps to fill out an answer to that question. Uh, not only would there be a sort of regional archives in the, in the conception of an outcome on archives, but that these regional archives would especially be in historically Black colleges and universities. Uh, if institutions in Georgia and Alabama could work out such an agreement. And it might well be that what you generate, you may wish to you may wish to keep in your own. Um, | 43:21 |
| Speaker 3 | But that institutional libraries | 44:00 |
| Speaker 3 | Too, you know, I, I would love to see them at Historical Black College. The historical Black colleges, the archives and libraries are the last things of funds that are funded. So as as a matter of a proposal, will there be a consideration of, of, you know, get soliciting fund so that potential repositories will have the funds that are necessary to process these papers to make them available to researchers. Because, you know, if you just bring a, a, you know, a truckload of papers to a Black college, I mean, you've got the, you've got storage, you've gotta have someone to process it. I mean, you have a whole new dimension that we're adding to it when we talk about repositories. But perhaps there should be some concerned about storage, about, you know, maybe we can have some central location until these things we have the funds to assess them or to do something with them, or, I see the, the same problem we had, not knowing where the things are. Okay. | 44:02 |
| Speaker 2 | I do, I do think that that is a dimension that is um, to be considered. I'm, I'm not sure whether it will be an integral part of this particular proposal. I, I do think that if this stage is conceived and implemented smoothly, that it will serve as a building block for the larger accessioning and development that that you're addressing. Now. I don't minimize that as a very important part of the delivery system for the larger project in the long term. | 45:06 |
| James N. Eaton Sr. | When you speak of scholars, are you speaking of scholars from a local, your local university? Are you speaking of a scholars from Duke University or from Indiana? | 45:52 |
| Speaker 2 | Something broadly defined? | 45:59 |
| James N. Eaton Sr. | That was kind of scholarship. We could say, well, in the graduate programs now we do have a master's degree program, but what, you— | 0:01 |
| Speaker 2 | Can't finance it— | 0:07 |
| James N. Eaton Sr. | You see? But now Florida State got doctoral program, so I'm trying to say what kind of scholars we speaking of, you know, if you coming from Harvard and Yale, people come frequently use it. That's a little bit different. You know what I mean? We already, if you want to use it, yes. | 0:08 |
| Raymond Gavins | You wouldn't permit undergraduates to use your materials? | 0:21 |
| James N. Eaton Sr. | Not some of these. It is just not appropriate for 'em. You can't— | 0:23 |
| Speaker 4 | You don't know that— | 0:26 |
| James N. Eaton Sr. | You can't use this material because it's too rare. Number two, they tear the pages out. | 0:27 |
| Raymond Gavins | I did, I did research in the Livingstone College Library in Salisbury, North Carolina, and the archivist sat all day every day and watched me. | 0:33 |
| Raymond Gavins | For two months. | 0:44 |
| James N. Eaton Sr. | (audience laughs) I understand that very well. | 0:46 |
| Raymond Gavins | So if you watched your undergraduates, would you let them use it? | 0:48 |
| James N. Eaton Sr. | Yeah. But see how you have, do you have the staff to watch somebody? One student two months at a smaller school? You got the archivist, the head man, got to go pick up all the stuff. | 0:51 |
| Speaker 4 | Doing processing— | 1:00 |
| James N. Eaton Sr. | See, see, that's where the money will come in. You got to have staff. | 1:01 |
| Speaker 4 | You got to have staff. And storage. | 1:04 |
| James N. Eaton Sr. | See now what you could, one, maybe we could do, and I would like to see this maybe could do this is microfilm this material. Somebody to have a central microfilm in place. And what you do for me is put it on microfilm and I have the copy along with the original. And then you can use the microfilm. Then it makes it very easy. Yeah. But somehow there's got to be funds for somebody to get those to microfilm. | 1:04 |
| James N. Eaton Sr. | No, an undergraduate student not going, not going to use Mungo Park's book. No way in the world you gonna use that book. | 1:25 |
| Speaker 2 | So that, that's a consideration in your overall design. That if you are going to establish or have a resources, that you establish a method to have them accessible to scholars. And that's gonna take money. | 1:32 |
| Iris Hill | One thing discuss this whole integrated project of the people from the preservation, archive preservation program were very interested in, in the possibility of individual universities and colleges that participated in this consortium to make separate individual and independent applications NEH for archival projects. | 1:46 |
