Voices From Our America
Voices Lifted, Lives AmplifiedVFOA is an applied research project dedicated to preserving and disseminating the neglected narratives of the American experience. Through oral interviews, we aim to create social and educational resources that provide communities with a more complete understanding of life in Our America.
Featured Voices In Their Own Words
Dr. Erna Broder
"It's part of, I call it the black space, looking at things from your perspective. Having the confidence to look at it from your perspective."
Augustus Trym
"My best advice to the young people coming today should be to study. It is their duty that they should study."
Miriam D.J.S.
"My hope is to have a better future. What I do for them is aiming that they may recognize the path, tomorrow or later on, the struggle I’ve been through for them to become good people, and to achieve their goals too."
Furaha Youngblood
She decided that she wanted to become a “citizen of the world” and travel extensively - always wanted to travel to Africa, and knew that she wouldn’t spend her entire life in the United States.
Aljosie Aldrich Harding
She credits going to Togo in 1962 with saving her life because of the pressure of being Black and female in the US. Harding says, "I learned to breathe and to relax in a way that I had not learned before."
Cecil Haynes
"Well I would say the secret is normal and natural and it’s a natural instinct that you admire someone. You like them. It develops into love. And good understanding...you feel you want to be together forever."
Melva Lowe De Goodin
"You know language very often is used politically. That happens in the US and all over the world. When we have political entities that are formed out of the conglomeration of people, there has to be one language that serves as a lingua franca and then that language empowers the people who speak it..."
Haydee Beckles
"Personas, así que tenemos que saber cómo vivir unos con otros, aunque las actitudes de las personas las del lado tuyo sean malas, mejor déjela ahí y búscate a otra persona y están todos bien, porque nunca vas a poder cambiar a la gente, a las personas, porque hay veces es la cultura de ellos."
Mary Watkins
"What is 'valley?' You know that's what they called it back in 1870. District fifteen was 'valley.' And I kept thinking, that's throwing me off because I knew my people were from Walterhill and everything. So...finally, I found out that 'valley' and 'Walterhill' was the same thing. They just changed the name. "
Malaika Adero
Went from Toni Cade Bambara's and to the John Killen's writers workshop,“which was about literature, but also about activism because art and politics are one.”
A Word
From Dr. Nwankwo
“VFOA has long been a dream in the making, with the Panamanian core beginning as a seed in 1998 during my first visit to the Isthmus, and maturing over the last ten years during my sojourns to a range of sites across the Americas. Throughout the course of my travels, I have been struck by the richness of the histories and cultures I have encountered, particularly those of African Diaspora communities. As I have journeyed from place to place, however, I have been troubled by the extent to which so many of our histories, these individual and collective histories of experience, are not well known beyond (and even within) our communities themselves. My research, including my book Black Cosmopolitanism, has centered on the relations (positive and negative) between populations of African descent in the Americas, covering areas such as poetry, anthropology, and contemporary music. Simply put, it has become clear to me that we, the people of the Americas don’t know enough about ourselves or about each other. We see each other on TV, or encounter each other briefly in other ways, but don’t really know or understand the nuances of the histories, experiences that drive our approaches to viewing the world and each other. Consequently, our interactions, whether between West Indian and non-West Indian Panamanians, or between U.S. African Americans and Caribbean people, or between older generations and younger generations within the same community, are not always as enriching or as productive as they might be if we were armed with more knowledge about our own history as well of the histories of those with whom we are interacting. ”
Read ‘The Wisdom of the Elders’ Now
The Wisdom of The Elders Program serves African American seniors in the Murfreesboro, TN Parks and Recreation’s Patterson Park Community Center. In 2012, the City of Murfreesboro was awarded a mini-grant from the Meharry-Vanderbilt Community Engaged Research Core to gather data on the impact of a mental health intervention engaging African American seniors in the production of an autobiography (through print and/or visual media) and intergenerational exchanges. The undertaking, initiated and spearheaded by Professor Ifeoma Nwankwo in collaboration with community partners The City of Murfreesboro Department of Parks and Recreation, Dr. Barbara Hodges and Leroy Hodges, Dr. George Smith, Ms. Mary Watkins, and academic partners William Turner, Ph.D., Peabody College and James Powers, MD, Vanderbilt-Reynolds Geriatric Education was created to gather information about and develop new ways to enhance the general health, mental health and social engagement of seniors.
Get In Touch
Email:
vfoamerica@gmail.com