Our Ancestors' Wildest Dreams

Travel to Nashville, Tennessee, “the cradle of student protest,” to learn about Fisk University’s activist legacy–from the Jubilee Singers in the 1800s to the sit-ins of the 1960s to Black Lives Matter today.

Travel to the Lowcountry of South Carolina to learn about the Mather School, founded after the Civil War to serve the newly freed, and the Gullah Geechee people, whose traditional way of life is threatened by gentrification.

Dive into Tuskegee University’s vast collections, from the notebooks of George Washington Carver to archival speeches from luminaries Myrlie Evers, Shirley Chisholm, Amelia Boynton Robinson, Jackie Robinson, and Muhammad Ali.

Learn about Alcorn State University student life–and civil rights protests–in the 1960s, and how a community-centered approach to librarianship has made Alcorn indispensable to the people of Lorman, MS.

Morgan State University archivist Ida E. Jones discusses the history of Maryland's largest HBCU and how it is deeply entwined with the history of Black politics, activism, and media, particularly in Baltimore.

Kofi Amu Horne, who created the theme music for this season, started drumming with his Ghanaian mother before he was two. Here, he talks about drumming as a spiritual practice and its importance to the African diaspora.

Librarian and curator Erika Witt speaks about Southern University at New Orleans’s African art collection, a transformative trip to Egypt, and how GLAMs can and must make themselves more inviting and accessible to BIPOC.

This season, we’re taking a tour of the treasures housed in HBCU libraries and archives. Meet two women instrumental to the HBCU Library Alliance: executive director Sandra Phoenix, and recent board chair Monika Rhue.

In this season of the Material Memory podcast, we're taking an audio road trip to explore the libraries, archives, and museums at six Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Hear briefly from our guests in this season's introduction. View the video trailer at material-memory.clir.org.

Special episode! Three stories about crisis as catalyst: capturing NHS COVID-19 stories; rethinking anti-racism and anti-ableism at the Wellcome Collection; & toward a climate action plan at the National Library of Scotland.