IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: CHRYSTLE SWAIN, 512.635.2986
MARSHALL, TX – The 4th annual HBCU Oral History Project Story Harvest will be hosted at Wiley College on April 2nd through April 5th at Wiley College in Marshall, TX. Under the direction of Rev. Steve Miller, the Project’s Founder, digitized oral history accounts will be gathered by the HBCU academy which include; Wiley College, Southwestern Christian College, Jarvis Christian College, Huston-Tillotson University, St. Philip’s College, and Texas Southern University. Participating partner universities included, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Baylor University and its Oral History Institute, City University of New York, and Guttman Community College of the NYU system. Using academic and historical research methodology, East Texas residents of color will be invited to share personal stories of racial discrimination. Students are trained to acquire these stories after being immersed in the context of historical racial discrimination and its origin. Students also receive extensive training in interviewing techniques and compassionate listening.
Participating scholars and their universities process the research which is archived in HBCU University libraries across the United States to be made available for posterity. The HBCU Oral History Project operates under the auspices of US-CLO, the United Christian Leadership Organization. Both organizations were founded by the Rev. Steve Miller, a 2018-2019 Ashoka Fellowship recipient. The $150K fellowship award recognized the value of healing the racial divide through story telling. Miller describes the weekend events thusly, “We digitally collect and chronicle stories of deep pain to pursue personal and national healing as well as to educationally inform policy changes within the political environment, and spiritual changes within the ecumenical community.”
Rev. Steve Miller is Project Director and Founder of the HBCU Truth & Reconciliation Oral History Project and the United States Christian Leadership Organization, a comprehensive and Christian-based educational and humanitarian organization dedicated to achieving racial equity through spreading the love of Christ and re-building and re-imagining relationships across ethnic lines in order to promote more lasting and authentic spiritual and social change. He believes there are more than enough laws written on the books, just not enough written on our hearts, and it is through a changed heart, not laws, that will ultimately bring God’s Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.
Miller is a humanitarian working in human rights in the State of Texas and beyond for ten years with his work resulting in Federal civil rights investigations by the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights and the United States Department of Justice’s Community Services Division, primarily, within the Texas educational system. His work has brought increased equity to hiring processes, enlarged job opportunities, and fostered greater understanding of institutional bias in education through education. He has coordinated and won legal actions at the Federal court level and has been the stimulus of rewrites of discipline policies, whose ends resulted in fewer loved ones of color being exposed to and caught in the educational system’s disciplinary apparatus, which correlates highly with elevated juvenile justice levels and mass incarceration rates.
Miller holds a B.S. in Political Science from Texas A&M University; a B.S. in Finance from the University of Houston; a Master’s in Commercial Real Estate Development through the Graduate School of Finance at Mays Business School, Texas A&M University; and a Master’s of Divinity from Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Austin, TX. He is the author of a comprehensive multi-year Christ-centered spiritual, educational, operational, philosophical, and intellectual blueprint to advance racial reconciliation through re-imagining and re-building vulnerable relationships. He is a husband of 20 years and a father of two.