Archives & Special Collections celebrates Julius Friedman with Exhibit and Gallery Dedication
Posted: July 7, 2022 Filed under: Archives & Special Collections, Art Library, Collections, Digital Collections, Ekstrom Library, Exhibits, Images, Kentucky, Louisville, Louisville History, New Items, People, Photographic Archives, Photographs, Primary Sources, University of Louisville, University of Louisville Libraries | Tags: art, artist, Julius Friedman, Louisville History Leave a commentEarly posters and other works by internationally renowned Louisville artist Julius Friedman are featured in the exhibit Graphic Pioneer: The Early Poster Designs of Julius Friedman, 1965-1980, hosted by Photographic Archives, part of UofL’s Archives and Special Collections (ASC). The exhibit opened with a reception on July 14 featuring the dedication and renaming of the Photographic Archives gallery in Friedman’s honor.
Friedman’s sister, Carol Abrams, donated the bulk of his artistic works to the Photographic Archives after his passing in 2017. Ms. Abrams states, “Julius loved to mentor students and fellow artists. In giving his work to the Archives and Special Collections, students can learn from his work.” Ms. Abrams also generously provided support to renovate the gallery, enhance storage for ASC’s photographic holdings, including Friedman’s work, and prepare the collection for research by the community. This preparatory work is ongoing, but the full collection is expected to be open to the public in 2023.
Beloved by the local arts community, Friedman was also highly regarded among international audiences. Perhaps best known for the posters “Fresh Paint” and “Toe on Egg,” Friedman created posters and other graphic works for a broad range of clients. Outside of his design work, Friedman created his own artwork through photography – often printing on unique surfaces like metals and fabrics – as well as sculpture, furniture design, collage, book art, and collaborative video. While this exhibit focuses on his early posters, the collection includes this broad range of media and formats.
“Julius Friedman was such a significant figure in our local arts scene,” said Carrie Daniels, Director of ASC. “We are delighted to serve as the home of his archive, and to present a slice of it to the community in this exhibition.”
Friedman was a graphic design alumnus of UofL and had a decades-long relationship with the University Libraries. His work frequently appeared in ASC exhibits, including a 2012 celebration of Photographic Archives’ 50th Anniversary, which featured Friedman’s photographic capture of a ballerina in mid-swirl. Friedman’s close friend, former Art Library Director Gail Gilbert, inspired one of Friedman’s later efforts, a project titled The Book. Gilbert suggested that Friedman create works of art from old books that otherwise would have been thrown away, and he ran with the project, taking old books, tearing them, twisting them, boring into them, reconstituting them and creating art. The Book consists of 130 photographs of that art.
Among ASC’s Oral History Center (ohc.library.louisville.edu) digital offerings are two recordings of conversations between Abrams and ASC archivist and local historian Tom Owen. In them, Abrams discusses her memories of growing up with Julius, her older brother and only sibling, and how she came to work alongside him in his studio and then gallery to exhibit and sell his work commercially. Abrams recounts observing her brother’s talent burgeoning in childhood and watching him become successful as an adult. She also talks about establishing a nonprofit foundation in her brother’s name to help young people pursue academic degrees in the arts, the Julius Friedman Foundation (juliusfriedman.org).
The exhibition will run through December 16 in the Julius Friedman Gallery, on the lower level of Ekstrom Library. For more information, contact Elizabeth Reilly (502 852-8730; elizabeth.reilly@louisville.edu).
WHAS11 Interviews David Williams, ASC Donor and Local Activist, for Pride Month
Posted: June 28, 2022 Filed under: Archives & Special Collections, Books, Collections, Digital Collections, donor, Ekstrom Library, Louisville, Louisville History, People, Photographic Archives, Photographs, Primary Sources, University of Louisville Libraries Leave a commentIn celebration of Pride Month, local news affiliate WHAS recently interviewed Rare Books Curator Delinda Buie and Archives and Special Collections donor and local activist David Williams about the Williams-Nichols Archive, one of the largest LGBTQ collections in the U.S.
Williams donated the large, eclectic archive to ASC in 2001 to honor his late partner Norman Nichols, who died in 1995. It contains many pieces of memorabilia from protests and demonstrations, parties and events, and photos, newspapers, magazines, flyers and other materials.