| Speaker 2 | And therein lies another problem. NEH funds. If you look at the, the amount of funding that is given to Black colleges, and if you look at the amount of funds that has ever been given to a Black archival program, the only fund that, and that's within the last year that that has ever been granted has been, not to me (laughs) but to Spelman College and to Tougaloo. | 2:17 |
| Speaker 2 | And, you know, these are recent phenomenon with NEH and there was an impetus, at one time, they said they really tried to get, you know, Black archivists to write proposals and to get that in to themselves. | 2:42 |
| Speaker 2 | But we, we need some people who are perhaps more schooled in the art of grantsmanship, and Duke might consider that to assist these colleges that you have identified in generating proposals, appropriate proposals to NEH | 2:57 |
| Raymond Gavins | Well, Tom Adams will be addressing that very issue when he comes. | 3:13 |
| Speaker 2 | Um, yeah, Tom is with education—But Jeffrey Fields is with the—well, he used to be with library and archives— | 3:17 |
| Raymond Gavins | Division of research— | 3:26 |
| Speaker 2 | But he's with preservation, now, he's with preservation. And Tom and, and both Jeffrey. Tom has—Tom approaches it from a different perspective than Jeffrey does. I mean, you know, I'm getting personal now, but, but I found that, I found, you know, Tom does education type broad scope things, and Jeffery will focus on the preservation, making sure that those materials will be available, making sure that they're accessible and making sure that, you know, the archive is sound. | 3:27 |
| Speaker 5 | May I speak about undergraduate usings archives? Um, we, at Amistad we try to encourage undergraduates to learn to use archival materials. And when the center was located on the campus of Dillard, we had certain faculty people who assigned small manageable projects to their undergraduate students so that the students could learn to use the original materials. And some of them eventually develop pretty decent projects. | 4:02 |
| Speaker 5 | Amistad is still on a university campus and it still tries to have some, you know, reach down into the undergraduate level because that's the way it feels is gonna get the graduates, you know, trying to teach them. Um, it does not have a very large staff in terms of some depositories, but a part of what it wants to do is to, to make what it has available to undergraduate school, move up through the graduate program, through the doctorate and post ate and the book level and so forth. | 4:37 |
| Speaker 5 | It isn't always easy. We had a student who came from California to do a project on Creoles of color in Louisiana, and he did a hotel documentary and he used Amistad collection and collections all over the city. At some point, he decided to give Amistad the exhibit that he had returned to California and had mounted. | 5:17 |
| Speaker 5 | And in the exhibit was an original document from another repository, which we returned to the repository. But I mean, these are real concerns. This material disappearing (laughs). | 5:43 |
| Speaker 5 | And this was a one of a kind item, a pass for a free man of color. You know, most people think slaves had to have passes— the free people of color had to have them too in New Orleans. (laughs) | 5:58 |
| Speaker 5 | And I mean, still, despite this unpleasant experience, and despite several recent ones for the historic New Orleans collection and Tulane University, there is a commitment on the part of some repositories to try to help people understand that you are, you know, you are ripping off the whole system and you take the one of a kind or anything and, and, and what are you going to do with it? | 6:09 |
| Speaker 5 | It's not fair to serve anybody else anymore. But again, Amistad got money from NEH and other places to microfilm some of its holdings. And one of the big sellers is the American Missionary Association Archives, which has a whole lot of history pertaining to Black schools, especially those started by American Missionary Association. And so some of, you know, I can see some of the concerns, but I can't see just keeping things locked up in boxes which nobody can touch because that isn't going to change the information based on which people can work. | 6:35 |
| Speaker 6 | I would suspect that this is a problem of all archivists, right Ginny? I mean, I'm sure you confront this right here too, with stuff walking out on anything, right? | 7:17 |
| Speaker 5 | Yeah— | 7:32 |
| Speaker 6 | There was, somebody had a hand over there. | 7:34 |
| Speaker 7 | Oh, I was simply gonna say that at Hampton we have pretty extensive archives that's disorganized and paper boxes and old cartons and whatnot. But we had no hesitation about sending history majors to the archives to do research, for example, in American history or, you know, African American history and so on. | 7:36 |
| Speaker 7 | Uh, granted, we, you know, the library needs more people to work in that area, and probably with the opening of the new library, they will fill that in. But it worked quite well for us at the undergraduate level. Um I'm aware that you, you probably need to watch some students a little bit more because you know, they're kind of lazy and maybe a little slippery, but it worked quite well. | 8:06 |
