IS is an oral history research seminar in LEADS at Spelman College that provides students from across the disciplines with rich opportunities to learn from and bond with African American women elders of the South from diverse economic background. The elders have ranged in age from sixty-five to 103 and in achievement from earning a GED at the age of eighty and a Ph.D. at the age of twenty-four.
SIS an oral history research seminar in LEADS at Spelman College that provides students from across the disciplines with rich opportunities to learn from and bond with African American women elders of the South from diverse economic background. The elders have ranged in age from sixty-five to 103 and in achievement from earning a GED at the age of eighty and a Ph.D. at the age of twenty-four.
They were born in rural or urban communities in the South as the daughters of domestics, coal miners, sharecroppers, land-owning farmers, seamstresses, railroad pipe fitters, blacksmiths, cooks, pressers, teachers, preachers, and artisans. They became secretaries, nurses, teachers, realtors, caterers, entrepreneurs, preachers, college professors, and librarians.
In interviews conducted by Young Scholars in SIS, the elders journeyed to different sites of memory where forgotten, or untold, stories reside, waiting to be shared. Whether the site was a midwife’s birthing room in Mississippi, a one-room Rosenwald school in Tennessee, a coal miner’s kitchen in Kentucky, a tobacco farm in North Carolina, a bayou in Louisiana, or a slowly moving train in Warm Springs from which President Roosevelt waves, they remembered in color and in sound, sometimes chanting children’s rhymes and singing favorite hymns.
The collective life stories of elders in SIS, spanning eight decades, add textures of the human experience to American history and give witness to their generation’s belief in family, faith, hard work, integrity, and education as tested anchors in life.
Bonding with elders and research across disciplines that opens the lens of age help prepare Young Scholars in SIS for age-sensitive leadership and service in the twenty-first century.
Gloria Wade Gayles
Founding Director of Spelman’s Independent Scholars
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They were born in rural or urban communities in the South as the daughters of domestics, coal miners, sharecroppers, land-owning farmers, seamstresses, railroad pipe fitters, blacksmiths, cooks, pressers, teachers, preachers, and artisans. They became secretaries, nurses, teachers, realtors, caterers, entrepreneurs, preachers, college professors, and librarians.
In interviews conducted by Young Scholars in SIS, the elders journeyed to different sites of memory where forgotten, or untold, stories reside, waiting to be shared. Whether the site was a midwife’s birthing room in Mississippi, a one-room Rosenwald school in Tennessee, a coal miner’s kitchen in Kentucky, a tobacco farm in North Carolina, a bayou in Louisiana, or a slowly moving train in Warm Springs from which President Roosevelt waves, they remembered in color and in sound, sometimes chanting children’s rhymes and singing favorite hymns.
The collective life stories of elders in SIS, spanning eight decades, add textures of the human experience to American history and give witness to their generation’s belief in family, faith, hard work, integrity, and education as tested anchors in life.
Bonding with elders and research across disciplines that opens the lens of age help prepare Young Scholars in SIS for age-sensitive leadership and service in the twenty-first century.
Gloria Wade Gayles
Founding Director of Spelman’s Independent Scholars
