Kai Wright: History is always on our minds here at Notes From America, but particularly so right now. We've, of course, just finished Black History Month. We're just starting Women's History Month. These annual celebrations are at least in part about crafting a new version of our national story. A version that includes people who have been written out of it often because our lives and our contributions complicate the existing version of our national story. As the Notes from America team has been thinking about our own role in crafting a new version of the national history, we came across a really, really cool project that we thought maybe we can try a version of this live on our show.

Bear with me in a moment. I'll set up what we're all going to do together, but first, let me introduce our guest. Julieanna Richardson is the founder of The HistoryMakers. This is a project that uses video oral histories to capture the untold personal stories of African Americans one person at a time. There are now more than 3,400 oral histories in The HistoryMakers database. Some famous, some everyday people. It's housed at the Library of Congress and available in a digital archive online, and among its many purposes is to be used in educational settings. Julieanna Richardson, thank you so much for joining us.

Julieanna Richardson: Thank you for having me, Kai. It's really nice to be here.

Kai: This project was born from your own personal experience digging around in the archives at the Schomburg Center for Black History here in New York as way back in the 1970s. Can you share your origin story with us on this work?

Julieanna: Sure. I grew up in a small town in, I'll call it, Newark, Ohio, not New Jersey, those of you who are on the East Coast. They really never said anything about Black people. George Washington Carver and his peanuts and slavery. My nine-year-old brain couldn't compute that my white teacher was telling me he could do all these things with peanuts when all we had been were slaves. Then one day the same teacher asked us to talk about our family backgrounds, and literally, the kids' hands were going up. I'm part German, I'm part French, in a dizzying speed.

I was like, I didn't know what to say because I didn't know at that point, Black, it wasn't Black, and I'm proud, so maybe I was Negro. Then I said Native American because most Black people think they have Native American in them. Then I had a little French because my father had been stationed there, so I lied.

Kai: Oh, no.

Julieanna: Yes, because I wanted to be sexy like the others.

Kai: Oh, wow.

Julieanna: It wasn't until that fateful day at the Schomburg Library when I was doing research on the Harlem Renaissance, that I had this awakening and went around interviewing people. At that time, Butterfly McQueen who had starred in Gone with the Wind, tap dancer Honi Coles, the historian, John Henry Clarke, and a man named Lee Whipper, who was the oldest living Black actor at the time, he had been born in 1887. That's the beginning.

Kai: At the time, you were a student, but you were not a historian. In fact, you went on to be a lawyer, to have an illustrious career in law, in media, and all these other things.

Julieanna: Right.

Kai: It wasn't until, what, 2000 I think that you came back and started The HistoryMakers?

Julieanna: Yes, 1999.

Kai: 1999, what brought you--

Julieanna: You get to a point where you start wanting to give back and do something for society. Those stories, I was talking to lots of friends, and their backgrounds and their families were so fascinating, and they were not in the public departments. Think about there's been discussion like the-- Even at that point, it was The Cosby Show and people were thinking at the beginning, that Black people didn't live like this. There were all these stories, really, really, really rich stories of people's backgrounds. Those stories stayed with me that I had done as a young college student.

At that point, I don't know about the Spielberg Shoah Foundation, don't know about that project, which, after Steven Spielberg did Schindler's List, he was motivated to interview all living and willing Holocaust survivors. It was in the planning phase of people from the Jewish community start telling me about the Shoah Foundation. I checked them out, but at that point, I'd already written a concept paper. I had two friends who did an intervention on a Saturday. They were like, "What are you doing?" I've actually gone to National Bar Association Conference in Memphis because I was without a job. That's another thing, I was without a job.

Kai: It'll focus the mind a lot of times.

Julieanna: That's right. Focus the mind because I had no idea what I wanted to do, and I was very confused about what my next steps would be. Been a long time since I had practiced law. I went to this Bar Association Conference, and there was Reverend Billy Kyles and Justice Constance Baker Motley, and more importantly, Judge Leon Higginbotham who I loved and adored. This is the time that the Clarence Thomas hearings with people and he had been invited to a conference. The name came to me, and I came back, and I was like, "I know what I want to do. I want to do an archive of Black people." My friend who had been head of our local PBS station, she had been indexing the collection because a lot of TV stations had thrown away their materials, and so she was indexing this.