| Raymond Gavins | Sounds like a lot of scholars. | 8:36 |
| James N. Eaton Sr. | But it's a, it's a little different. Yeah. Duke got a rare book and you can't use the rare books in your University Library. I couldn't use them 10 years ago or 15 years ago. | 8:37 |
| Raymond Gavins | Yeah, you can, you can use rare books. | 8:50 |
| James N. Eaton Sr. | Any book you have, they can use? | 8:51 |
| Raymond Gavins | You can't take it out—you can't take it out of the room. But you can use it. | 8:58 |
| Speaker 8 | Say we do the course as a, like a one shot deal for one year, because that would depends upon, particularly for me, I guess what kind of strategy to use. For instance, in our catalong, we have a seminar course, a topic course , if I use it as the one year, that would be easy in terms of implementation. Use it as a topic course professors do what she wants. If we think of more in terms of institutional change, in terms of something more permanent, then that might not be the more appropriate strategy in terms of— | 9:03 |
| Raymond Gavins | In terms of your own institution. So, well, I, I think, I think you would, we seem to have gotten over onto— | 9:40 |
| Speaker 8 | That's all right. | 9:47 |
| Raymond Gavins | We, we do very much view this as a working proposal. Um, I think ideally we would want to be able to take the course and use it as a building block in a multi-stage effort to develop the, the sources to, to strengthen those all important ties in communities to train students in the humanities. That would ideally be more than a one shot deal. But if in fact you, you don't see your way beyond the year it could lead to other things within your own institution. So I would welcome that rather than not trying it at all. | 9:49 |
| Speaker 8 | Well, this is gonna be I guess we should start, we're gonna do the pilot project, I guess next year at Central, 92. | 10:36 |
| Speaker 8 | What, what we, we already have in place two courses, actually four courses two courses on the undergraduate level, two courses on the graduate level. And the oral history courses. We have oral history one, oral history two. Now, unfortunately, for the last few, few years uh, those courses have not run. But because we have been involved in this project and whether or not we get the funding for the project, for the power project, we're going to activate the courses anyway, that is, we're gonna offer beginning in 1992 some oral history course based on the fact that we've been a part of this for the last year or so. So I, I see I guess it's going to, it depends on the institution, but at Central we plan to activate it and to carry it on and offer it every, every year, even after the project ends. | 10:43 |
| Speaker 8 | Go ahead. I can see some similarities between what this effort to do and what the university Wisconsin to do promote research and curriculum development in African American studies and ethnic studies in general in the state of Wisconsin may be instructed to to talk to people. | 11:37 |
| Speaker 8 | That effort was called the American Ethnic Studies Coordinating Committee, the American Ethnic Studies Coordinating Committee person who would probably be best to talk to us, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. I was involved in it several years. | 12:12 |
| Speaker 8 | And a couple of things that I could mention that that, that I, I see can be anticipated. Some of you probably already thinking about it now. In fact, the comments that we've had so far that reflected some of those concerns and some of the ways that we attempted to, to deal with the American Ethnic Studies Coordinating Committee was just that it was a coordinating committee that had representatives from the 14 campuses state in the university system in Wisconsin. | 12:26 |
| Speaker 8 | And we came together each year and we had a, of that was actually to promote research and curriculum development in, in, in the area. One of the problems that we faced in terms on the curriculum side, curriculum development side was just of, of, of trying to decide trying to promote development courses and getting people to actually develop courses probably was very simple at one level. And it was how do you get people to develop courses when these courses compete against both in terms of increasing the number of courses in the curriculum that is getting them accepted into the curriculum. And secondly, in terms of getting people to teach the courses. So what we did was we had one component where, where we funded from the money that we had release time or, or for either teaching them the course the first time or developing the course. | 12:59 |
| Speaker 8 | Um, and so people had to submit proposals from those institutions and, and, and in submitting their proposals, very short proposal, they had to indicate some institutional support, both, either in terms of having the department saying, pledge this or that We're gonna try to include this course as a part of the curriculum, or at least some semblance of a commitment that would be to offer on a more ongoing basis, ongoing basis ongoing. The, the, the, the, the, the second, the research component, how was different where we, where we were trying to get people to investigate, you investigate topics that had not been given the kind of thorough investigation and were not likely to be parts of people's research agendas. So we actually gave seed money to people who, who had innovative proposals or ideas for doing things that they weren't sure, even, even whether they could do 'em. | 14:09 |