You can find the article here: https://www.whas11.com/article/news/community/moments-that-matter/louisville-lgbt-history-ekstrom-library-collection-archive-david-williams-kentucky/417-b72d609a-8fa2-4410-b309-0ed5853ba173
Open Educational Resources and Student Success
Posted: May 13, 2022 Filed under: Digital Collections, Digital Scholarship, Ekstrom Library, Kornhauser Health Sciences Library, Teaching Ideas, University of Louisville Libraries | Tags: open educational resources, student success Leave a commentStudies have shown that students will forgo buying a textbook due to its price even while acknowledging that they will do worse in the class without their own copy. With hardcopy textbooks costing as much as $400 with averages running between $80 and $150, many students feel financially pressured to not purchase the text.
Open Educational Resources (OER) can help students succeed by reducing their costs and improving their access to course materials. OER are freely available material and the availability of them is growing as faculty recognize the advantages to students and their financial considerations in whether to buy textbooks, or indeed, to complete their degrees.
In order help faculty learn about OER, the University Libraries have created a new website, https://library.louisville.edu/oer/, that provides information on what OER are, how to find them, and how to implement them.
The Defining OER section introduces what OER are and how they benefit student learning.
The Finding OER section includes search options for OER metafinders and library e-books (which are available at no additional cost to UofL students, staff, and faculty). On the OER by Subject tab, faculty can link to individual guides for specific subjects which provide highlight available materials. The Evaluating OER tab provides a suggested list of questions faculty should ask when determining whether a particular OER will work for their class.
The Implementing OER section provides information on creating and adapting OER, creative commons licensing, and contact information for consultation services with our OER Librarian.
We invite you to explore the site and start thinking about how you could use OER to improve student success.
Sources
Richard, Brendan, Dean Cleavenger, and Valerie A. Storey. “The Buy-In: A Qualitative Investigation of the Textbook Purchase Decision.” Journal of Higher Education Theory & Practice 14, no. 3 (2014): 20-31.
“Average Cost of College Textbooks.” Updated August 12, 2021, accessed May 13, 2022, https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college-textbooks.
Libraries hire new project archivist for Julius Friedman collection
Posted: April 26, 2022 Filed under: Archives & Special Collections, Books, Collections, Digital Collections, Digital Scholarship, donor, Ekstrom Library, Exhibits, Kentucky, Librarianship / Archivy, Louisville, Louisville History, New Items, People, Photographic Archives, Photographs, Primary Sources, University of Louisville Libraries | Tags: archives, Collections, donors, JuliusFriedman, philanthropy Leave a commentA trove of work by Louisville artist Julius Friedman (1943-2017), including a diverse mix of graphic design, books, commercial art, and photography, was recently donated to University of Louisville’s Archives and Special Collections (ASC), by Friedman’s sister, Louisville philanthropist Carol Abrams.
And now Friedman’s work will soon be preserved, organized, cataloged and available for public viewing thanks to additional funding from Abrams which allows ASC to hire a project archivist.
“It’s a rich and unique group of materials and there are so many different types,” said Haley-Marie Ellegood, who will serve a one-year term as archivist for the Julius Friedman Collection. “He worked with widely different formats – there is graphic design, posters, photography, and at the end of his career he got into bookmaking. He was moving into video production when he died.”
A recent Indiana University graduate with a Master of Library Science, Ellegood specialized in archives and records management and worked in the IU Archives. In addition to researching, cataloging, and preserving the collection, Ellegood will help select items for an exhibit of Friedman’s works to be held in mid-July in ASC’s gallery.
“He really loved working for nonprofit groups and he mostly worked for free,” said Ellegood. “He wasn’t really into making money, but he created annual reports for corporations and was able to charge a fair fee for it. That type of payment apparently funded his work for nonprofits.”
Friedman was well known for his commercial photography, graphic design, and iconic posters, including “Fresh Paint”; “Ballerina Toe on Egg” for the Louisville Ballet; and “Ice Cream in French Horn” for the Louisville Orchestra.
In addition to many of Friedman’s iconic posters, the collection includes much of his photography, and graphic design for menus, postcards, stationery, event programs, and flyers. Other materials include some of his written work, including a few notebooks and some correspondence. ASC has had a relationship with Friedman going back decades. Although the Filson Historical Society has a small collection of Friedman’s art, ASC holds the largest part of the collection.
Ellegood says her love of archival work grew out of her love of history, her subject major as an undergraduate. “I love learning about important people in historic places and from historic times. And I enjoy making information accessible to people, so they can appreciate it.”
Processing Friedman’s collection is an exciting first professional project after graduate school for Ellegood. “His art really makes you think about what’s going on, it’s not what you would expect. You wouldn’t expect a ballerina to balance on an egg. It challenges your preconceived notions.”
