October
3 ,
2003
African
American Voices Resonate for MHC Alumna and Student
|  Photo:
Todd M. LeMieux
Frances
Perkins Scholar Stacy Pringle interned at HistoryMakers
this summer. |
When
Nicole Hawkes '96 graduated from Mount Holyoke with a
degree in African American studies, she scarcely imagined that
six years later she would be creating living history. Since
July 2002, she has been project manager at HistoryMakers, a
nonprofit organization undertaking the most ambitious and extensive
recording of African American history since the Federal Writers
Project of the 1930s compiled written interviews with more
than 2,000 former slaves.
HistoryMakers is the brainchild of Hawkes's boss, Julieanna
Richardson, an African American media entrepreneur who graduated
from Harvard Law School in 1980. Richardson
created HistoryMakers to memorialize the entire twentieth-century
experience of African Americans. "Our history did not begin
and end with the Civil Rights movement," Richardson said. "We
hope out of
this quilt work will emerge a new
and more accurate history."
Some of the project's subjects are well known, including Terry McMillan,
author of Waiting to Exhale, and former New York City mayor David Dinkins. Others
have achieved prominence away from the public eye. These include 56-year-old
investment adviser Barbara Bowles, the first African American woman to start
a mutual fund, and Dr. Harold Freeman, 70, an oncologist who
did pioneering research on the
link between poverty and cancer.
Since its founding in 1999, History-Makers has already completed 560 interviews,
making it the largest collection of videotaped interviews with African Americans
in the world. Hawkes stresses that much remains to be done to reach the goal
of 5,000 interviews by 2007. The project has raised $2.8 million of the $25 million
it needs to complete its work. Hawkes compares the HistoryMakers project to a
political campaign. "We are pursuing an aggressive goal in a short period
of time," Hawkes said. "We are trying to get the word out. Last year
we lost seven of the people we had interviewed. That drives the point home of
the urgency of our work."
Hawkes's professional goals crystallized while she was in graduate school
at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "I was working on an
exhibit of African art, and I realized there was a gap between academics and
administrators," Hawkes said. "So many academics don't understand
the administrative side of things, and administrators don't understand
the content of scholarship." Hawkes went on to earn a master's degree
in arts administration from Boston University in 2002.
Personal reasons drew Hawkes to Chicago after she finished at B.U., and she soon
discovered the HistoryMakers Web site and a job opening that seemed tailor-made
for her experience and interests. As project manager, Hawkes works mostly in
development and public programs, although as part of a staff of six, she does "a
little of everything."
The staff this summer included MHC student Stacy Pringle, a Frances Perkins Scholar
from Springfield, Massachusetts. Pringle recalls learning about the internship
at the CDC. "When I found the information about HistoryMakers," Pringle
said, "I knew I had to be a part of this."
Among a variety of tasks, Pringle has been editing the time line on the HistoryMakers
Web site. A third-year African American and African studies major, she has not
yet decided on a career path. But she believes strongly in the educational mission
of HistoryMakers. "It's important that young people have access to
information about African American history," she said. "It's
right there for them because they're using the computer anyway. That's
why I love HistoryMakers. You have these first-person narratives, and from there
you can continue to explore. It's limitless."
Hawkes's greatest challenge is communicating to the public and potential
donors what HistoryMakers is. "The word 'archives' has the
sound of being dead and dusty," Hawkes noted. "But we are using modern
technology to capture life stories and make them accessible to the widest possible
audience. We want the archives to work. What good is the collection if it's
not relevant and useful to people?"
The archive, annotated with useful information that includes individual biographies,
is now accessible via the HistoryMakers Web site at www.thehistorymakers.com.
HistoryMakers has a bold educational initiative that is already a pilot program
in the Chicago public school system. "We want to teach history through
these oral histories and also to present these people as role models," Hawkes
said. Eventually the archive will be available at sites around the country and
be searchable by text and image, making it an invaluable research tool.
With the help of Hawkes and HistoryMakers, the lives of these illustrious African
Americans will be preserved for all of history to come.
The
counter is
1,763
|