| Speaker 8 | But we, so we as a committee, we actually made monies available to those things. But part of this proposal, and there are other examples, but part of proposal had to do with more kind of questions. For example um, what is the, what is the strategy in terms of resources? Are resources gonna be, are the resources gonna be used to distribute to the members of the consortium resources that would allow release time, for example, for the development of or, and is there to be a unitary approach to what is this seminar, Documenting African American Lives in Jim Crow South? | 15:12 |
| Speaker 8 | It seems to me that, you know, and it sort of says, well, you're gonna have oral history, do regular historical kind of thing, or will there be, you know, opportunities for people to develop different kind of courses at these consortium institutions that then would become a part of whatever the seminar is, you know? Or is there some, some model that someone has in mind that's already there? | 16:06 |
| Speaker 8 | Um, I think that in general a lot of the the ability, a lot depends on what the resource, the ability of people to respond, depend upon how the, I mean, how, okay, I know at my institution, for example, I mean, we're gonna, I, I'll face problems on both fronts, you know, both in terms of trying to get institutional support and also in terms of just who, who gonna teach those courses, those regular courses. | 16:31 |
| Raymond Gavins | I, I think I think this is very much a working document and, and you point to to areas that that need to be filled in. But I think that those areas can be filled in appropriately if we can reach some agreement or consensus on the configuration of a consortium if we get funded (laughs). | 17:08 |
| Raymond Gavins | Um, and if we can get the pilot course off the ground, it seems to me that release time is an integral part of that. Having persons who are here or who are in the respective institutions to take to take the leadership role in in applying for permission to offer the course, actually crafting it and, and doing the uh, the busy work to, to make it an effective uh, part of the educational experience. | 17:34 |
| Raymond Gavins | Um, some of those some of those issues while they're very important, need not weigh down this particular version of it, but they would be, I think critically important for, for moving, say from a pilot to a regular offering in a larger number of of institutions. I do see the necessity for those sort of annual or semi-annual meetings of regularizing, at least some broad um framework for themes and and content and and evaluation. Um at the end of one or two years. | 18:15 |
| Speaker 9 | One of the things that we also need to build, build into this is an understanding that the process of putting a course in place in each institution is going to be different from institution to institution. And in writing, we felt it would be unfair to name what that process should be if it didn't apply to your institution and it was different in your institution. So one of the things that would help us is if the group can inform us in a way that then we can begin to write, write concretely how we can, how would we take off? But each institution is different that— | 19:05 |
| Speaker 8 | The year long course as described does it have to be consecutive semesters? Uh, | 19:41 |
| Raymond Gavins | I I am experimenting with a graduate seminar right now, and I'm doing it in consecutive semesters, but I'm considered a structuralist anyway. So you know, people expect to cover a certain amount of chronology with me and then move on to the next stage. Uh, I'm sort of old fashioned that way, but I, I, I think that you can adapt it to to your own scheduled needs. For example, if you can get release time in the spring rather than in the fall, that that might well change the, the equation of your work. | 19:51 |
| Speaker 8 | Do students too, you know, sometimes students can't guarantee that they can start, of course, take course in the fall and then take the follow up in the spring because of a number of things. And then I would think that the half of the course would be restricted to those who took the first half, or does it necessarily have to be that way? Because there'll be people who want to start in this spring, you, but there was a group who was doing something and was doing something in the fall. | 20:31 |
| Raymond Gavins | You might have enough students at Smith to to do that. Um, I think perhaps in some other institutions, they might not wanna shut any people out of the history course and still expect to, to have a paid faculty. | 21:00 |