Digital Collections – New and Old
Posted: March 24, 2022 Filed under: Digital Collections, Images, Photographic Archives, Primary Sources, University of Louisville Libraries, Web Site | Tags: Digital Collections 2 CommentsThe University of Louisville Libraries Digital Collections is moving to a new platform, Samvera Hyku, an open-source repository framework. It will allow for greater configurability, including an improved image viewer. The open-source software allows the University of Louisville Libraries to contribute technical development rather than licensing funds, ultimately saving money while developing our skills and promoting broader, more equitable access to digital content.
However, in the short term, situations beyond our control relating to the aging server and out-of-date software require us to limit access to the full set of materials on the old platform, at https://digital.library.louisville.edu, to on-campus and UofL logins only. If you are on either campus, the URL should work as it always has. If you are off-campus and are a student, employee, alumnus, or retiree with an active UofL address, simply go to https://echo.louisville.edu/login and log in, then either select Digital Collections from the confirmation page, or replace the “digital.library.louisville.edu” string with “digital-library-louisville-edu.echo.louisville.edu”.
Meanwhile, the beta version of Digital Collections on the Hyku platform can be explored and shared by anyone and everyone, on or off campus, at https://hyku.library.louisville.edu/.
Only about 20% of the content has been added to the Hyku version. We are still testing code for upload of multiple-page items (books, catalogs, newspapers, postcard folios, baseball cards, recto/verso images, atlases, photo series…), but not even every single-page item has been uploaded yet. If you don’t see something you used to be able to access yet, don’t worry – it will get there!
Once everything has been migrated to Hyku, the old server will be completely shut down and the https://digital.library.louisville.edu address will transfer to Hyku. We do not recommend saving the URLs of items you’re interested in reviewing; instead, please make note of the Item Number, as that will be the best way for you and our staff to identify both the digital and physical items.
If you have questions about functionality, please let us know, so that we can not only help you, but also write up an explanation for others.
Louisville history of racial oppression and activism revealed in new online resource
Posted: March 7, 2022 Filed under: Archives & Special Collections, Art Library, Books, Collections, Databases, Digital Collections, Digital Scholarship, Ekstrom Library, Images, Kentucky, Kornhauser Health Sciences Library, Louisville, Louisville History, Photographs, Primary Sources, University of Louisville Libraries | Tags: archives, information literacy, Photographic Archives, racial justice, research 2 CommentsBy Rebecca Pattillo
University of Louisville’s Archives and Special Collections (ASC) has published a new resource, Uncovering Racial Logics: Louisville’s History of Racial Oppression and Activism, a website that provides access to documents, oral histories, photographs and other materials that tell the story of Louisville’s history of racial oppression and activism.
The site is focused on education, policing and housing, “areas in which we see institutional racism at work, producing unequal access to resources, freedoms, and opportunities as part of ongoing U.S. racial stratification,” according to the site’s introduction. Funded by the Cooperative Consortium for Transdisciplinary Social Justice Research (CCTSJR) and the Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research, the collaborative project was created by faculty members across multiple departments for an interdisciplinary look at the “racial logics” of Louisville via primary source materials housed in ASC.
Dr. Carrie Mott, UofL Assistant Professor of Geographic and Environmental Sciences and one of the site’s creators, said the goal of the project was to provide access to useful information to anyone interested in learning about Louisville’s history around racial justice.
“We also wanted to provide a tool that would help people see the amazing archival resources housed at ASC,” said Mott. “From prior research and teaching with archives at UofL, I knew of the wealth of resources we have here at UofL. But we recognized many people on campus as well as in the larger Louisville community do not understand how to use archival resources, why they might be useful, or know how to access them. The website was an opportunity to provide some resources in terms of actual scanned documents, but also to help people learn that UofL has a lot more where that came from for research on Louisville’s racial history.”
Rebecca Pattillo, ASC Metadata Librarian and site co-creator, said “Working on this project allowed ASC to make some of our materials available digitally. The site also directs visitors to our robust online digital collections, where they can explore some of the materials referenced in greater depth.”
“One misconception about the archives is that they are only available to UofL affiliated people, when actually we are open to anyone in the community,” said Pattillo.
The site features scanned archival documents including pamphlets, newspaper clippings, oral histories, correspondence, and photographs, with contextual and historical information about each document and the larger collection to which it belongs. In addition to scanned documents, the site also highlights oral histories, story maps, and other resources addressing Louisville’s racial history.
