IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: CHRYSTLE SWAIN, 512.635.2986
SAN ANTONIO, TX – The 3rd annual HBCU Oral History Project was hosted at St. Philip’s College on February 15-17 th in the Sutton Learning Center at 1801 Martin Luther King Dr., San Antonio, TX. Under the direction of Rev. Steve Miller, the Project’s Founder, digitized oral history accounts were gathered by the HBCU academy which included; 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, San Antonio residents of color were 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 as well as undergo 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.”