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DELISA MINOR HARRIS: Hi, I'm DeLisa Minor Harris. I'm the Director of Library Services here at Fisk University's John Hope and Aurelia E. Franklin Library.

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Fisk's history is long, and it includes many women, African-American women, who helped to not only bring this University into its prominence, but also around its founding, as teachers, as students even.

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Our University was founded in 1866, around the end of the Civil War here in Nashville. And it's the longest-- it's the earliest institution of higher education in the city,

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and it was the first. And so within that founding, you have figures who are coming forward and being shaped through the educational leadership here at Fisk.

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Those early classes have the first graduating class that included Virginia Walker Broughton, who was a Fisk Jubilee singer, but also went on to be a missionary and do work in Memphis, Tennessee.

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So you have those early sort of roots being planted here at Fisk, and women are at the center of that, even through the early 20th century, through teaching and mentorship, through educational milestones

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and just breaking glass ceilings. The development of African-American Women's collections here at Fisk University has a long history. Started in 1929, Arturo Schomburg,

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the famous Black bibliophile, was here at Fisk for a tenure from 1930 to 1931, and during that time he developed what we now know as our special collections and archives.

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And in that moment, you had early collections from women like Ella Shepard Moore, who was a member of the original Fisk Jubilee Singers, the international touring group ensemble for which our institution is known,

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and the records of other women a part of that ensemble, America Robinson and Virginia Walker Broughton. Their correspondence, diaries and experience

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really shaped the early collections centred on Black women. Later on, you have an intentional effort in the 60s with black librarians and women, Doctor Jessie Carney Smith

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and Ann Allen Shockley, who are more intentional in capturing the legacy of Black women from the early periods of the 19th century into the mid to-- early to mid 20th century.

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So a lot of the collections you'll see in this resource are from that era of our librarians here at Fisk. Historically Black Colleges and Universities, or HBCUs, have long been stewards of African-American collections,

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and particularly African-American collections centred on women, and it's due to the intentionality behind the librarians and archivists who walked the halls and institutions like Fisk

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University, but also Howard University, Hampton University, Atlanta University and others. And this intentionality came not from just a love of Black community and culture and life,

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but also out of necessity, as you have larger white institutions who systematically did not collect materials and ephemera related to the Black experience. When you think about the early institutions, Hampton

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University, Fisk University, Atlanta University, and how those institutions saw the immediate value in what was happening around their communities. When you think about the Fisk Jubilee Singers,

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they go on their first tour in 1871. This is a unique experience, as they're one of, if not the first, Black ensemble to tour in North America and really have a success,

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and then eventually tour in Europe. And so you have these early sort of groundbreaking histories happening at these institutions. And there's a moment that happens

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where you have librarians at that time and other professionals at the schools thinking about how this documented history will be told in the future or shared.

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And so there's an intense intentionality around how it's documented, shared. You think about the work and labour of Carter G. Woodson, who started the Association for Negro Life and History that

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really studies this history more in depth and makes it a professional sort of facing identity. And HBCUs come along with that in supporting it. In 1947, here at Fisk, you have Charles S. Johnson,

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who establishes officially the archives at Fisk, that even though, we know, it started much earlier, it becomes this like professional space of-- or organized space for documenting history

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with guidelines and really an investment. You have the first archivist here who comes to Fisk. And so this is a story not just at Fisk, it's across HBCUs. And also, we know the longer history of separation,

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of segregation, where there's not Black students being permitted to attend certain institutions, or libraries and archives aren't appreciative or understanding of how the value of Black life and culture is.

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Fisk is among the leaders, obviously, of HBCUs. We've produced a number of graduates from our institution. We were first to be accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges.

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We were the first HBCU with a Phi Beta Kappa chapter. And so we've held a prominent role in history, and we extended that to our archives and special collections, where you

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have some of the most probably rare, or certainly valuable, collections on Black life and across America, but also internationally. The collections at Fisk are important to researchers

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studying African-American women's history because they helped to develop these narratives that have long been overlooked and really under researched. When you think historically about the scholarship

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in science, or the scholarship on music, or any really, field of study, area of life, cultural experience, it's lacking a lot from the perspective of women and especially Black women.

