Publications and Research
Document Type
Poster
Publication Date
5-2021
Abstract
In response to the challenges brought on by the onset of the pandemic, the Queens College Special Collection and Archives (SCA) created the “Student Help: Lived Experience” student fellowship, designed to be completely remote. The project is an initiative to further document the activities of Queens College students who participated in both the Virginia and South Jamaica Student Help Projects in the early to mid-1960s. The Virginia Student Help Project was an intensive education effort during the summer of 1963 in Prince Edward County, Virginia where public schools were closed for five years in massive resistance to integration. The Jamaica Student Help Project took place closer to home. Starting in schools near campus, it eventually engaged 500 Queens College student volunteers in tutoring more than one thousand educationally challenged, under-resourced students across New York City. In the corresponding conference poster, Fernandez and Tummino have identified the pros and cons of producing and archiving oral history interviews in a completely remote workspace while also using forms of participatory archiving that include the college’s alumni networks. The interviews that are part of the Student Help: Lived Experience project further highlight the connection between the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s and the social rights demonstrations in the United States during the last year from individuals still active in similar initiatives, as well as demonstrating how the action of conducting oral histories benefit archival institutions as complements to existing collections, all while being produced under unique circumstances.
Included in
Archival Science Commons, Oral History Commons, Social History Commons, United States History Commons
Comments
Poster presentation at the Midwest Archives Conference Annual Meeting, May 13-14, 2021.