| Speaker 8 | Can I raise one other question? Since you mentioned some of configuration, I feel out place mentioned this because I do know that my school wasn't one of the eight schools initially mentioned. So I guess my question is to what is the how does the consortium conceive now, in the paper described, of course, the center, the historically Black colleges, which I define narrowly as the age students that I initially heard about. And then it talks about the African American studies program at the major research institution. Well, Johnson C. Smith is defined out of that. | 21:17 |
| Raymond Gavins | Well, I, I, I really do think it's, it's the open conceptualization that you started with. Um, I think that the mention of those institutions simply had to do with the way in which the early conversations the course of the early conversations when Freddy and Bob and Robin and others began talking with institutions. But as we developed it as we developed an application and some strategy for for outreach Johnson c Smith was certainly very much a presence. (laughter) | 21:55 |
| Speaker 2 | May I respond to, to this question too? I would think that you would've to have a prerequisite, you know, you talk about whether you could take the second semester first. Um, so I, I, I would think that the first course would, you know, clear for the second part. | 22:42 |
| Speaker 8 | Well, I, I don't know if they, I was trying to figure out if they conceived of that, but I would prefer as a teacher, and not being a historian, but working with students and believe in the point of the students doing particular thing. In my field, we do simulation, you know. | 23:00 |
| Speaker 8 | Um, but in the African American experience thing, I think I, I know of a number of uh, how do you say, groups within my own university community who have tried to preserve, preserve a part of Charlotte Mecklenburg County's history that has been disappearing. Uh, skyscrapers, for instance, taking part of town part town in our three other people have been collecting pictures and stuff from that. | 23:18 |
| Speaker 8 | So this is an opportunity for students to do a project on that, a type of local history. So I would prefer them to be able to walk in with no prerequisite and benefit from the course where they start in the fall, the spring, or whatever fall. | 23:48 |
| Speaker 8 | Well, possibly when it was perceived. The idea was that we started in the fall, because that there was some structure to it. The structure is that that first, first semester gonna be dealing with the kind of things that we doing. This, I, the second semester's gonna be more field oriented. And so a person coming in the second semester is gonna be completely lost because they haven't had that prerequisite information yet. | 24:06 |
| Speaker 8 | So the idea is that you want to start at it's a yearly, a yearly course for people are going to go in. Uh, we can see, initially see that it had been a class of about 15 students. Uh, those students would go in for that one first semester. The second semester we do field work. There was actually a third component to this. The third component was that during the summer, those same students would actually go out and fulfill the objective of the whole project. And that was to, that is to go out and interview people. You need money to fund that. That's, that's all they talking about. | 24:32 |
| Speaker 8 | The deal is a lot of a lot of these issues have been dealt with that we talked about. But you know, we're actually in the infancy, you know, and all the stuff that we're talking about now, of course is good. So that we move from step one, step two, step three, we'll have all this, this stuff. | 25:19 |
| Speaker 8 | Historically institutions, many, some of them I know Jackson State already have in place a program that that might best be through which this might best be research program, which is, which is some institutions already have funded, is an honors program. Honors program science. It's in sciences. | 25:40 |
| Speaker 8 | But I'm saying a model, I don't mean funded actual program, but concept. And some places, like per college, schools have honor colleges through which these kinds of might be best, where you can get from groups of students, you can focus on innovative, kind committee terms. | 26:06 |
| Speaker 8 | And, and, and also in terms of permit, you know, likelihood better getting an honors program. But you're talking about funding. That's true. Yeah, that's true. I, I think that we've even talked about uh, selecting students for those courses. I mean, not just align anybody to sign up for a course, and that might be a better way of getting, getting you can get commitment from there is assurance of funding, particularly in the summer, summer support things. | 26:39 |
| Raymond Gavins | Freddy, I um, the projects I think are important in the student learning, the different skills of, of, of technical things. But I would think about the, the courses designed really, I mean, we will be consumers more than we are producers. When I say that though, I do think that we would produce something, but I would think that the um, activity, I, I, I have some problems with seeing 15 undergraduates around Mecklenburg and surrounding counties doing their own thing. | 27:18 |