Kai: Their conversations with these Black women.

Julieanna: Yes, and so that was it. I said, "I'm going to do an archive." She didn't think it was a good idea, but my friend asked two questions. Asked if [unintelligible 00:06:17] archived like you envision, does it exist already? If it doesn't exist and one would be created, would anyone be interested? They theorized, no, but those were the two questions I set out to answer.

Kai: Okay. We need to take a little break. Listeners, as I said, we're going to try to do something similar to Julieanna's work with you. We can't do a formal oral history, but maybe we can capture the spirit of things. I want to know, do you have a story of someone living or dead in your community, whose history you think needs to be captured, but probably won't make it into the history books? Call us up and tell us their 32nd story. Like, if you had an oral history project going like the one at The HistoryMakers, who would you include? Julieanna is collecting the stories of African Americans.

For this hour, we're open to stories from any community, though since it's Women's History month, we'll give special preference to stories about women. I'm talking with Julieanna Richardson, founder of The HistoryMakers. We will take a short break and take your calls after. Stay with us.

[pause 00:07:18]

[music]

Kai: It's Notes From America. I'm Kai Wright, and I'm joined by Julieanna Richardson who is founder of The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. It's a project that has collected thousands of video oral histories of African Americans, both famous and unsung. Listeners, as Julieanna tells us about her work, we are asking you to call us up with your own stories. I want to hear about someone living or past in your community whose story will probably not make it into the history books, but that you think needs to be captured. Julieanna, one of the neat things about The HistoryMakers archives is that it's, a lot of interviews start with these detailed mundane questions to get people going, like, what's your favorite food? What's your favorite food, Julieanna? [laughs] Can you just--

Julieanna: [unintelligible 00:08:40]

Kai: Why do you start the conversations that way, but first, what is your favorite food?

Julieanna: One of my favorite foods is salmon. We actually started to ask people those questions because a lot of what we're doing at the beginning is bringing people to a point of memory, and also relaxing people with questions that sort of catch them off guard because they're sitting there thinking they're going to do something very serious in terms of their life long history. We see people relaxing as we really start the process of reawakening memory.

Kai: Did you share your favorite food though, just now?

Julieanna: I did. I said salmon.

Kai: Okay, that's right. You said salmon. Sorry. See, I got so drawn into the answer.

Julieanna: [chuckles] Okay.

Kai: I want to share a clip from one of the notable but not famous people in the archive. This is Shirley Ann Jackson. She is a physicist. She was the first woman to receive a PhD in physics from MIT in 1973. She later chaired the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for four years. This is her telling an anecdote about her time in the women's dorm as a Black woman doing her work. It's about a minute long.

Shirley Ann Jackson: I've told people the story of the first physics problem set, and I had been working on it for a period of time. I was working my way through the problem. Then I got up to go to the restroom. When I went out into the hall, I see all these women on my floor out there working on these problem sets. I went in, did my thing, washed my hands, went back to my room. I gathered up my papers, and went out and said, "May I join you?" One of them looked up and says, "Go away." I said, "I've done half the problems, and I think the answers are right.

I think I know how to do the other half." The other one, "Didn't you hear? She said go away." I went back to my room, and I actually cried for about half hour, 45 minutes. Then I decided I had to finish my physics problems set. I went back to the problems.

Kai: I love that. "Then I decided I had to go back to work, so I went back to work." [chuckles] I'd love to hear your reaction, Julieanna, but I share that one because you've got a whole section of the archive dedicated to people in science, and I want to know about why you chose that.

Julieanna: Thank you for playing that, Kai. I actually did her interview, and I don't have memory of that story.

Kai: Well, you've done thousands.

Julieanna: I've done myself about 500 of the interviews, but I want to say that, first of all, that everybody should know Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson. She just recently stepped down as president of Rensselaer Polytechnic. She is a noted scientist, a noted business leader, well, I should say education leader, and STEM leader. She serves on major corporate board, so that's where the business comes in. She was head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission under President Clinton. The fact that she's telling that story and you think of kids now, there's a lot of trying to find your way, a lot of things like bullying, but in this case, it's like she doesn't exist. How does she go on to be the first female, Black or white, to graduate with her PhD in physics at MIT, when obviously she did okay on those story sets?

Kai: Obviously?