Site users may explore the topic of both secondary and higher education in Louisville to learn about the push for equal pay among Black and white teachers in the late 1930s and early 1940s, the city’s move to desegregate schools via court-ordered busing in the mid-1970s, integration of the University of Louisville in the 1950s, and the founding of the Black Student Union and the Department of Black Affairs in the late 1960s. In addition, learn about Simmons University, one of Kentucky’s two HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities), and Louisville Municipal College, the only Black liberal arts college in the state which operated from 1931 through 1951, when it merged with a newly integrated UofL.
Another topic explored is the history of policing and police violence throughout the city. An example is the story of Fred J. Harris, a Black man who lost an eye after being beaten by police in 1979, and the work of the Kentucky Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression to seek justice for Harris by demanding accountability from the police force.
Housing and Urban Renewal is another focus of the Uncovering Racial Logics project. Select archival materials highlight the narrative of Louisville’s history of racist housing policies and practices, including the construction of racially segregated federal public housing projects in the aftermath of the destruction of neighborhoods and displacement of communities via Urban Renewal. These materials also reveal resistance to and organizing among the Black community and white allies to fight against racist housing policies and discriminatory practices. One such well known housing project is Beecher Terrace, which is explored via the papers of its long-time manager, Earl Pruitt.
Rounding out the project is an extensive, albeit not exhaustive, list of resources for further research. You can explore interactive maps that detail the history of racism within city planning and zoning, as well as redlining within Louisville. In addition is a list of community resources that highlight local organizations that work to empower and improve life for Louisville’s diverse citizens. Also included is a list of UofL Resourcesthathighlights on-campus organizations and committees that work towards racial and social justice, as well as minority affinity groups.
This project was created by Carrie Mott, Rebecca Pattillo, Melanie Gast, Anna Browne Rebiero, Joy Hart, Kelly Kinahan, and Catherine Fosl, with additional assistance from undergraduate and graduate research assistants Cat Alexander, Elizabeth Frazier, and Ben Harlan. Additional technical assistance was provided by Cassidy Meurer and Terri Holtze. Special thanks goes to UofL’s Cooperative Consortium for Transdisciplinary Social Justice Research (CCTSJR) and Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research (ABI) for funding and supporting this work, as well as our community partners.
Archives and Special Collections collects, organizes, preserves, and makes available for research rare and unique primary and secondary source material, particularly relating to the history and cultural heritage of Louisville, Kentucky and the surrounding region, as well as serving as the official memory of the University of Louisville.
James Everett Recalls Beecher Terrace and ‘Old Walnut’ in the ‘40s
Posted: December 15, 2021 Filed under: Archives & Special Collections, Collections, Digital Collections, Images, Kentucky, Louisville, Louisville History, People, Photographic Archives, Photographs, Primary Sources | Tags: Archives & Special Collections, Louisville History, Oral History Center, Photographic Archives, Primary Sources 2 CommentsBy Tom Owen, Archivist for Regional History, Archives & Special Collections
of Howard Breckinridge
Howard Breckinridge of Plano, Texas, a longtime friend of our Archives and Special Collections and a fountain of information about West Louisville history, told me that his eighty-eight-year-old cousin James Everett also had keen memories of Louisville’s African American community in the 1940s. Everett and his parents were among the first residents of the brand-new Beecher Terrace public housing project on Muhammad Ali, and he spent his entire youth enjoying the bustle of the ‘Old Walnut Street’ business district. I jumped at the chance to capture those memories on tape since Beecher Terrace is being totally redone as a mixed-income community. At the same time, the wisdom of the destruction by Urban Renewal of that segregated commercial district immediately west of downtown in the late 1950s is being reopened for debate.
The problem was James Everett, an Indianapolis resident, was in poor health and under Covid protocols it was unwise for me to travel. Heather Fox, director of ASC’s Oral History Center, stepped into the breech, downloading an app to my cell phone that allowed me to record an almost one-hour interview with James Everett which as a digital file has been added to our massive collection of 2000 oral histories, gathered since the early 1970s and including many from the African American community.