| Raymond Gavins | Uh, to some extent, you know, I don't wanna appear too conservative. I think that they could possibly do that, but I would like to see some project conceived and students participating within the framework of project under the supervision of the faculty, that it's coordinated and they each make a contribution to the end product. | 28:00 |
| Speaker 8 | No, we're not talking about, about arming 15 students with a camera or, or tape recorder, say "Go get 'em." For the most part, we're talking about hopefully a well, seed project. It may be a project where we go in and interview 20 people from a particular area of, in our case, Durham County. It may be that we want to talk with the people down in Morrisville, North Carolina about the, the shallow experience. So I'm talking about it actually being a project and everybody contributing to that project, not, not a freelance free for all kind. | 28:21 |
| Iris Hill | Go ahead. One thing we also debated, and dunno how this will fall out, is, is this question of summer research for, for undergraduates, whether the, whether it would be possible to get that funded or whether the research project has to be thought of within the second semester. So that, that, that I think does seem like it might be really hard. | 29:08 |
| Speaker 8 | As a matter of fact, we had also talked about that first semester, the content, the first half of the second semester, students learn the technical parts of the project, and then the second half of the semester actually going out and out project. | 29:33 |
| Speaker 8 | So, because it's gonna be difficult to get, you know, students, because number one students are saying, I can go work at McDonald's or Hardee's for what I'm gonna be paid to work. So they're gonna have to be paid. | 29:53 |
| Speaker 7 | Um, can, can I raise a question here? I'm just wondering are we going to limit students enrolled and of course to history majors only, or we gonna open it up to students who might be an English major or mass media major, or—? | 30:19 |
| Raymond Gavins | I, I think that's an open question. I, I think the details on how you do it will be pretty much determined by the instructors coordinator and the coordinators. Um, I could very well think in terms of of an honors uh, seminar, say for juniors or seniors who may well have some broad interests in the humanities, but just hope in the course of teaching that uh, experience and introducing them to these research techniques that somebody will go to graduate school. I seem to, I seem to put a lot of emphasis on that these days. Uh, if, if I can get someone out of that to, to continue on, it seems to me that could be an English major or a history major. | 30:49 |
| Speaker 8 | Most of the students that other people may be most of the students that, that would be interested in this kind of seminar at, at the institution where I'm would not be um, majoring in either history or African-American studies, but there would probably be specialists that minor African studies, some of whom would taken a history course in African-American studies and would have an interest probably abroad in humanities and social sciences. And the nature of what we would be talking about would be interdisciplinary. I suppose that it would, it would, it would also involve kind people from other areas. So I would suspect that | 31:47 |
| Raymond Gavins | The special, right, the special emphasis in the proposal on history departments need not lend itself to thinking of the course of in that way. It, it seems to me that given, given the, the locus of history and the development of of the field especially in historically Black colleges and | 32:33 |
| Speaker 7 | Universities. Lemme lemme write another question on, on the tail when it does. Um, I don't really have a problem with, with bringing in students from outside the discipline. If if I can, you know, deal with them and, and work with them and, you know, say that the oral history technic and all of that, and impress upon them the importance of, of maintaining quote unquote, what I call historical integrity, (laughs) that type of thing. But um, I, I was just thinking that in maybe some of the Black colleges, we might not have a lot of history majors to choose. | 32:55 |
| Speaker 7 | At Hampton, for example, I had gotten up to about 61 or 62, but I would not count all 62 oral history project, you know, now I don't know what I'm gonna find, say at the Prairie View, but so for that reason, I, I just wondered about opening it up to English majors, to mass media people, that type of thing. And maybe limiting the course to 10 people. | 33:52 |
| Raymond Gavins | Again, I think that's an open, I think that's an open consideration. | 34:26 |
| James N. Eaton Sr. | Well, history majors of Black colleges are declining every day, serious problems. But my biggest problem is that how are you going to sell this to the Black college president. President carried on stick, see, President going ask, ask you a question. He going say, "Eaton, tell me what's this gonna do for FAMU?" | 34:32 |
