July 13, 2023
SIU’s Paul Simon Institute virtual conversation will feature the founder of The HistoryMakers
CARBONDALE, Ill. — Juliana L. Richardson, creator, founder and executive director of The HistoryMakers, the nation’s largest collection of black video oral histories from the Works Progress Administration initiative in the mid-1930s, will join the Paul Simon Public at Southern Illinois University Carbondale Policy Institute for Virtual Discussion on July 24.
Richardson and Shaw, the institute’s director, will discuss Richardson’s inspiration to create, assemble and distribute an oral history video collection of more than 3,000 interviews of African-Americans, including Barack Obama, Colin Powell, Maya Angelou, Harry Belafonte and Ernie Banks. The virtual discussion is from 9 a.m. Online program in Zoom is free and open to the public, but Registration it is required. The talk is part of the institute’s Understanding Our New World series.
“Juliana Richardson is a true pioneer who continues to do the nation — and the world — a great service by recording the stories of African Americans,” Shaw said. “The stories collected by The HistoryMakers include those of world-famous celebrities as well as lesser-known Americans who have made incredibly valuable contributions to our world. Juliana continues to tell what she calls America’s essential and missing stories.
HistoryMakers is a national 501 (c) (3) Chicago-based “nonprofit research and educational institution committed to preserving and making widely available the untold personal stories of both well-known and unsung African-Americans.” The organization’s website notes that the interviews began in 2000 to address “the lack of documentation and preservation of the African American historical record.” Using a first-person perspective, the testimonies “reveal the wide range of African-American men and women who made significant contributions to American life, history, and culture in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.”
The organization’s work documenting black history was recently featured on NPR’s “60 Minutes” and WBUR. Prior to The HistoryMakers, the organization notes that the only large-scale attempt to capture black history from a first-person perspective was the WPA Slave Narratives, housed in the Library of Congress.
Richardson graduated from Brandeis University with a degree in Theater Arts and American Studies, then earned a law degree from Harvard Law School. Prior to founding The HistoryMakers in 1999, Richardson worked as a corporate attorney, television producer and cable television executive.
Participants are encouraged to submit questions about Richardson on the registration form or email questions to paulsimoninstitute@siu.edu.
More information, a list of upcoming Institute events and past speakers and events are available.