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And for us to be able to provide access to these materials, to researchers, that expands the scholarship that we're seeing that is produced. And also for our students, you know students are researchers

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as well, and it gives them a broader sense of how society and community operated in segments of history and how women played an essential role in building community and creating maybe the best version of a fraction

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or some kind of scientific discovery, or maybe even a political action, or just expansive things that were done to help them think more expansively

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about their own scholarship and work. These collections are important for researchers particularly because they span across several areas of study, but also life.

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So cultural expression. When you think about STEM or sciences, and you think about politics as well as sports and all sorts of literary history, there's all sorts of variety and diversity

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amongst these archives. The themes that emerge most strongly from these materials are leadership, Black firsts really, and cultural expression. So you have within these materials

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women like Pauline E. Hopkins, who is one of the earliest Black women literary figures. She's a playwright, as well as a lecturer, and there's rarely any documentation

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on Pauline Hopkins outside of Fisk's collection on her. And it's important because there aren't many stories of Black women from the early 20th century, especially individual and in detail.

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And that research today is formulating those stories. But collections like this help to not only formulate but evaluate the experience of someone like Hopkins. And then you have Dr. Dorothy Lavinia Brown.

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Her papers are here as well. And Dr. Brown was the first Black woman surgeon in the South, as well as the first Black woman in the Tennessee legislature, and that story

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of how she navigated being a Black woman surgeon at Meharry Medical College and then also here in Tennessee in the legislature, is important to the narratives of women in politics in those early Black firsts.

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So the groundbreaking experiences and breaking the glass ceiling in areas that are often dominated by men and the male experience. And then you have cultural expression.

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So you have collections from singers and composers and people in music like Eileen Southern, who is a composer and one probably most overlooked from the 20th century. And her compositions are unique and important

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to choral and chamber music. And one of the more notable persons, Ophelia Settle Egypt worked alongside Charles S. Johnson as an interviewer for the unwritten history

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of ex-slaves, where they documented the experience of formerly enslaved people in the South during the 1920s and 30s. My favourite collection from Fisk is Mrs.

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James A. Myers collection, or Henrietta Crawley Myers is her name. And her papers document her experience as an independent ensemble director of a Jubilee Singers group and her experience

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touring in the 1950s across Europe and Southeast Asia. And really, those papers are enlightening because it's not only documents, but both a long selection of photographs where you see Mrs. Myers and her ensemble

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and pictures with ambassadors from India, and in Paris and London in front of Big Ben. So a lot of important cultural moments there, especially as it relates to music, but also Black travel.

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When you think about the experience of African-American women, and people travelling abroad. So that collection is really an excellent collection, and it gives a variety of material and research.

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Researchers can look at it from all different angles. The advantages for digitizing these collections are immense. When you think about access today, everyone is not able to come to Nashville,

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although we would love them to come to Fisk. And why that matters is there's an international lens that's also missing from a lot of discussion on Black women's lives.

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But we know for a fact through these collections that Black women lived globally and lived lives that were creative and innovative. And so we want to open the doors to everyone, not just

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scholars and researchers, to access the materials for genealogy-- genealogical work, or just basic knowledge and information. I mean, access to information, as we have seen,

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creates a better sense of society and community and one that is diverse and positive, all of those things, and we feel these collections have the ability to do that. And when you think about the research or the sources--

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the primary sources available to communities in higher education or schools, K through 12, those sources often don't include diverse voices. And we want to ensure that those voices are diverse

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and they are heard. I'm looking forward to African American Women's Histories to really change the landscape of scholarship and research. I'm also looking forward to seeing

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in totality these collections in the digital space. We often see fragments of the collection when we're doing research or reference work for researchers, but we haven't seen in its entirety the documents,

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the photographs and other images for this. Also just having more of an expanded sense of the holdings itself. We're a small staff.

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We're a small team here. I'm looking forward the most to African American Women's Histories launch, but also what it produces. So how are scholars, researchers, students, faculty,

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staff going to react to these collections? And what sort of stories or projects or events come out of this collection being digitized and available.