| James N. Eaton Sr. | He got a Black studies African American program. He got an undergrad and master's degree in, he's going to want to know "How you gonna find this expert teacher? Gotta go to the faculty senate?" 'Cause it means interdisciplinary approach. See Black college got all kinds of problems. I just want you to write it through that. When I take it over to Dr. Humphrey, he said, "Well, I can't see where this benefits FAMU." You can ask that question, and we need to be sure to put it in this document, take back, or we gonna have a problem sending to— | 34:51 |
| Raymond Gavins | You mean, you mean in the doc in the work—this the audience for this proposal is NEH you mean as a cover letter? | 35:19 |
| James N. Eaton Sr. | We need something to convince the Black college president that this is gonna be to his advantage. [crosstalk] | 35:26 |
| Raymond Gavins | Alright. Alright. I, I have spoken, I have spoken to some uh, Black college presidents old classmates people like Bill Harris down at Texas Southern and others. And there is a, a growing sort of favorable sentiment about, about the possibility of, of doing this. And I would think that uh, Dr. Humphreys, someone whom I've known a long time, okay, would be open to to something like this. | 35:34 |
| Speaker 8 | I may say. So Ray what, what this proposal going in in October we've already been asked to ask our presidents, our deans, our vice chancellors for academic affairs to write a letter in support. I, I've gotten a commitment from Dean School of Arts and I've from Vice Chancellor Affairs, I've from our chancellor. Our chancellor is a businessman. If you can get him to go along with something in the social sciences, you can get anybody in on, on the planet to go along. (audience laughs) | 36:06 |
| Speaker 8 | Matter of fact, he was he was a part of the, of the March program. He did something for welcome— | 36:45 |
| Raymond Gavins | The welcome address. | 36:52 |
| Speaker 8 | The welcome address. So they, they're for, and they all said they'll be very glad to write, write letters. I think Lynn said that up at Hampton, the dean said that it's okay. So, you know, it may not be as difficult as, as it seems bit translate that letter. | 36:53 |
| Speaker 8 | I have to sit here and I have to say, okay, you want to do this? Okay, now we have limited staff in your course. If you teach the major, you know, you gotta have, we gotta, there's some provision gotta be made in the resources. Um, I suspect that when you get this letter, you get this letter of support from presidents, you know, and let's say proposal goes through when it comes back to university, okay, now we're ready for the consultant participation. I suspect that that same college president wants to then see, okay, now how are you gonna implement this in terms of the resource redistributions that are going to be needed. | 37:25 |
| Speaker 8 | So I'm, so, I'm, I'm I'm saying that who the proposals, the right of the proposal to anticipate that, to make sure that this letter of endorsement isn't going to approve that. Then, you know, when you get ready to do what you're going to do, then they're gonna be receiving this with open arms. | 38:04 |
| Speaker 8 | And, a matter of fact I guess most of it's gonna have to do with whether or not the school and somebody asks a question. I mean, you know, where's the carrot? They are looking for how this is going to benefit my institution. | 38:21 |
| Speaker 8 | One of the ways it's gonna benefit the institution is that for example, at Central, we've already gone to talk with the people in the comptroller's office. We've dealt with the people over in the financial arrangements office where Vice Financial and, and we, we, we've talked about the arrangements, the how can we bring this thing to our campus to benefit our students, our faculty to put NCC on the map in terms of trying to teach people about Jim Crow. | 38:36 |
| Speaker 8 | And, and so I, you know, I think we already have something in, in place. Now, one of the things that's going to happen, I hope, and I think the center is trying to do this, is to, is to make sure that we have monies available before release time and people are going to have some time off. And that's how the school's gonna be benefit. For example, if you get somebody to teach my course you, you send $3,000 to the institution or $6,000, they benefit because they might pay somebody $2,000, two, those, those kind ways. And then those in kind funds are going. | 39:02 |
| Speaker 8 | So I think we, we, we've talked about some of these things, you know, but it doesn't mean that we're going go into a whole lot of hitches and problems once implementation comes about. | 39:42 |
| Speaker 10 | Can I just add that when we did our, our projects we sent letters to all of the college presidents and, and vice presidents in these three states. And I was surprised at the level of support that you're right when it triggered down to the departmental, and it may have been a different thing, but I was actually very surprised at how responsive they were and receptive and how they passed along this information. | 39:54 |