Julieanna: When you think about it, no one was willing to work with her, and look what ended up happening.

Kai: Right.

Julieanna: I just think that for young people, and for anyone who's trying to find their way, that that story itself would be within context, would be very inspirational. The other thing is that STEM brought us through COVID.

Kai: Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed. We are at a time where we are remembering the value of this field. Let's take some calls. Let's go to V in Chicago. V, welcome to the show.

V: Hi.

Kai: How are you doing, V? Do you have a person whose story you'd like to share with us who you think, "This is a person whose story needs to be recorded."?

V: Absolutely. I want to share my grandmother. My grandmother is the first Black female that the Chicago Board of Trade hired as a director in 1971. She's still living. She retired in 1994, so next year will be 30 years she's been retired. She was in charge of the mail room, office services, and reprographics. Her name is [unintelligible 00:14:02] R. Bryson.

Kai: Say her name one more time.

V: Her name is [unintelligible 00:14:09], R for Renee, last name, Bryson.

Kai: Okay, [unintelligible 00:14:13]. Let's lift her up. That's wonderful. Thank you for calling and sharing that, V.

V: Thank you.

Kai: Thank you. Julieanna, the folks like that, in your archive, includes people who-- We have some, again, there are famous people. I think Barack Obama is in there, but there are also, as I've said, people who are not famous. Why is that important to you? Why is it important?

Julieanna: Oh, it was extremely important because you don't know where history lies. We're doing people's life oral histories. About 50% of our subjects know a lot about their family background, 50% don't know much at all. We're really trying to pick up where the slave narratives left off. A lot of times, we were paying attention. We have a place on our site where people can recommend people to us. There's a woman named Jeni LeGon who got recommended to us. If you watch any old black and white movies, she's from Chicago. She was a famous tap dancer, female tap dancer.

Kai: Wow, okay.

Julieanna: You just don't know where history lies.

Kai: You don't know where history lies. Let's go to Brett in Elgin, Illinois. Elgin, Illinois, Brett.

Brett: Hi, there. I wanted to mention my grandfather. His name was Russell [unintelligible 00:15:36]. He was born in 1904, he passed in 1992. He passed when I was 15, so there was a lot that I didn't get to ask him about. Later in life, I always marveled at the fact that he lived through so many major events throughout the 20th century. He was too young for World War I, and they lived through the Depression, and too old for World War II, and just all the different things that he saw between the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Kennedy assassination, and going to the moon.

It fascinated me that this man who, he was born in [unintelligible 00:16:13], Illinois, he ran his own trucking company before World War II, and he built houses. He was an electrician and a carpenter, mostly self-taught. I thought he was a treasure trove of information that as a 15-year-old, you don't think to document.

Kai: Wow. Thank you for that, Brett. Let's go to Wendy in Springfield New Jersey. Wendy, welcome to the show.

Wendy: Yes, I would like to lift up Emma Jean Johnson, who is now dead, but she's originally from Chicago. Here in Springfield, New Jersey, she was the principal of a middle school, but what she was most known for in our community was anything that you had a problem with, whether it was something with an agency or something which somebody wanted to learn something, she knew someone who could connect you with someone, she was the person you went to. She was the community godmother. When she was younger, she went to the continent, I think it was Liberia, with a group of teachers to train teachers in Liberia.

I know that from her eulogy when I went to her funeral. A wonderful person, Emma Jean Johnson. She's originally from Chicago, she grew up in the [unintelligible 00:17:20] the projects there, but she came to New Jersey, and she was the light of our life and my son's other grandmother.

Kai: Wonderful. Thank you for that, Wendy. UC on YouTube says, Richard A. Smith, 1932, was a Black physician who was part of a five-person team composing the Surgeon General's Office of Equal Health Opportunity, which desegregated the US hospitals in the mid-1960s. Thank you for that, UC. You mentioned, Julieanna, the slave narratives at one point. This is the WPA, the Works Progress Administration's collected narratives in the early 20th century of formerly enslaved people. Just for folks, first off, who aren't familiar with that project, give us a quick sense of what that was, catch people up on that because you said you see The HistoryMakers as a continuation of that work.