In our interview last July, Everett recalled the family move to Beecher Terrace when he was eight as a God-send—a new comfortable home with central heat, indoor plumbing, and hot and cold running water which trumped in every respect their former rental in Louisville’s Black Hill neighborhood at Eleventh and Magnolia. He also remembered ‘Beecher’ as a safe, pleasant community where children were admonished by other parents if they got out-out-of-line and there were plenty of things for kids to do. For him, the lengthy ‘Old Walnut’ business district, which bordered his home on the south and stretched from Sixth to Thirteenth and beyond, offered a potpourri of possibilities: a favored donut shop, movie theaters, cleaners and tailor shops, pawn shops, dry goods and drug stores, cafes, and taverns and much more. (Some of the venues were Black owned.) At one point, James tells how as a teenager he snuck into the locally famous Top Hat Nightclub without being ejected by Frankie Maxwell, the watchful manager. On Derby Day, he said, ‘Old Walnut’s’ sidewalks were filled with fashionably dressed visitors—some not even headed to the track—and a large parade filled the street on Thanksgiving Day prior to an annual Central High School rivalry football game.
One especially warm memory involved Mr. Davidson, James’ teacher at Central, who met eight or ten male students in the neighborhood and led them on a lengthy Saturday hike through Downtown Louisville, across the Second Street bridge, and down the Indiana shore to the Falls of the Ohio. Praising this youth mentorship, Everett told of wading into the shallow pools at the Falls to catch carp with his hands and stopping for lunch on the way back to Beecher Terrace. The last third of our interview is a chronicle of James Everett’s years in the Air Force, his brief return to Louisville, and a permanent move to Indianapolis where, after a decade of job changes, he was employed by Ford Motor Company twenty-eight years until his retirement.
Sadly, a couple of weeks ago, Howard Breckinridge texted that James Everett died on November 13. How happy I am that Heather Fox made possible a phone interview that will be preserved in our ASC Oral History Collection. Now we hold forever the memories of a childhood and youth of an elderly Indianapolis resident spent in the 1940s in Louisville’s Beecher Terrace housing complex along that once-vibrant ‘Old Walnut’ business district.
ThinkIR Highlights BIPOC Scholarship
Posted: October 25, 2021 Filed under: Archives & Special Collections, Art Library, Digital Collections, Digital Scholarship, Ekstrom Library, Kornhauser Health Sciences Library, Librarianship / Archivy, Music Library, People, Primary Sources, ThinkIR, University Archives & Records Center, University of Louisville Libraries Leave a commentPart of Open Access involves building structural equity in OA venues. To this end, the Libraries have created The Collective, an initiative to uplift BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) faculty and staff at UofL by highlighting their research and providing open-access to BIPOC-produced scholarship on ThinkIR, the University’s digital institutional repository.
Hosted and managed by the University Libraries, ThinkIR promotes genuine open access and sustainable scholarship by making the work of UofL researchers freely available to a global audience without requiring costly and unsustainable access to journal subscriptions. “The Collective” was initiated in response to research showing that faculty who identify as Black, Indigenous, and/or people of color are underrepresented and marginalized in academia. According to the Higher Education Research Institute’s 2016-2017 faculty survey, there were large gaps between white and BIPOC scholars feeling a need to work harder to be perceived as a legitimate scholar. “Substantially more Black (72.2%), Asian (70.7%), Latino/a (70.6%), and Native American (66.7%) faculty perceived a need to work harder than their peers to gain legitimacy compared to just 46.8% of White faculty who felt similarly.”
By featuring a BIPOC scholars research collection in our institutional repository, we hope to encourage scholars of all disciplines to intentionally seek out the research and scholarship of their colleagues of color.
Helpful Links and Resources
Home – ThinkIR – UofL Libraries at University of Louisville
BIPOC Scholars – ThinkIR – UofL Libraries at University of Louisville
HERI-FAC2017-monograph.pdf (ucla.edu)
Celebrating International Open Access Week
Posted: October 25, 2021 Filed under: Archives & Special Collections, Art Library, Digital Collections, Digital Scholarship, Ekstrom Library, Kornhauser Health Sciences Library, Librarianship / Archivy, Primary Sources, ThinkIR, University Archives & Records Center, University of Louisville Libraries 1 CommentInternational Open Access Week (IOAW), held this year from October 25-21, advocates for the right to use and access knowledge freely and without subscription and copyright limitations. Every year, IOAW attempts to raise awareness of the potential disparities that arise when some scholarship is made more exclusive and less accessible to the public.
The theme for this year’s IOAW is “It Matters How We Open Knowledge: Building Structural Equity.” This theme was created to align with the recently released UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science:
Open Science should embrace a diversity of knowledge, practices, workflows, languages, research outputs and research topics that support the needs and epistemic pluralism of the scientific community as a whole, diverse research communities and scholars, as well as the wider public and knowledge holders beyond the traditional scientific community, including Indigenous Peoples and local communities, and social actors from different countries and regions, as appropriate. (UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science, Page 7)
Often large publishers force academics to sign contracts limiting publication of their work to a single journal, and then charge high subscription fees for access to the work. This creates a disparity in who can access the knowledge.