| Speaker 10 | And part of it was the carrot was that the faculty who participated got a stipend and wasn't huge. It was like $2,000 or something for being part of that. But that was enough that people like said, oh, a little bit of money here. You know, I wouldn't have to teach a course this summer. You know, whatever. So I was actually surprised at the level of upper administrative support that we, you know, got project You gave him that. Yeah. And it wasn't even a huge, you know, amount. But, and the ways that Freddy talked about too, I think | 40:17 |
| Speaker 8 | I have a concern about several things I mentioned. I think from thee perspective, it starts with where we're in 1990 operating under a budget freeze, hiring freeze since January. And probably the hiring phase changed and probably a budget freeze through May 31 of 92. So I would feel that the first question to raise will be where is the money coming from? The finance, this project from A to Z? | 40:46 |
| Speaker 8 | We don't have now, but we don't have, we have our campus through May with research grants who could not get that release tank, but the grant still rolling up. And here I'm walking up to his, with another project, another consortium asking him to sign off on this arrangement with the center without any money to, I'm talking about a budget that's so tight that we, we don't, we no longer have unrestricted watch access. It's just that bad | 41:24 |
| Speaker 10 | Bad all over. | 42:03 |
| Speaker 8 | I can't see, I can't see. I haven't heard anything, I haven't read anything so far, but I can take him to make him sign off. You gotta, you gotta give him something to give him. | 42:04 |
| Raymond Gavins | Well. It's just an idea this time (laughs) | 42:17 |
| Iris Hill | One thing that's really very important. And one of the reasons for thinking about implementing this state was that we would've the opportunity to work closely with the two or three initial schools on figuring out all of the financial and budgetary issues. You know, what did schools need to be able to participate? | 42:23 |
| Iris Hill | And the idea is that the, the grant that we'll be seeking will be to fund the participation of the schools and the consortium. That that's what resources, the primary resources of the, of the grant will be directed toward that. And uh, we, one of, one of the questions will be how, how comparable would be one institution's needs to another institution's needs. Is there some way to sort of look at it in a uniform kind of need and, and obviously work that, | 42:45 |
| Raymond Gavins | Right. I do think that that would, that would depend upon the workability of the project and the pilot depends upon whether we can craft a proposal that NEH will buy | 43:18 |
| Speaker 8 | Around. Now here's one other thing I didn't mention. Our also raised question about what impact will h this program we already received from the federal government. Shouldn't, | 43:34 |
| Raymond Gavins | Shouldn't conflict, | 43:54 |
| Speaker 8 | But in his mind, who understand the initiative from the federal government to help Black college. He has his hook in it right now. He's gonna write it to the max | 43:55 |
| Raymond Gavins | Than anybody. | 44:14 |
| Speaker 8 | If I go to him with request to sign off on the project, that might over three years show he's at 6 million May on something else. That's why keep I believe the figure some in the neighborhood I 5 million renovate building, probably archive | 44:14 |
| Speaker 2 | 6 million. | 44:39 |
| Speaker 8 | 6 million. | 44:40 |
| Raymond Gavins | I, I feel optimistic about uh, Dr. Peyton has the reputation of being one of the best fundraisers in the country among— | 44:41 |
| Speaker 8 | Don't forget Dr. Harvey. | 44:49 |
| Raymond Gavins | And I, I would be very, I would be very surprised if he didn't give you the an enthusiastic backing for, for participation in the project such as this. | 44:52 |
| Speaker 2 | You must go beyond individuals too. | 45:06 |
| Speaker 8 | But I'll be able to promise him. Yeah. | 45:10 |
| Speaker 2 | Just because he accommodates— | 45:14 |
| Raymond Gavins | Go ahead. | 45:17 |
| James N. Eaton Sr. | But you see that there are certain schools you gonna have to have. You don't have Tuskegee, Hampton, and Florida A&M university, you forget about your NEH proposal. | 45:17 |
| James N. Eaton Sr. | Now Tuskegee got the most unique program. You can't talk about you doing something, the Black colleges and using historical materials and you're gonna leave out the school that Booker T. Washington founded, the one that Booker T. Washington attended? You're going to leave out the largest repository in the southeast and what schools you going to have? These schools got track records. Track records. | 45:27 |
| James N. Eaton Sr. | So the Harveys, the Humphreys and the Peytons got be sold. And they're the very shrewd ones that gonna be hard to sell because they got already programs that got a lot to offer the center. And the thing that I'd view legitimate about those schools, that's where you got this thing that she's talking about. | 45:45 |
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