Julieanna: Yes. Between the years of 1936 and '38, right after the Great Depression, under the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, there was what was called the Works Projects Administration, and so they put people basically back to work. One of the projects was to interview the formerly enslaved. There were 2,300 interviewed between the years of 1936 and '38. There are funny stories about that, where one formerly enslaved was interviewed by a white person and a Black person, and they had totally different stories. Zora Neale Hurston is probably the most well-known Black person who worked on that project.

I want to say one thing, though, to also some of the people who've called in. It's really important, you'll get to a point where you really want to know more. If you can just take out your iPhone or recorder and just sit down and talk with family members, we really need to rescue the history. We're about to lose most of the 20th century.

Kai: It's a really, really stark point that those of us of a certain age are starting to realize because we could look at our families and say, "Oh my goodness, the 20th century is slipping away from us." Good note. If you're thinking about it, just take out your phone and start recording somebody in your family that you think should be captured for history. On the WPA narratives of formerly enslaved people, finish the thought on how this project-- You mentioned that you felt like this project was filling a gap that was left after that.

Can you explain more about that?

Julieanna: Essentially, that was our enslaved history, but there have been no attempt to record their history after that. I even talk about reconstruction, which we don't really know a lot about, and that is really harmful because during reconstruction, there were, I don't know, thousands of Black politicians that we don't know the names of. That's what was important. The thing that I want to say is that we're housed at the Library of Congress since 2014. They became our permanent repository. Because they're also a repository of the WPA slave narratives, in one place now are the stories of the formerly enslaved and the progeny of the formerly enslaved.

I just think that's pretty wonderful, but this is a project that we need lots of people helping us with. I really think we will be heading the way or forging the way, this Black project, with others who have lost American stories. You were talking to the listeners about who else has stories. There are lots of lost American stories.

Kai: You said you need lots of help with this project. How can people help with this project? Is this something that people can just chip into?

Julieanna: Volunteers, funding, interviewers, recommendations, though it takes us some time to get through things and prioritize. Each interview costs $6,000.

Kai: Wow.

Julieanna: It's not just the interviewing, it's the archiving. We're a very serious oral history project, but we are also a very serious archive.

Kai: Is it the case, I believe I saw that at one point you looked in the archive and you felt like women were underrepresented in the archive that you were making.

Julieanna: Yes. Oh, you heard this.

Kai: Tell me about that. How did you notice that, and why do you think it was the case?

Julieanna: Okay, Kai. I could not notice it because there are 800 less women than men, and this is a woman-led project. It wasn't intentional. I could interview John Johnson, founder of Johnson Publishing, Ebony, and Jet, but I couldn't get Eunice Johnson to interview. That happened. I just think over time it got to this catastrophic level. If it weren't for Ursula Burns, the former CEO of Xerox who stepped forward to fund it-- We've formed a Women Makers Advisory Committee. We've got women leaders helping us across different disciplines. We're really starting to change that, but it happened over a period of two decades.

Kai: I have to ask you, we've only got about 60 seconds here for this, but we do exist in a moment where an effort to interrogate American history is under direct political attack. Given that your work happens in educational institutions as well, I just wonder if that has shown up in your work at all, and if not, just how you feel about the work you're doing in this political moment.

Julieanna: First of all, our work started over two decades ago. I think our agenda has already been set, and we're not responding to Ron DeSantis or anyone else. That's one thing. The second is that, yes, it has shown up. We have had prior to any of this uproar and use in the classroom for some students, and their reviews said that they resented having to study about Black people. There are also an equal number of people who were giving life to and were changing the narrative of African American achievement in history.

Kai: Wow.

Julieanna: That's what I think is most important.

Kai: We will have to leave it there. Julieanna Richardson is founder of The HistoryMakers. It's a video oral history of African Americans with more than 3,500 entries housed at the Library of Congress and used in educational institutions and others. It's at thehistorymakers.org. Julieanna, thanks for joining us.

Julieanna: Thank you so much for having me.

Kai: Notes From America is a production of WNYC studios. Follow us wherever you get your podcasts and on Instagram @noteswithkai. Our theme music and sound design is by Jared Paul, Milton Ruiz, who's at the boards for our live show tonight. Our team also includes Karen Frillman, Vanessa Handy, Regina de Heer, Rahima Nasa, Kousha Navidar, and Lindsay Foster-Thomas. Andre Robert Lee is our executive producer, and I am Kai Wright. Thank you so much for spending this time with us.

 

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