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AAfter Shaw University’s WSHA radio station began broadcasting in 1968, several other historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) followed North Carolina leading the school, starting their own wave.
Over the years, students who work on these systems have used them to inform the audience about campus events, as well as play selected music and present cultural programs. In doing so, radio stations at HBCUs have become an important part of the campus and surrounding communities.
But the landscape of university media is changing. Today, of the more than 100 HBCUs across the country, about 30 have a radio. Some schools and students are turning to podcasts, for example, while others are gearing up for TikTok and virtual reality shows. Stations are closed, plus WSHA in 2018while others are working to develop new audiences. So what happens to the archives created by previous generations when the stations go live?
HBCU Radio Preservation Project is working to ensure that the unaltered data in these organizations is preserved and accessible. Thanks to the efforts of this project, WSHA archives are available through America Archives of Public Broadcasting. Several other universities, including Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, have preserved their radio archives for future generations.
How the project works
While working in the archives of WYSO, a public radio station in Yellow Springs, Ohio, Jocelyn Robinson began to wonder what HBCU radio collections might include. He created a project that looked for radio stations to find out.
“I’ve done a history of all the radio stations, so I knew where they were founded and what they looked like, how they broadcast,” said Robinson, a member of the African American and Civil rights caucus on the radio advocacy group at the Library of Congress. “At the end of the grant, I wrote a report and came up with a number of ideas on how I thought school radios could be better helped by preservation, including school records.”
He founded the HBCU Radio Preservation Project, which trains radio stations and college archives in audio and visual preservation.
This project consists of HBCU Radio Preservation Archive linkrecent graduates are eligible, while fellows are trained in archeology and art while also supporting radio stations and campus archives.
The HBCU Radio Preservation Project organizes and works with organizations to help provide people with the ability to read, package and archive archives. This service helps every organization manage and realize the maintenance of its equipment. Then, the American Archives of Public Broadcasting (AAPB), which is a service of public broadcasting, gives organizations the opportunity to make some of their material available.
To date, the project has digitized over 1,125 hours of audio and visited nearly a dozen HBCU campuses. The team interviewed more than 90 people, recording more than 140 hours of oral history.
Remembering history
There is an oral project part of the group effort, which is “where the story becomes more important and more visible in the work”, said Robinson. One of the earliest oral histories he recorded was with David Linton, WCOK program manager at Clark Atlanta University, in Atlanta, Georgia, whose career began at WSHA in Shaw.
“David left there as a student, learned his craft, and helped get WRVS, the radio station at Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina, on the air in the mid-1980s,” Robinson said. “You’re looking at decades of legacy.”
“It’s interesting to hear the presenters talk about the emergence of these radio stations in the ’60s and ’70s (and) to hear how black radio on HBCU campuses grew into the civil rights and black power movements,” said Will Tchakirides, assistant director of public and historical programming for the HBCU Radio Preservation Project, which works with historians. “These were Black college students who wanted a voice to be heard on the radio, and some of the narrators we talked to were students who were in communication departments or working in other jobs where they had the opportunity to talk to fellow students, share music, express their culture.”
The project has completed more than 90 oral records to date, with more planned. Those records are accessible to many people through the project’s cooperation with a Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University, an HBCU in Jackson, Mississippi, which has its own radio station at WJSU 88.5.
Reclaiming history
Celebrating the history of radio helps a variety of groups – from current students who may not be avid listeners to their family members who worked in radio – to understand the importance of the channel.
After documenting the archives, the HBCU Radio Preservation Project returns the materials to the institutions. The radio’s hard drive is supplied in a black box that is decorated to look like an old radio. The box has its own call letters and radios. The institution’s library and radio station will receive a plaque to acknowledge and celebrate the efforts made to protect the radio’s reputation and reputation.
Shaw’s comeback included 46 episodes of Traces of Faces and Places, the school’s weekly news program.
“Not only are we preserving the voice of this radio, this history, this cultural history, we are also, in some ways, giving families the sound of the voice of someone who may no longer be with us,” said Phyllis Jeffers-Coly, assistant director of administration and outreach.
The late Margaret Rose Murray, for example, who hosted Traces of Faces and Places was an important social justice and civil rights activist in the city. “This woman’s family has 46 hours to listen to their mother’s voice and be a channel for justice, social change and community engagement in Raleigh, North Carolina,” Jeffers-Coly said.
At the height of radio, he held talks about civil rights, youth activism and demonstrations. The record that the students made and kept during that time is now a valuable resource. “At this point,” said Jeffers-Coly, “where cultural institutions, including museums, including universities, including radio stations, are losing money, we had to show up and show and celebrate in a way that was visible to the public.”