ThinkIR, UofL’s Digital Institutional Repository, offers an online venue for sharing the work of our researchers, making it free, open, and accessible to a wide audience. There are no paywalls, no copyright contracts. ThinkIR is managed and hosted by the University Libraries.
Helpful Links and Resources
Home – ThinkIR – UofL Libraries at University of Louisville
PAS students collect oral histories that capture 2020 turmoil in Louisville
Posted: May 27, 2021 Filed under: Archives & Special Collections, Digital Collections, Digital Scholarship, Librarianship / Archivy, Louisville, Louisville History, People, Primary Sources, University of Louisville, University of Louisville Libraries | Tags: oral histories, Oral History Center Leave a commentA continuing pandemic and historic reckoning with racial tensions in Louisville and throughout the country have created unprecedented stress and turmoil in the Louisville community. No group has borne the brunt of the difficulties more than people of color.
To capture some of these experiences, students of Dr. Bamba Ndiaye’s Pan-African Studies-200 class conducted interviews with UofL students and Louisville community members, offering insight into their emotions and experiences over the past year.
Students were given the tools to conduct the interviews during an oral history workshop held within the class, led by University Libraries Archivist Heather Fox. Resulting conversations have been turned into an eight-week series on the Archives and Special Collections’ Instagram page.
“Dr. Ndiaye used oral history methodology in his doctoral work and recognizes its value,” said Fox. “He reached out to me to do a workshop with his students and was extremely proud of the work they did in this class.”
The Oral History workshop 101 was framed as an hour-long session, one typically taught to history students, but also students in Modern Languages and Women, Gender and Sexuality studies. Students learn about oral history as “a guided interview where your interviewer has done research on the topic and is trying to elicit info about a particular topic with focus being on the interviewee,” said Fox.
The interviewer’s role is to listen, she continued. “It’s hard for people to get used to that. I counsel them: “‘Don’t talk; you’re supposed to listen. Don’t say, “uh huh,” etc. Just stay focused on what you are saying. Count to 10 before asking another question.’ That’s hard to do, especially if they’re nervous.”
But resulting interviews were extremely professional and gleaned many insights into individuals’ experiences during the past year.
One interview by UofL student Buff Fallot is of Tara Bassett, one of the 502 Livestreamers, a collective organized in the midst of the protest movement in Louisville. Bassett not only reveals life experience that led her to being a part of this group, but also explains a specific moment where her footage helped a protestor who was wrongfully arrested.
Fallot also interviewed George Smithers, AKA Santa George, about his work appearing in malls throughout the country as Santa to provide representation where it is lacking. Smithers livestreamed along the 502 Livestreamers during the protest movement, something he speaks on in the interview as well.
Student Daja Walker interviewed Jazman Branche, a young protestor who details her experiences during the protest movement, including her feelings on the National Guard being employed, how the collective energy of the movement felt, and her emotions after the verdict was announced. This particular segment focuses on the impact that media outlets had on perception of the protest movement.
Student Edison Pleasants interviewed Domini Williams, a nurse practitioner working at the Park Duvalle Community Health Center, who finished nursing school in May of 2020. A single mother of three, Williams juggled the completing nursing school, working full time in the University Hospital ER trauma center, guiding her kids through online schooling, and navigating the pandemic all at once. This interview also touches on Williams’s experience being a first responder to covid while working at the ER, her experience with nursing school at UofL, and mental health trends in the African American community during the pandemic.
Ja’Nay Williams interviewed Ecasia Burrus, an educator at the Shawnee Boys and Girls Club and an activist in her community. In the interview, Burrus talks about the difficult conversations she had to facilitate with her students as the upsetting events of police brutality unfolded last spring and summer, as well as what Black Lives Matter means to her as an activist.
The students’ questions were savvy and helpful in revealing important information from each individual, Fox said. “They’re not experts: these are 200-level 15 students, but they were extremely engaged, and asked excellent questions, so I’m really pleased with the work they did.”
“There’s quite a bit of pedagogical value in these interviews,” said Fox. “It’s a different ways to engage in the community and also as a research method that people are trained in.”
The Oral History Center will collect and curate the interviews. Archives and Special Collections Imaging Manager Cassidy Meurer has created a series of videos released as an eight-week series on ASC’s Instagram page over the past six months.
University of Louisville Libraries News 